Part 1 of 3 articles focusing on taking a stock Ubuntu installation and turning it into a visually pleasing and overall functional desktop. This first part focuses on the installation followed by some critical system updates and the first tweaks to the visual appearance of Ubunutu’s Warty Warthog distribution. Start reading this article here.
Customizing Ubuntu
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I don’t really find the screenshots that pleasing. It just looks like their trying to make gnome look like windows.
Of course I also have a dislike for blue, so that might be part of it. Of course this does raise the question as to why dropline is blue by default. Guess its just bowing to pressure. I happen to like ubuntu’s default look quite a bit. Although, I prefer something a bit lighter.
http://www.borgerding.org/dropline/paulbest/screenshots/20041222.pn…
Take a “user friendly” Linux distribution and write a guide about how to change your package sources, upgrade to an unsupported (by Ubuntu) release of FireFox, complete with instructions like: run this command from a root shell. I can imagine how many first time Linux users are now pulling their hair out trying to figure how to get apt working again.
I like the two panel-bars (top and below.)
The default theme is fine, though I change the window borders to Industrial. I think that the icon set is incomplete, the default theme uses the stock OO.org icons. The stock BlueCurve theme feels more “complete” IMHO, but all in all my Ubuntu experience is fine.
I’m not using ubuntu there. I’ve used it and like it, but its just not for me. At least not on my main system. (Too much of a slacker to install something new.)
What’s the app on his desktop on the extreme right?
(with the clock and hard disk usage).
What’s the app on his desktop on the extreme right?
(with the clock and hard disk usage).
It looks like gDesklets
I briefly tested ubuntu, but didn’t really find anything exceptional about it. Maybe I missed something… but, what about Ubuntu makes it so popular? I mean… do people like the defaults? is it the philosophy of the packagers? frequent updates? vast package repository? what is it?! Why is Ubuntu so special?
is to turn on auto-hint so you can get some decent fonts.
I don’t think that Ubuntu is targeted at people who want to customize everything… If you already know you want to customize so much, why not just use debian unstable?
What do I like about Ubuntu?
IMHO it’s a perfect mix.
It gives you a very usable desktop with sane defaults in no time. Just pop in the CD, install and you have a working enviroment. On top of that it’s a very lean install, for example, no services that might give you any security problems are installed by default.
But while it is very simple it still is debian at heart, which of course gives you a vast package repository and the ability to tinker with your box any way you want.
As I already said, the perfect mix.
for a linux distro, Ubuntu works…it may have some issues regarding networking and hardware, but for a simple desktop, Ubuntu gets the job done. If you need more from it, just add the packages.
I’ve been running Ubuntu for a week and so far, everything works..the community is also great…
Users of serious OSes please read this part of the article and laugh:
”
Upgrade Firefox
There are several posts and how-to’s in the Ubuntu forums on how to upgrade to Firefox 1.0 using the Hoary packages. Hoary is the next Ubuntu release, still in development. I strongly recommend against installing any Hoary packages on your Warty system. It has caused my Gnome desktop environment to become extremely unstable and I have since reinstalled Warty from scratch.
Instead I suggest that you download Firefox directly from http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
Run the installer from a root terminal and install it to /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/firefox
Unfortunately you can’t remove the original firefox installation via synaptic as it will try to rip other packages out as well. Not a good idea.
Instead just remove the old reference to firefox by issuing this command: rm /usr/bin/firefox
Then create a symbolic link to reference the new firefox executable: ln -s /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox
”
And this distro is using one of the systems that “solve all installation problems” (apt-get) – haha!
I am wondering about that too.
I dual boot between Debian Sid and SUSE 9.2 and with Ubuntu I feel in a straitjacket. Of course I could change everything (and I have done,I upgraded to Debian Proper), but what is the point?
Nothing to do with Linux in general. This kind of things happens when somebody takes a well established distribution and “customizes” it. Most Debian derivatives break APT (and most say so), Vidalinux breaks Portage, and so on…
And which serious OS do you use?
