The Switcher's Guide: What To Do After Installing Ubuntu

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Is there life on Ubuntu? There is! We install the necessary applications, unleash the potential of the system, find useful programs and alternatives to those that we are used to using on Mac and Windows.

Canonical recently released the next release of the Ubuntu operating system - 15.04, which pleasantly surprised its users. I was surprised by the fact that the number of problems arising during installation has decreased significantly, the system itself has become faster, and some of the obviously unnecessary functions have disappeared. As much as we praise it, installing any version of Ubuntu is not complete without a few extra steps.

Updates

The first step is to check Ubuntu for updates. The terminal and a simple command will help us with this.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Additional Drivers

Ubuntu often works better with proprietary drivers, which are easily found.

Settings → Software & Updates → Additional Drivers

Drivers marked tested generally perform better than others, but the choice is yours.

Unity Tweak Tool

The Unity Tweak Tool helps make Ubuntu more user-friendly with options that are not provided by default on the system.

Disable online search in Unity Dash

Unity Dash is able to find Alla Pugacheva's songs and possibly the weather in Norilsk, but when did you use something other than Google for this? Disable it in the settings.

Settings → Security & Privacy → Search

Installing codecs

Due to patent issues, Ubuntu does not have the pre-installed codecs required to play some types of music and video files. However, they can be installed in two clicks via the app store.

Software

Google chrome

Many people will like the browser from Google more than the already installed Firefox, and it will be useful to us today.

Audacious

Just don't be confused with Audacity. Audacious is an easy-to-use player and a noteworthy replacement for Rhythmbox.

sudo apt-get install audacious

Dropbox

Should I say anything about Dropbox? Convenient service, perfectly implemented on many operating systems. And the Ubuntu distribution is no exception.

sudo apt-get install dropbox

VLC media player

Legendary cross-platform media player that supports most of the formats known to science.

sudo apt-get install vlc browser-plugin-vlc

Skype

What could be more legendary than VLC? Only Skype, for 12 years, has been helping us communicate with mothers and grandmothers.

The rapidly growing messenger Telegram has long ago acquired a Linux version that has shown itself to be no worse than mobile clients.

Deluge

Deluge is one of the main torrent clients, along with Transmission, which was included with Ubuntu out of the box. Transmission is good, but Deluge supports a lot of plugins, without which it's hard to imagine a torrent client in the modern world.

sudo apt-get install deluge

Geary

Geary is a simple yet modern email client that just puts Thunderbird to rest.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa: yorba / ppa

sudo apt-get install geary

KeePass

KeePass is a cross-platform password storage program.

Mac and Windows application alternatives

"Everything would be fine, but there is a program Y in the X system, which I really need, how can I work without it?" - you ask. This is what Y most often become programs from the following list. There are always alternatives, you just need to get used to them:

3ds Max - Blender;
Adobe Audition - Ardor, Audacity, LMMS;
Adobe Illustrator - Inkscape;
Adobe Lightroom - Darktable, RawTherapee, digiKam;
Adobe Photoshop - GIMP;
Adobe Premiere - OpenShot Video Editor.

Launching the Android application on Ubuntu

The Play Market is replete with applications that are often lacking on a computer. And thanks to Google, installing them has become very easy.

First of all, download ARC Welder from the Chrome Web Store.

Find the APK file of the application, APKMirror is ideal for this.

Open ARC Welder, select the directory where the application files will be stored. Find the downloaded APK file, select the desired parameters and launch.