Things to do after installing

Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS Trusty Tahr

PS/ Download : Every Ubuntu default wallpaper — from 4.10 to 16.04

Or Download : The New Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Default Wallpaper

The New Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Default Wallpaper

20 million users are currently using Ubuntu, powerful, solid and versatile operating system that offers security, stability, speed and reliability to users located from Algeria to Russia, China and USA.Before talking about ubuntu or other Unix/Linux Based on distros,I want to show you what can viruses do under microsoft windows .life's too short to spend it worrying about viruses.

Ubuntu 14.04 Unity Desktop Environment

Ubuntu 14.04 Gnome 3 Desktop Environment

Ubuntu 14.04 Cairo Desktop (Gnome Environment)

PS/ you can download my favorite wallpapers HERE

Ubuntu is designed primarily for use on personal computers, although a server edition also exists. As of 2012, according to online surveys, Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution on desktop/laptop personal computers, and most Ubuntu coverage focuses on its use in that market. In January 2012, the people at Ubuntu estimated that 20 million people use their operating system. However, it is also popular on servers and for cloud computing. No more viruses, no more spyware/malware, and Ubuntu OS is free.

Ubuntu is sponsored by the UK-based company Canonical Ltd. Canonical generates revenue by selling technical support and services related to Ubuntu, while the operating system itself is entirely free of charge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLRF7o3HPJk

For more specific information (recommended):

System requirements: The system requirements vary among Ubuntu products. For the main Ubuntu desktop product, the official Ubuntu Documentation recommends a 1 GHz Pentium 4 with 1 gigabyte of RAM and 5 gigabytes of hard drive space, or better. For less powerful computers, there are other Ubuntu distributions such as Lubuntu and Xubuntu.

THIS GUIDE IS CURRENTLY UNDER-CONSTRUCTION AND WILL NOT BE READY UNTIL MID-APRIL 2014 FOR NORMAL USE.

Download Ubuntu 14.04 Desktop:

Download Ubuntu 14.04 Server:

Download Ubuntu 14.04 – Torrent (Faster Download) Desktop

Download Ubuntu 14.04 – Torrent (Faster Download) Server

In addition they can be found at the following links:

Existing Ubuntu users can install Unetbootin (or use Startup Disc Creator) from the repositories, and use any of these application to migrate the above downloaded image to a USB Flash Drive or USB Thumb Drive. Afterwards you can boot from your USB drive, or you can burn it to a disc with Brasero, or K3b, and boot from your CD/DVD drive instead. USB is much faster than CDs or DVDs when it comes to installation time, and less chance of data corruption.

Existing Mac users can use these instructions on how to install Ubuntu for the first time:

Existing Windows users can use these instructions on how to install Ubuntu for the first time if you are new to Ubuntu Linux. Find out out if you are running 32-bit or 64-bit hardware. I recommend using a USB Flash Thumb Drive to install Ubuntu OS. (Recommended):

If you are currently running Windows:

Format your USB device using a FAT32 partition. Download win32imagewriter from here. Extract the ZIP archive to the directory of your choice, preferably your download directory the Ubuntu ISO is stored. Run the Win32ImageWriter program, and click the folder icon in the Image File section. In the window to “Select a disk image,” navigate to the download directory your ISO is in, and type “*.iso” without the quotes. The image should appear. Click the Save button. Select your USB device from the list under “Device”. Click the “Write” button to write the image to the USB drive.

Special Note: Tutorial on how-to disable Windows UEFI “Secure Boot” if you have a newer Windows PC:

help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI

When you have your ubuntu.iso downloaded, and installed onto a USB Flash Thumb Drive, you will need to boot your computer from the USB Flash Drive. When you turn on your computer there should be an option at the bottom of your screen to allow you to change the boot order temporarily or you may need to select BIOS settings, and then reconfigure your BIOS settings to boot from your USB port first, instead of your HDD. You can change it back to the default when you are done installing Ubuntu. You will need to have your newly created Ubuntu installation USB inserted in your USB port when the computer is booting up. If this is your first time using Ubuntu on your computer, please make sure that you thoroughly test everything with your Live Ubuntu USB drive to make sure everything still works on your computer before installing it to your hard drive.

Special Note: If you have a hard drive (non-SSD drive only) that you need to have magnetically shredded because you are giving your computer to someone else make sure to use “Secure Erase” application within the Parted Magic boot disc. It will overwrite everything, even sectors marked as bad. The Parted Magic live linux CD has a GUI interface to run Secure Erase, and it makes shredding very simple for even new users to Linux OS. If you have an SSD drive that you need to have shredded, make sure to use the disc that came from the factory since SSD are usually encrypted.

Here is where you can download Parted Magic iso image to burn onto a blank cd-r/dvd-r disc:

Installation of Ubuntu OS: Make sure you select and place checkmarks next to “Download updates while installing”, and “Install this third-party software” on the following screen. (Required)

It might be a good idea to hardwire your computer to your internet connection for greater download speed. You can either select to repartition your entire hard drive for Ubuntu, or if you want to keep your existing Windows OS installation, you can select a side-by-side installation. A side-by-side will take considerably longer to install because it has to change your hard drive to be a dual boot system, so try to be patient during this process. Don’t encrypt your installation unless you really need to do it because it will degrade your overall system performance speed.

If this is your first time using Ubuntu on your computer here is a quick example of how to use Terminal to install software using this to-do list guide (make sure to switch the video to HD)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj81tC63Q4g?version=3&rel=0&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent]

Okay, if you rebooted your computer after installing and your computer fails to start correctly you can try to fix grub bootloader with the following program called Boot-Repair.

Boot-Repair is a simple tool to repair frequent boot issues you may encounter in Ubuntu like when you can’t boot Ubuntu after installing Windows or another Linux distribution, or when GRUB is not displayed anymore, or when some upgrades breaks GRUB, etc. Boot-Repair lets you fix these issues with a simple click, which (generally reinstall GRUB and) restores access to the operating systems you had installed before the issue. You need to boot from your live stick of Ubuntu again and then run these commands in Terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && boot-repair

Grub Customizer is a GUI configuration tool to allow users to change the Grub 2 settings without using the command line. The application allows the user to add, remove, freeze, rename and reorder boot menu items. It will also allow changes to the Grub 2 configuration settings such as background image and menu timeout. For long-time users familiar with StartUp-Manager, this application performs many of the same capabilities with additional options. It also makes convoluted guides such as my “Grub 2 Title Tweaks” unnecessary for all but the most devoted command-line enthusiasts!

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install grub-customizer

But hopefully, if all went well, you should now be logged into your brand new Ubuntu 14.04 desktop at this point.

Gnome Session“Flashback” the most basic version of GNOME you can install. The 3D features and requirements of the standard GNOME Shell are not present. It is the closest you can get to the original GNOME 2 desktop without installing the Mate PPA. The GNOME 2 desktop is the one most users would recognize as the familiar or traditional desktop from years ago.

To install Classic Ubuntu “Flashback” Desktop Environment, open Terminal and copy and paste:

sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback sudo apt-get install indicator-applet-appmenu sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

Then log out and select “GNOME Classic” at the LightDM login screen. You need to click on the the little-gear-looking-icon next to where you type your password to change your session to Ubuntu Classic “Flashback” session.

After you are logged into your Ubuntu Classic session you can move the top bar to the bottom (like in the screen capture at the top of this article) by first clicking and holding the ALT key and dragging it down to the bottom of your screen.

Ubuntu 14.04 (Gnome 2 Fork) Mate Desktop Environment

Unhappy with Unity? Want your old Gnome 2 desktop back? Just when you thought Gnome 2 was gone forever. It’s back!

More info here: http://mate-desktop.org/

How to install older Gnome 2 “Mate” Desktop Environment in 14.04:

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://packages.mate-desktop.org/repo/ubuntu trusty main" sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install mate-archive-keyring sudo apt-get install mate-core

Then log out and select “MATE” at the LightDM login screen. You need to click on the the little-gear-looking-icon next to where you type your password to change your session to Mate session.