To broadly state package installation in Linux is broken is foolish. I have no problem installing the latest software in Arch with a simple pacman -S command, much easier than in Windows. The same is true for straight Debian, Gentoo, and others. It all depends on the repository.
That said, Ubuntu isn’t made to be updated on a weekly, or even monthly basis unless you’re tracking the development branch, which is very easy to do by the way. Ubuntu is all about installing and being able to get your work done without a bunch of hacking (yet they don’t interfere if you want to hack). They don’t upgrade software so much in the release repository, they fix bugs and vulnerabilities, because most people don’t want to be bothered with constant updates. It’s really a non-issue to the types who use Ubuntu because every 6 months a new release will come out, and all you have to do is switch to the new repository and dist-upgrade.
And again, if someone wants the latest of everything under Ubuntu, they can always track development.
This is also why the author had problems installing Firefox from the Hoary repository. They’re really two seperate distributions with completely seperate dependency trees. To try to cherry pick packages from one while running the other will always be hit and miss.
the author went a long way to upgrade firefox. why? there’s a good version of firefox in warty. they actually wanted to have 1.0 in it but they had so many problems that they reverted back to 0.93.
really, is there any website you can view with firefox 1.0 that you can’t view with firefox 0.93???
the power of apt-get is to use the repositories that are available. this is a shitload of software, all fairly recent. i don’t get these update-junkies any more. that’s so windowsy, imho.
also, i think he actually decreased his user experience by removing one of the toolbars, possibly without ever trying the gnome standard layout, but of course he’s free to screw his operating system up the way he wants…
christian
The problem is that in LinuxLand you either run an unstable distro or you live with outdated software. If you want to use current versions of software on debian you have to run UNSTABLE (which will break now and then and is not intended for production systems) or force UNSTABLE packages into STABLE/TESTING (which will also break now and then).
I don’t know about Arch but I guess it’s just a Debian-like with only one unstable tree.
You should be able to install current software releases on an OS that’s just a few months old. You often can’t do this on Linux because of dependency hell – a problem NOT (fully) solved by apt-get/portage or whatever as the article has shown.
true…just add functionality to firefox imho…like installing flash for instance…
ubuntuguide.org is much more deeper when it comes to customizing ubuntu though…give it a try…
It’s Debian, but but there are frequently releases all 6 months, Debian needs 2 years (good for stable server-environments, bad for the usual desktop).
Ubuntu supports the releases over 18 months with security fixes.
The installer ist great, the Gnome-Desktop configuration is great and beside this it “just” works.
The current Ubuntu-Release is the *first* one and it’s very promising for future releases.
And btw: It’s absolutely free and you don’t have to pay for it.
“Break my Ubuntu” has some repositories to get some current SW like FF to run:
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/BreakMyUbuntu/view?searchterm=break…
No long comment is needed, just two examples will say it all:
1)Debian testing is far from outdated and far from unstable. By the time software reaches testing it has been checked for bugs first in experimental and then in unstable. Even unstable is so only by name.
2)Suse is never outdated nor unstable. Actually bugfixes and security updates are delivered *timely*, much better than your “serious” OS ever manages to do. And please let’s not talk about outdated, because if your “serious” OS is what I tend to believe, it is almost 4 years old and no chance of seeing a new one in the foreseeable future.
If its apps do get updated it is mainly thanks to open source.
i’m fine with 0.9x which comes along with ubuntu…
the only thing i miss is the neat “Go” Button
i run SUSE 9.1 and thew installation could not be easier, i left unallocated space on the harddrive specifically for the purpose, but had i not, SUSE will even resize the windows partition to make space.
ubuntu NEEDS to do this too.
I found several sites that wouldn’t display in Firefox 0.9.3 but would display in 1.0. As it is, Ubuntu users are stuck with an outdated version – does 0.9.3 have type ahead find and the yellow location bar for https?
