TechComm Labs

Every release of Ubuntu means a flury of ‘tips and tricks’ and guides to tweaking the system and adding useful utilities. There are three major reasons for this. One is that Ubuntu is sized to fit on a CD so it only includes the most commonly used applications. Second is that the release is totally FOSS so it doesn’t include things that have license or source code restrictions. Third is that of a common denominator as a base for user customization. If you make a list of your own favorite tweaks, you’ll likely find it itself needs tweaking to fit the next release.

Eva’s Useful Guide to Ubuntu 9.10 is a good example. It doesn’t get into those awful screen shots some folks seem to think are necessary but just dishes out the red meat.

The Medibuntu Repository item comes right off the source. What is interesting to note is the use of the ‘lsb_release -cs’ command to match the repository to the current release. It also provides a good example of chained commands into one long line.

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/`lsb_release -cs`.list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list; sudo apt-get -q update; sudo apt-get --yes -q --allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring; sudo apt-get -q update

Eva suggests installing ‘non-free-codecs‘ as a superset of the usual ‘ubuntu-restricted-extras‘.

Eva’s more unusual tips include replacing the main menu system preferences and administration entries with the Gnome Control Center. That is done by ‘system->preferences->main menu’ and selecting the control center. Deselect preferences and administration so they don’t show in the menu.

There is a suggestion to install thunderbird-gnome-support for better desktop integration.

To use the windows meta-key on the keyboard to pop up the main desktop menu:
gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/panel_main_menu --type string "Super_L"

In the last release, you could use properties to avoid the shutdown countdown. Now you need this command to change that
gconftool-2 -s '/apps/indicator-session/suppress_logout_restart_shutdown' --type bool true

Eva even describes sources so you can put Ubuntu branding stickers on your case. Check it out and see if she’s got a solution to something bugging you.