Cairo-Dock is a pretty, fast and customizable desktop interface. You can think of it as a good alternative/addition to Unity, Gnome-Shell, Xfce-panel, KDE-panel, etc. You can use OpenGL if your video adapter supports it, or you can run it without OpenGL. You can logout after you have it installed and change your session to Cairo Gnome to run it.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cairo-dock-team/ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install cairo-dock cairo-dock-plug-ins

Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems. It aims to be fast and low on system resources, while still being visually appealing and user friendly for old school users.

http://linuxg.net/how-to-install-xfce-4-12-on-ubuntu-13-10-ubuntu-13-04-ubuntu-12-10-and-ubuntu-12-04/

Lubuntu (LXDE) 14.04 Desktop Environment

For those of you switching from Windows XP, since it will no longer be supported by Microsoft, Lubuntu is a lightweight Linux operating system based on Ubuntu but using the LXDE desktop environment in place of Ubuntu’s Unity shell and GNOME desktop. LXDE is touted as being “lighter, less resource hungry and more energy-efficient”. Lubuntu received official recognition as a formal member of the Ubuntu family on 11 May 2011, commencing with Lubuntu 11.10, released October 13th 2011. If you really want something more like Gnome 2 was in Ubuntu, I can suggest trying Lubuntu as a nice slim retro alternative, copy and paste into Terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lubuntu-desktop/ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install lubuntu-desktop

Now log out and select “Lubuntu” at the LightDM login screen. You need to click on the the little gear looking icon next to where you type your password to switch your session to Lubuntu.

Adding Medibuntu Package Repository (Discontinued) (Optional Alternative):

The only thing this does is provide you with DVD codecs to playback DVD movies. If you don’t have a DVD drive, or you don’t watch DVD movies on your computer you can ignore these packages.

Special Note: w32codecs and w64codecs are no longer available.

To disable the Medibuntu repository and/or enable the new libdvdcss repository, use these commands:

sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
curl ftp://ftp.videolan.org/pub/debian/videolan-apt.asc | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb ftp://ftp.videolan.org/pub/debian/stable ./" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/libdvdcss.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2

Enable Partner and Independent Repositories in Ubuntu Software Center (Prerequisite and Requirement) :

Open Ubuntu Software Center and select “Edit” and then select “Software Sources”:

Make sure both Canonical Partner repositories have check marks next to them and make sure it looks something like this and click close:

As long as those four now have check marks next to them you can click close. Open up your ‘Software Updater’ and click update. After it is done downloading and installing all of your updates then you can reboot your system. Repeat this step until no further updates are found – do not proceed until you are done here with this important step:

Now hopefully your system is completely updated, and no more updates are found.

Okay, in the rest of this guide we will be using Terminal to install software and add additional software repositories. You can find Terminal here:

Synaptic Package Manager (optional)

A faster alternative Ubuntu Software Center. Synaptic is a computer program which is a GTK+ graphical user interface front-end to the Advanced Packaging Tool for the Debian package management system. It can be used to install, remove, and upgrade software packages. It is much faster than using Ubuntu Software Center, but not as user friendly and this is a much more technical version of the Ubuntu Software Center, if that is something you are looking for to install on your system.

To install Synaptic Package Manager copy and paste in Terminal:

sudo apt-get install synaptic

Gdebi Software Installer - Alternative to the Ubuntu Software Center (optional)

I’ve found that the software center can be at times very slow at installing packages manually. Sometimes I’m in a hurry and I don’t want to wait for it to install something I have downloaded from a third party vendor or whatever. Gdebi is great for installing 3rd party software *.deb packages very quickly.

To install Gdebi software installer copy and paste in Terminal:

sudo apt-get install gdebi

Video Drivers and Proprietary Drivers Check (Required):

Do a search for “Software & Updates” and click on it.

Then click on the “Additional Drivers” tab.

If you see any drivers listed that aren’t installed yet on your system, make sure to select them and install each of them completely in the above window before proceeding. Make sure to let them download and install completely before doing anything else, and make sure to restart your computer after this is done.

After you have installed your drivers, and restarted your system, you need to run this in terminal to check to make sure your video driver were completely installed and hopefully you have all “yes” displayed:

/usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p

If your video drivers didn’t install correctly or you couldn’t find any restart your system, and check again. Whenever you install new drivers you need to restart your system to make sure they are completely enabled. If they still don’t show up go to Ubuntu Forums, cut and paste the above results and do a hardware specifications pastebin upload and then post a trouble-ticket with them specifying what make and what model computer you are running and what kind of graphics adapter you are trying to install drivers for on Ubuntu. Be patient with them since they are all volunteers. They should be able to sort out any video driver problems you may be experiencing.

Here is how you can upload your hardware specifications to pastebin online for sharing with Ubuntu Forums support:

sudo apt-get install pastebinit dmesg | pastebinit

Here is how you can find our your currently installed video adapter hardware specifications to copy and paste:

lspci -nnk | grep -iA3 vga

Copy the pastebinit link and video hardware specification output these commands provide you with to Ubuntu Forums requesting technical support with your hardware configuration.

Make sure to also provide them with your unity support test results from the first unity test above.

Be patient as wait time may be 24 to 48 hours for a forum reply

How to remove all the SPAM and ADS from your Ubuntu (very highly recommended):

Starting with Ubuntu 14.04 you cannot remove the Unity Shopping Lens package. It has been replaced with Unity Smart Scopes (or “100 scopes” or “the many many scopes of spam”) which uses a huge list of scopes to display results in Dash to bog down your Unity search experience and make you want to switch to something other than Unity for your desktop environment.

Here is a great explanation of why:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/10/ubuntu-wins-big-brother-austria-privacy-award

If you would like to disable these features you have two methods to choose from:

Manually: To disable a Dash plugin (scope) in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr, open Dash, go to the Applications lens (either do it manually using your mouse or use the Super + A keyboard shortcut), click “Filter results” on the right and under “Type”, select “Dash plugins”.

Automatically: If you are in a big hurry and you don’t want to worry about this kind of commercial and potential tracking/annoying stuff again, to simply disable all the shopping Dash plugins scopes from the command line, use the following commands at the following link (very highly recommended):

How to change your privacy settings (recommended)

Open up the Software Center and install “Activity Log Manager” if your system doesn’t come installed with default Privacy options. Or you can cut and paste this in Terminal:

sudo apt-get install activity-log-manager activity-log-manager-control-center

If you are using Ubuntu Classic session, it is located in System Settings.

Samba file sharing is no longer installed by default in Ubuntu 14.04 so if you need to share files over your local network LAN you will need to install a few packages. Afterwards lookup “Personal File Sharing” and it should be ready to configure and run. And don’t forget to leave the proper port open when you configure GUFW/UFW firewall settings. After you install the packages listed here you will need to also power cycle/reboot your system.

How to Share Files over the Network

sudo apt-get install samba system-config-samba cifs-utils winbind

Auto Mount Windows NTFS Partition in Ubuntu 14.04

sudo apt-get install ntfs-config sudo mkdir -p /etc/hal/fdi/policy

Now, launch ntfs-config from the Unity Dash Home. Click Advanced Configuration and check the partitions you want to auto-mount at start-up.

Unity Tweak Tool is new Unity customization tool, and is a Unity configuration tool that aims to expose all the most needed Unity, Compiz (you can install compiz later on, down this list), Appearance, and Desktop settings in one interface to rule them all. Currently unity tweak tool is under development, there is no stable version released, So you shouldn’t expect everything perfect from this tool but you will get daily builds with some new fixes.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:freyja-dev/unity-tweak-tool-daily sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool

GUI for Uncomplicated Firewall GUFW (Required) is, as the name states, a graphical user interface for UFW (Uncomplicated Firewall). Gufw is intended to be an easy, intuitive, way to manage an Ubuntu firewall. It supports common tasks such as allowing or blocking pre-configured, common P2P, or individual ports. Gufw is powered by UFW, runs on Ubuntu, and anywhere else Python, GTK, and UFW are available.

Open your Terminal, copy and paste:

sudo apt-get install gufw gufw

To check your current settings:

sudo ufw status verbose

To add basic firewall rules:

sudo ufw deny 5353/udp sudo ufw deny 5900/tcp sudo ufw deny 22 sudo ufw deny 25/tcp sudo ufw deny 135,139,445/tcp sudo ufw deny 137,138/udp sudo ufw deny 110 sudo ufw deny 2049 sudo ufw deny 143 sudo ufw deny 21/tcp sudo ufw deny ssh

To block Outgoing Ports Except Those Needed (This configuration will allow the following outbound ports: 20-21, 53, 80, 123, 443 which is all that is required for many users, unless you plan on running a server):

sudo ufw deny out 1:19/tcp sudo ufw deny out 1:19/udp sudo ufw deny out 22:52/tcp sudo ufw deny out 22:52/udp sudo ufw deny out 54:79/tcp sudo ufw deny out 54:79/udp sudo ufw deny out 81:122/tcp sudo ufw deny out 81:122/udp sudo ufw deny out 124:442/tcp sudo ufw deny out 124:442/udp sudo ufw deny out 444:65535/tcp sudo ufw deny out 444:65535/udp

Re-check your changes:

sudo ufw status verbose

Re-check enable (required):

sudo ufw enable

It will automatically load these settings from now on. If you need to access one of those ports temporarily, then you can open up sudo gufw and disable your firewall momentarily, or the individual ports and services. Just don’t forget to re-enable when you are done. Always power-cycle your firewall if you make changes.