No, it has not.
I’ve posted a link where to get FF1.0 for Warty.
It’s Ubuntu’s philosophy to keep the software versions they released.
If you usually want to use “bleeding edge” software and you can’t wait for the next release, it’s better to use an appropriate distribution like Debian testing/unstable or Gentoo.
I agree with Gently. I’ve used the backport stable repository without a single problem.
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/BreakMyUbuntu/
The default FF wouldn’t load yahoo consistantly.
I just switched from Gentoo, which I had been runing for a little over a year. My favorite thing about Gentoo and now Ubuntu is the extremely active and helpful community behind it. The wiki is absolutely great. There has yet to be a question that it hasn’t answered for me. And the info is much easier to find than in a forum.
Ubuntu is, for me, the best way to get a linux desktop machine up and running that you’ll never again (in theory) have to reinstall or burn another cd simply to get a current system. (Upgrading from cd –Suse, fedora– has never completely worked for me.) With Ubuntu just change the version info in synaptic and upgrade.
me $0.02
I haven’t used Debian proper in quite some time, so I can’t comment on it so much for the last year or two. But from everything I hear, it’s continued on the same as when I last tried it: testing is really only unstable in terms of servers and other mission critical applications. For a desktop it rarely breaks, and it’s quite up to date.
Gentoo, I don’t use myself since I’m on dialup, but everything I’ve heard is that the ebuilds are released in a timely manner, and that it’s exceptionally stable. Maybe a Gentoo user can comment further.
In Arch, most new package releases make their way into the repository within a day or two, sometimes hours. The biggest, more complex packages can take up to a couple of weeks, but they’re certainly stable. Arch does have Unstable and Testing repositories, but they’re not complete repositories like Debian (only a handful of packages in each): packages work their way through very quickly, and most packages don’t even need to touch either repository before release.
You should be able to install current software releases on an OS that’s just a few months old. You often can’t do this on Linux because of dependency hell – a problem NOT (fully) solved by apt-get/portage or whatever as the article has shown.
That’s not a very fair assessment, you’re looking at one distribution with a fairly abnormal upgrade policy (as effective as it may be for it’s users). In Debian proper, Gentoo, and Arch releases don’t really mean much, it’s just a snapshot of current. Once you get it installed, you can very quickly and easily sync to the latest version of all your software. I’ve actually installed Arch from a two version old CD and synced without any problems.
Oh, and Apt, Portage, and Pacman DO solve dependency hell as long as you use the distribution’s repository. Even RPM is almost fool proof these days when this is done. This is one of the major reasons there are so many distributions, so that you can match your needs to a distribution’s packaging philosophy. If you do so, you’ll likely never need to download a non-distribution-specific package. If that’s not simplicity at it’s finest, I don’t know what is: there’s very little searching for packages when I have a new need.
Gentoo, I don’t use myself since I’m on dialup, but everything I’ve heard is that the ebuilds are released in a timely manner, and that it’s exceptionally stable. Maybe a Gentoo user can comment further. “
I’ve used Gentoo for about 18 months.
It has an bleeding-edge character and it’s fairly stable for that. But it’s not comparable to Debian stable, Ubuntu, or the big commercial distros like SuSE oder Mandrake.
The biggest failure was about one year ago where they forgot a “ldconfig” in the new glibc-update.
Nearly nothing worked after that emerge -uD world.
Sometimes other packages are not working for some hours or days. For example my postgresql was out of order for about one week.
The last problem before i switched completely to ubuntu was broken sound in the gnome-desktop.
The Gentoo-Team wanted to introduce pure security-updates, i’m not informed if this happened yet.
Until this feature is available, i would not recommend Gentoo in critical environments.
Hm, while gentoo certainly isn’t debian stable I don’t have the bad experiences you had with it. On the contrary, keeping to the stable tree should ensure you get a very uptodate system with nearly no breakage whatsover.