If you want to tighten-up your security even further please review:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1893751

Here is a configuration script if you are running a server:

#!/bin/sh # obtain server's IP address SERVERIP=`hostname --all-ip-addresses | cut --fields 1 --delimiter " "` # disable firewall ufw disable # reset all firewall rules ufw reset # set default rules: deny all incoming traffic, allow all outgoing traffic ufw default deny incoming ufw default allow outgoing # open port for SSH ufw allow OpenSSH # open port for Webmin ufw allow webmin # open ports for Samba file sharing ufw allow from 10.0.0.0/8 to $SERVERIP app Samba ufw allow to 10.0.0.0/8 from $SERVERIP app Samba # open ports for Transmission-Daemon ufw allow 9091 ufw allow 20500:20599/tcp ufw allow 20500:20599/udp # open port for MySQL ufw allow proto tcp from 10.0.0.0/8 to any port 3306 # open ports for Lighttpd ufw allow “Lighttpd Full” # open port for network time protocol (ntpd) ufw allow ntp # enable firewall ufw enable # list all firewall rules ufw status verbose

For more information:

http://www.frozentux.net/documents/iptables-tutorial/

How to setup and install your VPN connection (Optional):

VPN as a client here
Setting up an OpenVPN server here
VPN setup in Ubuntu – General introduction here
How to set up an SSH VPN. here
How to set up a VPN server on Ubuntu here

rkhunter (Rootkit Hunter) (Optional) is a Unix-based tool that scans for rootkits, backdoors and possible local exploits. It does this by comparing SHA-1 hashes of important files with known good ones in online database, searching for default directories (of rootkits), wrong permissions, hidden files, suspicious strings in kernel modules, and special tests for Linux and FreeBSD.

Open a Terminal and enter the following :

sudo apt-get install rkhunter chkrootkit

To run chkrootkit open a terminal window and enter :

sudo chkrootkit

To update and run RKHunter. Open a Terminal and enter the following :

sudo rkhunter --update sudo rkhunter --propupd sudo rkhunter --check

If you get a warning for unhide.rb rkhunter simply informs you the unhide.rb executable located in /usr/bin/ is a ruby script. It is perfectly normal and you can whitelist it in rkhunter.conf{,.local}.

And if you are interested in further hardening your Ubuntu security (optional):

http://www.thefanclub.co.za/how-to/how-secure-ubuntu-1204-lts-server-part-1-basics

Anti-Virus (Optional)

Windows equivalent : AVG AntiVirus, NAV, TrendMicro, F-Prot, Kaspersky, …

Ubuntu equivalent : ClamAV, BitDefender

ClamAV is a free, cross-platform anti-virus software tool-kit able to detect many types of malicious software, including viruses. One of its main uses is on mail servers as a server-side email virus scanner. The application was developed for Unix and has third party versions available for AIX, BSD, HP-UX, Linux, Mac OS X, OpenVMS, OSF (Tru64) and Solaris. As of version 0.96 ClamAV builds and runs on Microsoft Windows. Both ClamAV and its updates are made available free of charge.

Open your Terminal, copy and paste:

sudo apt-get install clamav clamtk

BitDefender is an anti-virus software suite developed by Romania-based software company Softwin. It was launched in November 2001, and is currently in its thirteenth version. The 2011 version was launched in August 2010, and it includes several protection and performance enhancements as Search Advisor and Performance Optimizer. The thing I love about BitDefender is that it will run in the taskbar after start-up and has a resident shield that is always monitoring your system for any potential threats, not that viruses normally target Linux operating systems however.

First you need to get a free scanner key here via email. It should be good for one year.

Bookmark this page then copy and paste in Terminal one line at a time:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://download.bitdefender.com/repos/deb/ bitdefender non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bitdefender.list' wget http://download.bitdefender.com/repos/deb/bd.key.asc sudo apt-key add bd.key.asc sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install bitdefender-scanner-gui

Once completely installed then you will need to reboot your system. And you will need to enter in the free scanner key you received via email by running Bitdefender.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page!

When you are ready to reboot just copy and paste:

sudo reboot

Before using the scanner it’s probably best to install the latest virus/malware signatures by clicking on the ‘Update’ button.

Special Note:Troubleshooting BitDefender Scanner Engine Crashing

Some users are reporting that BitDefender crashes right after the scanning engine is initialized. In order to fix this error you will need to copy and paste this into terminal:

sudo touch /opt/BitDefender-scanner/var/lib/scan/bdcore.so.linux-x86_64 sudo ln -fs /opt/BitDefender-scanner/var/lib/scan/bdcore.so.linux-x86_64 /opt/BitDefender-scanner/var/lib/scan/bdcore.so sudo bdscan --update

As of April 2012 they still do not have this fixed in BitDefender for Linux yet. Hopefully someone will let them know by posting a message to their support forum? Thanks.

For further BitDefender support please visit:

http://forum.bitdefender.com

Essential tools for compiling from sources (Required)

There are times when you need to compile software from sources, maybe because you need to compile the package with some specific option that is not enabled in the default package, or maybe the software application you wish to install isn’t available in any of your repositories. When you begin the installation process you will come to a window that will require you to accept the EULA to install, and you will need to click on your <Tab> key to select <OK> and press enter. (Here is a guide on how to compile software from source) and here are the required packages you need in order to compile sources in Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install build-essential checkinstall cdbs devscripts dh-make fakeroot libxml-parser-perl check

Multimedia (Required)

Windows equivalent : windows media player, real player, vlc, mplayer, media codecs

Ubuntu equivalent : vlc, mplayer, fluendo media codecs

Unfortunately, many audio and video formats won’t work “out of the box” with Ubuntu, or most Linux distros.

MPlayer is a movie player that plays most MPEG, VOB, AVI, OGG/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, FLI, RM, NuppelVideo, yuv4mpeg, FILM, RoQ, and PVA files. You can also use it to watch VCDs, SVCDs, DVDs, 3ivx, RealMedia, and DivX movies. It supports a wide range of output drivers including X11, XVideo, DGA, OpenGL, SVGAlib, fbdev, AAlib, DirectFB etc. There are also nice antialiased shaded subtitles and OSD.

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player and multimedia framework capable of reading most audio and video formats as well as DVDs, Audio CDs VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a media converter or a server to stream in uni-cast or multi-cast in IPv4 or IPv6 on networks.

Open your Terminal, copy and paste:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:n-muench/vlc sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install vlc mplayer

SMPlayer intends to be a complete front-end for MPlayer, from basic features like playing videos, DVDs, and VCDs to more advanced features like support for MPlayer filters and more. One of the most interesting features of SMPlayer: it remembers the settings of all files you play. So you start to watch a movie but you have to leave. Don’t worry, when you open that movie again it will resume at the same point you left it, and with the same settings: audio track, subtitles, and volume. This is really great for watching DVD movies.

sudo apt-get install smplayer

FFMpeg is a complete and free Internet live audio and video broadcasting solution for Linux/Unix. It also includes a digital VCR. It can encode in real time in many formats including MPEG1 audio and video, MPEG4, h263, ac3, asf, avi, real, mjpeg, and flash.

Open your Terminal, copy and paste:

sudo apt-get install libxine1-ffmpeg gxine mencoder mpeg2dec vorbis-tools id3v2 mpg321 mpg123 libflac++6 ffmpeg totem-mozilla icedax tagtool easytag id3tool lame nautilus-script-audio-convert libmad0 libjpeg-progs flac faac faad sox ffmpeg2theora libmpeg2-4 uudeview flac libmpeg3-1 mpeg3-utils mpegdemux liba52-0.7.4-dev libquicktime2

GStreamer is a pipeline-based multimedia framework written in the C programming language with the type system based on GObject. GStreamer allows a programmer to create a variety of media-handling components, including simple audio playback, audio and video playback, recording, streaming and editing. The pipeline design serves as a base to create many types of multimedia applications such as video editors, streaming media broadcasters and media players.

Open your Terminal, copy and paste (when prompted use the Tab key, and also TAB over to select YES when prompted):

sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 gstreamer0.10-gnonlin gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly totem-plugins-extra gstreamer-dbus-media-service gstreamer-tools ubuntu-restricted-extras ttf-mscorefonts-installer

Check and see if you can now view DVD movie discs on your computer. If not you may need to set the region key and you are usually allowed to do this only 5 times (only use if needed, and very optional):

sudo apt-get install regionset sudo regionset

Get encrypted Blu-ray discs to work with VLC in Ubuntu:

http://www.webupd8.org/2012/08/how-to-get-encrypted-blu-rays-working.html

Here are some highly recommended and thoroughly tested add-ons for Firefox:

Adblock Plus (plugin) (Highly Recommended)

Adblock Plus (ABP) is a content-filtering extension for Mozilla Firefox (including Firefox for mobile) and Google Chrome web browsers. ABP, a forked version of Adblock, allows users to prevent page elements, such as advertisements, from being downloaded and displayed. Very popular, and almost what I would consider to be a necessity, if you surf the Internet on a daily basis. Works great with sites like youtube.com and other similar web sites that bombard you with constant commercials. It will also allow you to import preconfigured blocklists to stop tracker web sites from monitoring your browser presence.

Password Exporter (plugin)

This extension allows you to export your saved passwords and disabled login hosts using XML or CSV files that can be imported later. Very helpful when needing to re-install Ubuntu onto a new system or migrating your data and personal information. This works on any OS with Firefox browser and you can migrate passwords from other browsers with Firefox preferences.

NetVideoHunter (plugin)

NetVideoHunter is a Firefox add-on (extension), and you can easily download videos and audio from almost all audio and video streaming web pages with two clicks. Tested and considered to be probably the best plugin out of all the other similar plugins available for this kind of task.

HTTPS Everywhere (plugin) (Recommended)

HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox and Chrome extension that encrypts your communications with many major websites, making your browsing more secure.

Tor Browser Bundle

The Tor software protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location, and it lets you access sites which are blocked. The simplified explanation is that you can think of Tor like using three VPNs in a row. The goal is to hide your IP address, giving you complete anonymity online. Tor routes Internet traffic through three relays: an entry node, a middle node, and an exit. Each relay has it’s own layer of encryption and the exit node is the one that contacts the web server, fetches the web page, and gives it back to you yet doesn’t know your actual IP address.

Alternatively, you can use this PPA to install Tor Browser Bundle:

http://www.webupd8.org/2013/12/tor-browser-bundle-ubuntu-ppa.html

Remember Passwords (plugin)

Patches the original Login Manager to allow saving of passwords on forms which otherwise suppress it. A really nice time-saver.

NoScript (plugin) (Recommended, but can be very intrusive at times)

NoScript (plugin) is a free and open-source extension for Mozilla Firefox, SeaMonkey, and other Mozilla-based web browsers, created and actively maintained by Giorgio Maone, an Italian software developer and member of the Mozilla Security Group. NoScript allows executable web content such as JavaScript, Java, Flash, Silverlight, and other plugins only if the site hosting it is considered trusted by its user and has been previously added to a whitelist. NoScript also offers specific countermeasures against security exploits. There have been reports of Java viruses/malware infecting Mac systems (Unices-based systems), so NoScript will stop that kind of problembefore it becomes a serious issue on your Ubuntu OS.

YesScript (plugin)

A very simple JavaScript blacklist. Lately, I’ve noticed scripts not responsing on certain web sites (like abs.twimg.com and others) when browsing on twitter. If you recieve an error that says a script isn’t responding (would you like to continue etc etc), causing your browser to hang/crash your browser -and- you don’t want to use the above NoScript plugin because it can be too intrusive most of the time, simply cut and paste the offending web site address into YesScript Firefox plug-in, and you can surf without further problems of this kind.

Dictionaries & Language Packs (plugin) (Recommended)

Spell-checking plugin for Mozilla Firefox browser.

Additional Miscellaneous Add-ons for Firefox:

BCExplorer for Firefox – BrightCloud category and reputation info as you browse! Beef Taco – Sets permanent opt-out cookies to stop behavioral advertising by 102 different advertising networks BetterPrivacy – BetterPrivacy is a safeguard which protects from usually not deletable LSO’s on Google, YouTube, Ebay… BitDefender TrafficLight for Firefox – Adds a strong and non-intrusive layer of security to your browsing experience BrowserProtect – Protect your browser configuration against homepage and search hijacks CipherFox – Displays the current SSL/TLS cipher and certificate chain in the status bar. CS Lite – This extension will allow you to easily control cookie permissions. Ghostery – Protect your privacy. See who’s tracking your web browsing and block them with Ghostery. GoogleSharing – GoogleSharing ultimately aims to provide a level of anonymity that will prevent google from tracking your searches, movements, and what websites you visit. HTTPS Finder – HTTPS Finder automatically detects and alerts when SSL is available on a web page. It also provides one-click rule creation for HTTPS Everywhere. Other features include an ignore-domain list, and “auto-forward” to HTTPS. Keylogger Beater – Use it to keep your username or password from being stolen by a keylogger. LinkExtend – Provides meta-site-ratings for computer safety, child safety, company ethics, and popularity. Master Password+ – Various enhancements for “master password” Netcraft Toolbar – Blocks phishing sites, helping to protect users from online fraud… anonymoX – Firefox add-on to achieve anonymity in surfing, using web-based proxy PrivacySuite – One place to protect your privacy when you go online. RefControl – Control what gets sent as the HTTP Referer on a per-site basis. RequestPolicy – Be in control of which cross-site requests are allowed. ShowIP – Show the IP address(es) of the current page in the status bar. It also allows querying custom information services by IP (right click) and hostname (left click), like whois, netcraft, etc. Additionally you can copy the IP address to the clipboard. Certificate Patrol – Verifies SSL certificates TrackMeNot – Protects users against search data profiling… Priv3 – Practical Third-Party Privacy for the Social Web WOT – The WOT add-on is a safe surfing tool for your browser. For Human Eyes Only – converts messages into images User Agent Switcher – To switch the user agent of a browser and OS reporting Change IP Address – How to easily change your Internet IP address via creating new router MAC address, quickly and reliably.

Openjdk 7 Update and Sun Java 7 JDK option

The default version of openjdk with Ubuntu may need be updated. (Required)

Here is the updated openjdk that should work for most users:

sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk openjdk-7-jre icedtea-7-plugin

And then run:

sudo update-alternatives --config java

And then select /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk from the selection list and press enter.

Now if openjdk isn’t what you need and you know you need the proprietary Sun Java 7 JDK instead, use this installation script (optional):

cd ~/ wget https://github.com/flexiondotorg/oab-java6/raw/0.3.0/oab-java.sh -O oab-java.sh chmod +x oab-java.sh sudo ./oab-java.sh -7 sudo apt-get install oracle-java7-jre oracle-java7-jdk oracle-java7-plugin oracle-java7-fonts

If you are behind a proxy you may need to run using:

sudo -i ./oab-java.sh

If you want to see what this script is doing while it is running then execute the following from another shell:

tail -f ./oab-java.sh.log

Thanks to https://github.com/flexiondotorg/ for providing us this method to install Java on Ubuntu.

Test your browser to make sure your Java is installed and working properly here:

http://browserspy.dk/java.php

If you are still having problems trying to install Java and getting Java to work correctly on your system, please visit the following web site for further support:

http://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/java

sudo apt-get install xul-ext-calendar-timezones xul-ext-lightning

To convert/import your MS Outlook PST files in Thunderbird:

sudo apt-get install readpst readpst -r nameofyourPSTfilehere

Alternative Graphical Web Browsers

Windows equivalent : Internet explorer, opera, google chrome

Ubuntu equivalent : Opera, Chromium, Google Chrome, Google Chrome Beta

Opera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by Opera Software. The browser handles common Internet-related tasks such as displaying web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, chatting on IRC, downloading files via BitTorrent, and reading web feeds.

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ stable non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/opera.list' sudo sh -c 'wget -O - http://deb.opera.com/archive.key | apt-key add -' sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install opera

Google Chrome is a freeware web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and as a stable public release on December 11, 2008. As of February 2013, according to StatCounter, Google Chrome has a 37% worldwide usage share of web browsers making it the most widely used web browser in the world. Net Applications, however, indicates that Chrome is only third when it comes to the size of its user base, behind Internet Explorer and Firefox. This comes with it’s own updated independent adobe flash plugin, unlike all other browsers, so flash playback should be improved if you are having issues with flash content in Firefox or Chromium.