It sure sounds like you ran ~x86 as I can’t really imagine the glibc error you mention slipping through to stable without anybody noticing.
Anyway, ubuntu is a great choice imho.
It sure sounds like you ran ~x86 as I can’t really imagine the glibc error you mention slipping through to stable without anybody noticing.
No. I’ve just used ~x86 for some selected packages like k3b.
Maybe i have not used ~x86 at all when that error occured.
The error *was* noticed because it was solved in the gentoo-forum where i found the information (there were more updates, glibc was was one of them, i was not sure which package or library broke the system).
Most people were not affected, because it was very quickly fixed, one or two hours later everything was ok again.
man, these things have such potential, but invariably fall flat on their face. all this is is a fairly accurate description of what a windows user would do after installing ubuntu. just for shits and giggles, did this help anyone with anything?
Here is a guide:
http://www.ubuntuguide.org
I’m missing something, but what is supposed to be so hard about downloading the most recent FF build from the mozilla website, and installing it in your local bin directory?
i’m currently dual-booting a kde-based debian sid and ubuntu hoary (unstable). while it was quite f* up recently, hoary is very stable right now.
gnome 2.9.4 is really beautiful and ubuntu has the major pro of not using anything other than gnome-system-tools (+ the installer and a bit of debconf of course) to configure the system. that makes it a must to try. nice & simple “just works” distro.
also the integration of gnome with project utopia is slowly converting to gnome a long time kde-user.
i really recommend ubuntu to anyone, especially debian users (synaptic shines)
my desktop:
http://pollycoke.org/linux-help/gente/felipe/gnome/2005-01-13b.png
One of the reasons users site as being the major reason for using Ubuntu is that they like to be on the bleeding edge. I like Ubuntu but greatly dislike their spoon fed user base.
The article is pretty lame, I hardly ever say that. I mean if you can’t figure out how to change GNOME’s look and feel maybe you need a new hobby.
The two panel look is all right but I find it taking up precious screen real estate, and it’s not that I want my DE to look like the Win32 DE that people love to hate.
I’m sorry but i really can’t agree with making users stick with buggy version of software for 6 months, lots of bugs have been fixed from 0.93 to 1.0 and 1.0 is not bleeding edge, it’s the stable version.
Also running the firefox installer won’t work until you delete the .mozilla directory, besides normal users don’t know how to do that.
Then we have the ugrading to hoary thingy, an absolute nightmare, lot’s of stuff get broken, x.org completely broke my system (and yes i know about migrating xf86config).
…upgrades Firefox by downloading it from mozilla.org? I mean apt is great and all, but for software which can install itself and isn’t a requirement for other packages, apt is overkill.
Installing software on Linux is no harder than in Windows except that you have more control over what bits of the OS you install, so if you start fiddling (as this article suggests you do), you can get unstuck. If you treat Ubuntu as you would Windows, you’ll have no trouble at all.
I’m sorry but i really can’t agree with making users stick with buggy version of software for 6 months, lots of bugs have been fixed from 0.93 to 1.0 and 1.0 is not bleeding edge, it’s the stable version.
Ubuntu’s Firefox is patched and it works.
FF 0.93 is part of Ubuntu’s Warty-Distribution, one “feature” of the Ubuntu stables is that there are no updates beside of security fixes.
You think they should upgrade FF, the next one needs gaim-current, the next one thinks a juicier glibc would be appropriate.
FF1.0 is available on mozilla.org, feel free to install it. In the ubuntu-wiki is explained how to get FF1.0 via apt-get without using something from Hoary.
Upgrading the whole distribution to unstable because of a newer Firefox is a little bit weird.
First of all, getting FF 1.0 working in Warty is as easy as using the (very stable- I help test it) backported packages found here:
http://ubuntu-bp.sourceforge.net/
This project has many other backported packages as well. (And if you want something, just ask…the maintainer is REALLY nice. He backported Gxine and GTKPOD the first day I asked for it.) A version of XFCE that is newer than Hoarys (don’t ask me how) can also be found here.
Second of all, I want to try to explain the point of Ubuntu
(aka What it does that plain Debian doesn’t). The whole point of Ubuntu is to make a FREE Linux (sorry Xandros) for the average user. And by average user, I mean someone a lot of Debian people don’t want hanging around their pet project:
1. Minimal use of commandline. Ubuntu is woring to get everything done in a GUI. Debian is fun for a nerd, but configuring simple things often requires the commandline + editing random text files. Thats something *I* (let alone my mother) don’t like doing.
2. A small install. Ubuntu only installs enough for a basic Gnome desktop (office suite, firefox, chat program). It does not install more than one type of program (there is only one broswer for example). The thought is that everything else can be had through Synaptic (notice, I didn’t say apt-get. As an Ubuntuer I look for a GUI solution first).
3. A clean unified interface. I might be flamed for this…but I hate the mess that is the Debian menu. I understand why it is this way (no dictator to demand uniformity), but I dislike it. Ubuntu does away with this, and puts NO icons on the initial desktop.
Basically, Ubuntu is for the next generation of Linux users. You know, the ones that right now have 1000 pieces of spyware on their windows machine. The ones that couldn’t name a single programing language. The ones that are scared of the commandline. The ones that make up most of the market for desktop computers.
Is Ubuntu there yet? No. There is a ways to go. But Hoary is already much better than Warty in its infant stage. Give it a year or two.
I have to aggree that Ubuntu and Gentoo have extremely organized, visually apealing, and easy “lamen” directions. This is why I was always interested in Gentoo, it was what I hoped other Distro’s could be like. It wasn’t so much corprate, or very messy community, for me ie:Yoper, or Mandrake. Gentoo and Ubuntu have very clean and organized communities. Plain and Simple. The reason I stopped using Slackware, and others, is the simple fact that after I installed Ubuntu, I didn’t have to do sweetFA. It was great, even the scroll wheel on my mouse was detected and working! I know this is trivial, but then again thats why it should be automatically configured. Im sticking with Ubuntu, even though Ive had to change Desktops mangers.
Has anyone else had the problem of removing firefox? The only other package that is removed is ubuntu-desktop, and had the author spent a minute to research that package, he would realize that it does ABSOLUTLY NOTHING! All it does is depend on all the default software included with Ubuntu. Basicially, if u remove a bunch of software and then want it all back, just install ubuntu-desktop and all the default apps will come back.
Run the installer from a root terminal and install it to /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/firefox
Is this normal? I mean:
root@mcsaba# ls /usr/lib
—————–snip——————
crt1.o libftpio.a libncurses.so libufs.so
crtbegin.o libftpio.so libncurses_p.a libufs_p.a
crtbeginS.o libftpio.so.5 libnetgraph.a libugidfw.a
crtend.o libftpio_p.a libnetgraph.so libugidfw.so
crtendS.o libg2c.a libnetgraph.so.1 libugidfw.so.1
crti.o libg2c.so libnetgraph_p.a libugidfw_p.a
————–snip——————
Isn’t /usr/lib/ for shared libraries? I understand that Ubuntu is not for users who want to learn linux/unix (which is made all the more difficult with incosistent placement of various libraries/progs, etc) – but does it have to be such a mess? Or is that the default install place for firefox?
It should be in /usr, /opt/foo, or /usr/local depending on the user and distribution. Putting it in /usr/lib is just plain strange, and while I don’t have Ubuntu installed at the moment, I do not think that’s the way Ubuntu does it.
This is strictly amateur hour, people. The first thing you change on Ubuntu is not to futz around with the browser, but to replace the 386 kernel with the 686 one
apt-get update
apt-get install linux-686
There’s an optimised K7 kernel available too.
Unless, you’re still on a 10-year old 386 box, of course …