To install Chrome browser repository:

wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add - sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google.list' sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable

or if you want the latest developmental version:

sudo apt-get install google-chrome-beta

Chrome Plugins:

Adblock Plus (plugin) (Recommended) Adblock Plus (ABP) is a content-filtering extension for Google Chrome web browsers. ABP, a forked version of Adblock, allows users to prevent page elements, such as advertisements, from being downloaded and displayed. Very popular, and almost what I would consider to be a necessity, if you surf the Internet on a daily basis. Works great with sites like youtube.com and other similar web sites that bombard you with constant commercials. It will also allow you to import preconfigured blocklists to stop tracker web sites from monitoring your browser presence.

Remember Passwords (plugin)

Patches the original Login Manager to allow saving of passwords on forms which otherwise suppress it. A really nice time-saver.

Remote Desktop (plugin) Access other computers or allow another user to access your computer securely over the Internet.

HTTPS Everywhere (plugin) HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox and Chrome extension that encrypts your communications with many major websites, making your browsing more secure.

Reditr is to Reddit what Tweetdeck is to Twitter. And now you can experience it under any GNU/Linux based system thanks to Google Chrome.

Additional Miscellaneous Add-ons for Chrome and Chromium:

A Little Privacy – Prevents passing referrer to third parties, removes redirect trackers, resolves short URLs, and more. Abine TACO – Opt-out of advertising networks Block Mixed Content – This extension blocks loading of insecure active content in secure (HTTPS) pages. Chrome BCExplorer BETA – BrightCloud category and reputation info as you browse! Chromeblock – Stop secret tracking of your web browsing Disconnect – Stop major third parties and search engines from tracking the webpages you go to and searches you do. Ghostery – Protect your privacy. See who’s tracking your web browsing with Ghostery. KB SSL Enforcer – Automatic security, browse encrypted. Keep My Opt-Outs – Permanently opts your browser out of online ad personalization via cookies. NOREF – Suppress Referrer (referer) for Hyperlinks NotScripts – A clever extension that provides a high degree of ‘NoScript’ like control of javascript, iframes, and plugins on Google Chrome. SaferChrome – SaferChrome makes browsing safer by identifying and preventing security and privacy breaches. Signature Check – Allows users to check a certificate thumbprint against the SignatureCheck.org thumbprint to detect man-in-the-middle attacks that use valid signing certificates. SiteAdvisor for Chrome – SiteAdvisor will give safety ratings for websites, this extension will warn you before you open threat sites. TrafficLight (BETA) – Adds a strong and non-intrusive layer of security to your browsing experience Unencrypted Password Warning – Helps to prevent you from sending unencrypted passwords or credit card numbers. Vanilla Cookie Manager – A Cookie Whitelist Manager that helps protect your privacy. Automatically removes unwanted cookies. WOT – The WOT add-on is a safe surfing tool for your browser.

Google Talk is a browser plugin that lets you voice and video chat with friends and family from your browser. Install this plugin and logon to Gmail with your webcam and microphone attached to your computer, then initiate a chat with a friend or family member. It will try to connect to your webcam and enable video chat.

wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add - sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb/ stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google.list' sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install google-talkplugin

Enable hidden Startup Application Manager settings on Ubuntu 14.04 (recommended)

Starting with Ubuntu 12.04 the ‘Startup Applications’ manager now only displays a sub-set of applications to control at startup with the remaining applications being hidden. There are many applications running in the background by default in Ubuntu it only makes sense to disable the ones you don’t really need to have running all the time. To make the hidden applications visible in the manager, follow these steps:

Copy and paste the following command into Terminal:

sudo sed -i 's/NoDisplay=true/NoDisplay=false/g' /etc/xdg/autostart/*.desktop

Do a search for Startup Applications to add or remove/disable features at startup. There are probably several apps that are running at startup that you can safely remove if you know what you are doing, and will save you time during bootup.

And you can remove the following applications that you will probably never use (optional):

sudo apt-get purge oneconf popularity-contest python-ubuntuone-client python-ubuntuone-storageprotocol ubuntuone-installer python-ubuntuone-control-panel rhythmbox-ubuntuone ubuntuone-client ubuntuone-client-gnome ubuntuone-control-panel unity-scope-musicstores deja-dup libfreerdp1 remmina remmina-common vino remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc activity-log-manager-common python-zeitgeist activity-log-manager-control-center rhythmbox-plugin-zeitgeist unity-lens-video unity-scope-video-remote zeitgeist zeitgeist-core zeitgeist-datahub rsync sudo apt-get autoremove

Compiz (optional) has been updated, introducing a handy plugin, Workspace Naming, that, as its name clearly suggests, allows users to name workspaces with desired names, names that feature a high usability potential and numerous usecases, like for instance, naming a workspace text-only if in that workspace the user deals only with text files, and/or coding-only specific to a coding-oriented “desktop”. Its usage is as simple as navigating to CompizConfig Settings Manager–>Window Management–>check Workspace Naming and tweaking the provided functionalities (names, Display Time, Font Size, etc).

Copy and paste the following command into Terminal:

sudo apt-get install compiz compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-plugins

You can add it to your DNS entries in your hardware WiFi router configuration (you can try calling the tech support company that made your router to help guide you through the process for updating your router’s “LAN” DNS settings. Just tell them you want to add a public DNS 67.138.54.100 and 207.225.209.66 to be used by all the computers on your network) or if you aren’t using a router on your individual Ubuntu system, you can update your DNS like this:

sudo gedit /etc/resolv.conf

Write down your existing ISP nameserver IP addresses in case you want to change it back later on. And then modify those ISP nameserver entries as to the pubic DNS ScrubIt entries:

nameserver 67.138.54.100
nameserver 207.225.209.66

Click on Save, and reboot your system.

The best way to update your DNS nameserver is to change your wifi router configuration. Just call tech support for your make and model router (the manufacturers tech support phone number) and ask them to walk you through the process to update your DNS nameserver configuration for your router box. It should normally be free of charge to call for support for your make and model router box. Make sure you put a good password on your router box when you are done. And never let your kids have administrative accounts on Ubuntu. Always create new users without superuser rights too. Only you, the superuser should be able to change any of the system network settings from within Ubuntu OS.

Here is an alternative to set up the same kind of parental blocking service but with OpenDNS instead:

https://www.opendns.com/parental-controls

Archiver/ Packing software (Highly Recommended)

Windows equivalent : winrar, zip, 7zip

Ubuntu equivalent : tar, unrar, p7zip, arj, unace

An archive format is the file format of an archive file. The archive format is determined by the file archiver. Some archive formats are well-defined by their authors and have become conventions supported by multiple vendors and/or open-source communities.

File Archiving:

sudo apt-get install unace rar unrar p7zip-rar p7zip zip unzip sharutils uudeview mpack arj cabextract file-roller

Auto Mount Windows NTFS Partition in Ubuntu 14.04

sudo apt-get install ntfs-config sudo mkdir -p /etc/hal/fdi/policy

Now, launch ntfs-config from the Unity Dash Home. Click Advanced Configuration and check the partitions you want to auto-mount at start-up.

Bitcoin Wallet/Client (sign: BTC) is a decentralized digital currency based on an open-source, peer-to-peer internet protocol. It was introduced by a pseudonymous developer named Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009. Internationally, bitcoins can be exchanged by personal computer directly through a wallet file or a website without an intermediate financial institution. In trade, one bitcoin is subdivided into 100 million smaller units called satoshis, defined by eight decimal places. Bitcoin does not operate like typical currencies: it has no central bank and it solely relies on an internet-based peer-to-peer network. The money supply is automated, limited, divided and scheduled, and given to servers or “bitcoin miners” that verify bitcoin transactions and add them to a decentralized and archived transaction log every 10 minutes. The log is authenticated by hashed ECDSA digital signatures and verified by the intense process of bruteforcing SHA256 hash functions of varying difficulty by competing “bitcoin miners.” Transaction fees may apply to new transactions depending on the strain put on the network’s resources. Bitcoin is the most widely used alternative currency. As of March 2013, the monetary base of bitcoin is valued at over $1 billion USD. The large fluctuation in the dollar value of a bitcoin has evoked criticism of bitcoin’s economic suitability as a currency.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bitcoin/bitcoin sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install bitcoin-qt

Special Note #1: Bitcoin will connect to other nodes, usually on TCP port 8333. You will need to allow outgoing TCP connections to port 8333 if you want to allow your Bitcoin client to connect to many nodes. Testnet uses TCP port 18333 instead of 8333.

sudo ufw allow 8333 sudo ufw disable sudo ufw enable

Special Note #2: Bitcoin-qt is a full-node and needs a full-copy of the blockchain to run and it can take days to update the blockchain. This inactivity will happen, and I’ve no idea why but it seems to get through it if left long enough eventually. A lightweight client like Multibit java-based will be up-to-date in a few seconds so Multibit Bitcoin Client may be a better option for some users if they are in a big hurry. And there is Armory you can try as well. Bitcoin.org could make that a bit clearer in the software description, the full client is way too heavy for ordinary infrequent use and bitcoin’s confusing enough as it is for newbies, and just having the default client taking several days to update the blockchain is rather new user prohibitive.

Electrum (the blockchain is the cloud) is an easy to use Bitcoin client. It protects you from losing coins in a backup mistake or computer failure, because your wallet can be recovered from a secret phrase that you can write on paper or learn by heart. There is no waiting time when you start the client, because it does not download the Bitcoin blockchain. Instant on: Your client does not download the blockchain, it uses a remote server. Forgiving: Your wallet can be recovered from a secret seed. Safe: Private keys are never sent to the server. Information sent by the server is verified using SPV. No downtimes: Several public servers are available, you can switch instantly. Ubiquitous: You can use the same wallet on different computers, it will auto-synchronize. Open: You can export your private keys into other Bitcoin clients. Tested and audited: Electrum is open source and was first released in November 2011. No blockchain on your system means you can’t be perceived as an MSB either.

Download Electrum:

http://electrum.org/download.html

Make sure you open GUFW and reset your firewall settings before running Electrum. When you first run Electrum you will be prompted with your seed information. Write the seed words down by hand and put it somewhere safe in case data recovery becomes necessary someday.

Would you like to mine for Bitcoins? Here are guides on how to install bgfminer or cgminer:

Webcam and VOIP

Windows equivalent : Skype

Ubuntu equivalent : Skype, Jitsi, Brosix

Skype is a software application that allows users to make voice and video calls and chats over the Internet. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free, while calls to both traditional landline telephones and mobile phones can be made for a fee using a debit-based user account system. Skype has also become popular for its additional features which include instant messaging, file transfer, and video conferencing.

sudo apt-get install skype

Or if you want the very latest version use:

http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/get-skype/on-your-computer/linux/

Hardware acceleration and WebGL also feature in this release but are not turned on by default. Head into opera:config to enable it.

Other new features include:

Webcam support
Support for the Do Not Track header
CSS3 Animations and Transitions
Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (Cors) Support
Improved language support

If you experience any kind of technical problems using Skype on Ubuntu OS make sure to check with the Skype forums over here:

http://community.skype.com/t5/Linux/bd-p/Linux

guvcview project aims at providing a simple GTK interface for capturing and viewing video from devices supported by the linux UVC driver, although it should also work with any v4l2 compatible device:

sudo apt-get install guvcview

Steam is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications platform developed by Valve Corporation. It is used to distribute games and related media online, from small independent developers to larger software houses; in October 2012, Valve expanded the service to include non-gaming software. Steam provides the user with installation and automatic management of software across multiple computers, community features such as friends lists and groups, cloud saving, and in-game voice and chat functionality. The software provides a freely available application programming interface, Steamworks, that developers can take advantage of to integrate many of Steam’s functions within their software products, including copy protection, networking and matchmaking, in-game achievements and micro-transactions, and support for user-created content through Steam Workshop. Though initially developed for use on Microsoft Windows, the client has expanded to include a Mac OS X version and a pending port to Linux, and clients with limited functionality on the PlayStation 3 console and for both iOS and Android mobile devices. And now we don’t have to listen to people say they can’t play their favourite video games on linux anymore either.

wget -c media.steampowered.com/client/installer/steam.deb sudo dpkg -i steam.deb sudo apt-get install -f

Google Earth allows you to travel the world through a virtual globe and view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, and much more. With Google Earth’s rich, geographical content, you are able to experience a more realistic view of the world. Starting with the version 4 beta Google Earth functions under Linux, as a native port using the Qt toolkit. It is proprietary software specifically in order to impose Digital Rights Management; the Free Software Foundation consider the development of a free compatible client for Google Earth to be a High Priority Free Software Project.

Special Note: Download the Google Earth 32bit version and install using gdebi for Ubuntu 14.04 until Google decides to repackage Google Earth. Or just downgrade to a previous version of Ubuntu OS for now. The real reason for this problem is the non-existent meta package in Ubuntu 14.04 called(ia32-lbs). Pure debian systems probably still use it though.

GEdit

Essentially is it like notepad in MS Windows but with many many more features.

sudo apt-get install gedit gedit-plugins gedit-developer-plugins

Geany is a lightweight cross-platform GTK+ text editor based on Scintilla and including basic Integrated Development Environment (IDE) features. Among the supported programming languages are C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, PHP, HTML, LaTeX, CSS, Python, Perl, Ruby, Pascal, Haskell, Erlang, Vala and many others.

It was developed to provide a small and fast IDE, which has only a few dependencies from other packages. It supports many filetypes and has some nice features.

sudo apt-get install geany geany-plugins

LibreOffice (Recommended)

Windows equivalent : Microsoft Office Suite

Ubuntu equivalent : LibreOffice Suite

LibreOffice is a free software office suite developed by The Document Foundation as a fork of OpenOffice.org. It is compatible with other major office suites, including Microsoft Office, and available on a variety of platforms. Its developers’ goal is to produce a vendor-independent office suite with ODF support and without any copyright assignment requirements. The name is a hybrid word with the first part Libre, which means free (as in freedom) in French and Spanish, and the English word Office.

LibreOffice comes preinstalled by default in Ubuntu usually, but you still want to double-check at this point that you have everything else installed that you probably will need, and that you have the latest updated version from the developers.

To install LibreOffice (and check for extra features):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/libreoffice-4-1 sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade sudo apt-get install libreoffice libreoffice-java-common libreoffice-math libreoffice-gnome libreoffice-java-common

How to install Grammar checking Plug-in for LibreOffice Writer:

http://debianhelp.wordpress.com/2011/10/25/how-to-install-grammar-checker-in-libreoffice-in-ubuntu/

To enable PDF import capability:

sudo apt-get install libreoffice-pdfimport

http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center

Special Note: If you would like the MS Windows OS or Apple Mac OS version of LibreOffice Suite for another computer you have at work or school – here is where you can find the link. And I definitely recommend using the torrent because the direct link doesn’t usually completely download for some unknown reason. https://www.libreoffice.org/download/

Graphical FTP clients

Windows equivalent : CuteFTP, SmartFTP, CoreFTP

Ubuntu equivalent : FileZilla

FileZilla is free, open source, cross-platform FTP/SFTP software, consisting of FileZilla Client and FileZilla Server. Binaries are available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. It supports FTP, SFTP, and FTPS (FTP over SSL/TLS). As of 18 April 2011, FileZilla Client was the 7th most popular download of all time from SourceForge.net.

sudo apt-get install filezilla filezilla-common

Access it through Applications → Internet → FileZilla FTP Client.

Development IDE

Ubuntu equivalent : Kompozer, Bluefish, Komodo Edit

Komodo Edit is a free text editor for dynamic programming languages. It was introduced in January 2007 to complement Active State’s commercial Komodo IDE product. With the release of version 4.3, Komodo Edit is built on top of the Open Komodo project. Many of Komodo’s features are derived from an embedded Python interpreter. Open Komodo uses the Mozilla code base, along with Scintilla, and the two products share many features and support the same languages (including Python, Perl, PHP, Ruby, Tcl, SQL, Smarty, CSS, HTML and XML) and computer platforms (Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows). The editor component is implemented using the NPAPI, with the Scintilla view embedded in the XUL interface in the same manner as a web browser plugin. Both Komodo Edit and Komodo IDE support user customization through plugins and macros. Komodo plug-ins are based on Mozilla Add-ons and extensions can be searched for, downloaded, configured, installed and updated from within the application. Available extensions include a functions list, pipe features, additional language support and user interface enhancements.

Windows: Notepad++

In 32-bit Ubuntu:

wget http://downloads.activestate.com/Komodo/releases/8.5.1/Komodo-Edit-8.5.1-13781-linux-x86.tar.gz tar xzvf Komodo-Edit-8.5.1-13781-linux-x86.tar.gz cd Komodo-Edit-8.5.1-13781-linux-x86/ sudo ./install.sh

in 64-bit Ubuntu:

wget http://downloads.activestate.com/Komodo/releases/8.5.1/Komodo-Edit-8.5.1-13781-linux-x86_64.tar.gz tar xzvf Komodo-Edit-8.5.1-13781-linux-x86_64.tar.gz cd Komodo-Edit-8.5.1-13781-linux-x86_64/ sudo ./install.sh

When prompted to specify the directory or folder to install into, type this command:

/opt/Komodo-Edit-8/

After installing, run this command in your terminal to complete the process.

export PATH="/opt/Komodo-Edit-8/bin:$PATH"

KompoZer is an open source WYSIWYG HTML editor based on a rewritten version of the now-discontinued Nvu editor. KompoZer is maintained as a community-driven fork and is a project on Sourceforge.

KompoZer’s WYSIWYG editing capabilities are one of the main attractions of the software. In addition, KompoZer allows direct code editing as well as a split code-graphic view (you have to install it twice to download all the dependences):

http://ubuntuguide.net/install-kompozer-in-ubuntu-13-04-12-10

Bluefish is a free and open source advanced text editor with a variety of tools for programming in general and the development of dynamic websites. Bluefish supports development in (among others) HTML, XHTML, CSS, XML, PHP, C, C++, JavaScript, Java, Google Go, Vala, Ada, D, SQL, Perl, ColdFusion, JSP, Python, Ruby and shell. Bluefish is available for many platforms, including Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X, and Windows. Bluefish is developed in C/GTK+ and can be used integrated in GNOME or run independently. Bluefish fills the niche market between the plain text editors and the full swing IDE: Bluefish is relatively lightweight and easy to learn, while still providing many features of an integrated development environment to support both programming and the development of websites.

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://debian.wgdd.de/debian quantal main restricted universe multiverse" sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install wgdd-archive-keyring sudo apt-get install bluefish

Image Editors

Windows equivalent : Adobe Photoshop

Ubuntu equivalent : GIMP

GIMP

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free software raster graphics editor. It is primarily employed as an image retouching and editing tool and is freely available in versions tailored for most popular operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux. It has layering abilities like Photoshop.

In addition to detailed image retouching and free-form drawing, GIMP can accomplish essential image editing tasks such as resizing, editing, and cropping photos, photomontages combining multiple images, and converting between different image formats. GIMP can also be used to create basic animated images in the GIF format.

New additions in Gimp 2.8 are single window mode, on-canvas text editing, layers group, and to apply all changes to a layer grouping.

GIMP’s product vision is that GIMP is, or will become, a free software high-end graphics application for the editing and creation of original images, icons, graphical elements of web pages and art for user interface elements.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:otto-kesselgulasch/gimp sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install gimp gimp-data gimp-data-extras

Access it through Applications → Graphics → GIMP Image Editor.

Instructions on how to install Scripts that work in Gimp 2.8:

http://www.gimphelp.org/script28.shtml

To install additional helpful plugins for Gimp try:

http://registry.gimp.org/popular

G’MIC is an open and full-featured framework for image processing, providing several different user interfaces to convert/manipulate/filter/visualize generic image datasets, from 1d scalar signals to 3d+t sequences of multi-spectral volumetric images. G’MIC provides a serious tool for image processing along with flexibility for creative applications. It has a very lightweight core that is mature code and comes with a complete set of manipulation and filter commands which operate on a stack of images.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:otto-kesselgulasch/gimp sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install gmic gimp-gmic

Photo Management

Windows equivalent: Aftershot Pro, Lightroom, Bridge, Photoshop Organizer

RAW file viewers/editors/plugins for SLR Digital Photography

Not the most intuitive program to use at first, Raw Therapee is a fairly feature rich and comprehensive RAW editor that’s compatible with Linux. At the time of writing, the team are working on a stable release of version 3.0, which is a major release for the project. Unidentified Flying RAW (or UFRaw for short) is a dedicated RAW image editor based on GTK+. It can be used as an application on its own or as a plugin for GIMP (simply open a RAW image in GIMP to be presented with the UFRaw editor window).

sudo apt-get install libraw-bin ufraw ufraw-batch and gimp-ufraw rawtherapee

For more raw file utilities visit: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/4-great-tools-editing-raw-photos-linux/

Darktable is an open source photography workflow application and RAW developer. A virtual lighttable and darkroom for photographers. It manages your digital negatives in a database, lets you view them through a zoomable lighttable and enables you to develop raw images and enhance them. It focuses on the workflow to make it easier for the photographer to quickly handle the thousands of images a day of shooting can produce. It’s also one of the very few FOSS projects able to do tethered shooting.

sudo apt-get install darktable

Shotwell can import photos and videos from a digital camera directly. Shotwell automatically groups photos and videos by date, and supports tagging. Its image editing features allow users to rotate, crop, eliminate red eye, and adjust levels and color balance. It also features an auto “enhance” option that will attempt to guess appropriate levels for the image. Shotwell allows users to publish their images and videos to Facebook, Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Piwigo, and YouTube.

sudo apt-get install shotwell

PhotoFilmStrip creates movies out of your pictures in just 3 steps. Great if you need to create video presentations. First select your photos, customize the motion path and render the video. There are several output possibilities for VCD, SVCD, DVD up to FULL-HD. Creates animated slideshows. You can add audio with Avidemux when you are done creating your slideshow with PhotoFilmStrip.

sudo apt-get install photofilmstrip

Picasa is free photo editing software from Google. For a free program, it allows you to do some great photo manipulation. Addtionally, Picasa links you directly to free online photo storage known as Picasa Web Albums to upload your digital pictures. It is no longer officially supported for Ubuntu by Google, but here are the last updated *.deb installation packages if you want to install Picasa on your Ubuntu operating system.

For 32-bit Ubuntu copy and paste into Terminal:

sudo apt-get install lib32asound2 wget http://packages.linuxmint.com//pool/import/p/picasa/picasa_3.0.5744-02_i386.deb sudo dpkg -i picasa_3.0.5744-02_i386.deb

For 64-bit Ubuntu copy and paste into Terminal:

sudo apt-get install lib32asound2 wget http://packages.linuxmint.com//pool/import/p/picasa/picasa_3.0.5744-02_amd64.deb sudo dpkg -i picasa_3.0.5744-02_amd64.deb

3D Graphics Applications

Windows equivalent : 3D Studio MAX, Google Sketch

Ubuntu equivalent : Blender

Blender

Blender’s features include 3D modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging, water and smoke simulations, skinning, animating, rendering, particle and other simulations, video editing software, compositing, and the ability to create interactive 3D applications, video games, animated film, or visual effects.

More advanced tools include rigid, realistic body, fluid, cloth and softbody dynamics simulation, modifier-based modeling, character animation, a node-based material and compositing system, and embedded scripting in Python.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:irie/blender sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install blender

Access it through Applications → Graphics → Blender (windowed).

Calibre is a free and open source e-book computer software that organizes, saves and manages e-books, supporting a variety of formats. It also supports e-book syncing with a variety of popular e-book readers. calibre is cross-platform (programmed in Python and C) and is intended for the three main operating systems, Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.

Windows: “Kindle for PC” software

Calibre was originally called libprs500, but was renamed calibre (lower case ‘C’) in mid-2008. calibre is primarily an e-book cataloging program. It is designed around the concept of the logical book, where a single database entry corresponds with the same book in a variety of formats. calibre supports the following formats for cataloging: AZW, AZW1, CBR, CBZ, CHM, EPUB, FB2, HTML, IMP, LIT, LRF, LRX, MOBI, ODT, OEBZIP, OPF, PDB, PDF, PML, PMLZ, PRC, RAR, RB, RTF, SNB, TPZ, TXT and ZIP.

sudo apt-get install calibre

Also make sure to install better smaller fonts:

http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/957788-installing-calibri-font/

P2P Clients & Servers, File Sharing

Windows equivalent : Limewire, utorrent, Azureus, Emule, PeerGuardian

Ubuntu equivalent : Frostwire, Deluge, Azureus, Amule, Moblock/Mobloquer, Transmission

Transmission

The latest version of the Transmission torrent client is now available to install on Ubuntu from a PPA.

Two years in the making, Transmission 2.90 saw release earlier this week. It brings a number of bug fixes and performance improvements to the popular BitTorrent app. While few new features or functionality is on show, the bump in stability is welcome nonetheless.

In the comments to our earlier article on Transmission you told us you were patiently waiting for a PPA to become available to install it (the new release comes a few weeks too late to make it into Ubuntu 16.04, either).

Rather than update the preceding post and hope you check back to see if a PPA is available we thought we’d shout about it.

Official Transmission PPA

To install the latest stable release of Transmission on Ubuntu 15.04, 15.10 and Ubuntu 16.04 add the official Transmission PPA to your software sources.

The easiest way to do this is by using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:transmissionbt/ppa sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install transmission-gtk

That’s it; you’re done!

The PPA will keep you updated with any new updates(should they arrive quicker than the 2 years it took the most recent one to).

To remove this PPA and downgrade to the version of Transmission Ubuntu ships with run (assuming you have PPA page installed):

sudo ppa-purge ppa:transmissionbt/ppa

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol used for distributing large amounts of data over the Internet. BitTorrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files, and it has been estimated that it accounted for roughly 43% to 70% of all Internet traffic (depending on geographical location) as of February 2009.

Frostwire

Windows equivalent: Limewire

FrostWire is a free, open source BitTorrent client, first released in September, 2004, as a fork of LimeWire. It was initially very similar to LimeWire in appearance and functionality, but developers added more features, such as BitTorrent support. In version Five, Gnutella support was dropped entirely, and now FrostWire only uses the BitTorrent network. Development of the program has been active since the program was first released in September 2004.

Download Frostwire:

http://www.frostwire.com/download/?os=ubuntu&

Bittorrent Add-ons for Ubuntu:

Windows Equivalent: PeerGuardian (highly recommended for Bittorent users)

Ubuntu equivalent : PGL and PGLGUI

PeerGuardian Linux (pgl) is a privacy oriented firewall application. It blocks connections to and from hosts specified in huge blocklists (thousands or millions of IP ranges). Its origins lie in targeting aggressive IPs while you use P2P.

While you are installing PGL just accept the default settings for now. You can change them with PGLGUI after you are done installing everything.

To install PGL and PGLGUI in terminal (select the default settings by using the TAB key and pressing enter – there will be several prompts – just accept default settings and afterwards you can configure the blocklists):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jre-phoenix/ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install pgld pglcmd pglgui

Make sure to enable your blocklists you want and update PGLGUI after you get it completely installed:

The first thing most users will notice after installing PGL and have it running is that their Pidgin/Empathy/IMclientOfChoice/WebBrowser stops working. PGLGUI log will list the IP’s and info about the IP’s, so just whitelist them if need be with one mouse click.

It is a really strong utility and will block pretty much everything until you tell it to do otherwise. But you only need to run this when you are seeding or downloading torrent files.

Deluge Client is a full-featured BitTorrent client for Linux, OS X, Unix and Windows. It uses libtorrent in it’s backend and features multiple user-interfaces including: GTK+, web and console. It has been designed using the client server model with a daemon process that handles all the bittorrent activity.

The Deluge daemon is able to run on headless machines with the user-interfaces being able to connect remotely from any platform.

sudo apt-get install deluge-torrent

Access it through Applications → Internet → Deluge Torrent.

Azureus Client: Uses Java to run, very complete but a bit heavy. And has a wide variety of add-ons to choose from too.

Vuze (formerly Azureus) is a P2P file sharing client using the bittorrent protocol. Search and download torrent files. Play, convert and transcode videos and music for playing on many devices such as PSP, TiVo, XBox, PS3, iTunes (iPhone, iPod, Apple TV).

sudo apt-get install azureus

Access it through Applications → Internet → Azureus.

µTorrentServer is a very tiny BitTorrent server, super fast and ultra light. µTorrent’s built for speed. That means ultra-efficient downloads of mega-sized files.

Go to µTorrent official site and download the Ubuntu installation package and use the following instructions to install µTorrent at:

http://ubuntuguide.net/install-lightweight-fast-%C2%B5torrent-on-ubuntu-12-04-lts/

Music / MP3 / OGG Players

Windows equivalent : iTunes, Winamp

Ubuntu equivalent : Amarok, Nuvola Player, Spotify

Amarok 2.5 “Earth Moving” was released on December 2011.

New features:

GPodder.net podcast synchronization.
Re-written USB Mass Storage support.
The Windows version of Amarok is now officially declared stable.
Many bugfixes to the iPod plugin, thanks to Matěj Laitl.
An integrated Amazon MP3 store. This major feature is the work of our web-entrepreneurs Sven and Justus.

sudo apt-get install amarok

Nuvola Player is an application that integrates cloud music services like Google Music, Grooveshark, Hype Machine, 8tracks, Pandora, Rdio and Amazon Cloud Player with your desktop. Using it, you’ll get desktop notifications, multimedia keys support, Mpris v2 (integration with Ubuntu Sound Menu or GNOME Shell Media Player extension) integration, Unity quicklists and more.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nuvola-player-builders/stable sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install nuvolaplayer

Great Little Radio Player is a robust Internet radio station streamer for various Linux distributions. It connects to web sites offering radio streaming and lets you play radio stations directly from that locations. With Great Little Radio Player, you will have collection of more then 500 radio stations worldwide. Best part, it’s free of charge.

You can download it here:

sites.google.com/site/glrpgreatlittleradioplayer/

Spotify is a Swedish-founded, UK-headquartered DRM-based music streaming service offering streaming of selected music from a range of major and independent record labels, including Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group, and Universal.

Launched in October 2008 by Swedish startup Spotify AB, the service had approximately ten million users as of 15 September 2010; about 2.5 million of whom were paying members.The service is, as of November 2011, available in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 94558F59 sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://repository.spotify.com stable non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/spotify.list' sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install spotify-client-qt

TV-MAXE is an application which provides the ability to watch TV stations and listen radio via different streams, like SopCast. Currently it has a large number of channels. I tested this in 14.04 and it is working great with about 50-70 percent of the channels functional, but that also depends on where you live. Similar to iPlayer:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:venerix/pkg sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install tv-maxe

Channel lists: https://code.google.com/p/tv-maxe/wiki/ChannelLists

Netflix is an American provider of on-demand Internet streaming media in the United States, Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean, United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and flat rate DVD-by-mail in the United States. The company was established in 1997 and is headquartered in Los Gatos, California. It started its subscription-based digital distribution service in 1999 and by 2009 it was offering a collection of 100,000 titles on DVD and had surpassed 10 million subscribers. On February 25, 2007, Netflix announced the billionth DVD delivery. In April 2011, Netflix announced 23.6 million subscribers in the United States and over 26 million worldwide. By 2011, the total digital revenue for Netflix reached $1.5 billion. The new Netflix streaming media player takes advantage of Play Ready DRM, which is built into Silverlight codec, for the playback of protected content. According to Netflix, this had not been possible with previous technologies. The company also said that it has expanded the number of movies and television programs available through the “Watch Instantly” service. The paid service is roughly around $7.99 per month. Currently, you are allowed a 30-day trial to test the services.

If you have questions or need support please visit:

https://launchpad.net/netflix-desktop

Download and install Netflix:

`sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ehoover/compholio sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install netflix-desktop redbox-desktop lovefilm-desktop`

Hulu Desktop is a lean-back viewing experience for your personal computer. It features a sleek new look that’s optimized for use with standard Windows Media Center remote controls or Apple remote controls, allowing you to navigate Hulu’s entire library with just six buttons. For users without remotes, the application is keyboard and mouse-enabled. Hulu Desktop is a downloadable application and will work on PCs and Macs. It will initially launch as a beta product during which we plan to gather and incorporate user feedback to improve the service. The new version includes both bug fixes and also support for the new Hulu Plus subscription service.

You can download the deb installation package for your 32-bit or 64-bit version of Ubuntu 14.04 here:

https://github.com/alghanmi/ubuntu-desktop_setup/wiki/Hulu-Desktop-Install-Guide

After you have download it, you can double-click on the *.deb file and it should automatically install itself with your Ubuntu Software Center.

Special Note: There is a problem when you run the default HuluDesktop configuration in FullScreen mode on Linux. To fix this you must manually edit your .huluconfig file to match your current monitor display resolution.

Copy and paste in Terminal:

gedit .huludesktop

And change this:

[display] fullscreen = FALSE width = 1024 height = 576 pos_x = 164 pos v = 95

and change FALSE to TRUE for fullscreen and update width and height to your actual display resolution sizes. You can find your current monitor display resolution sizes in your System Settings under Hardware.

[display] fullscreen = TRUE width = 1280 height = 720 pos_x = 164 pos v = 95

And if someone would be nice enough to drop a message to the HuluDesktop support people to let them know they need to find a solution to this issue eventually, and you can post that over this way. Maybe a nice GUI monitor resolution configuration option within Huludesktop itself or even an auto detect function?:

http://www.hulu.com/discussions

Audacity is a cross-platform multitrack audio editor. It allows you to record sounds directly or to import files in various formats and convert audio files into many different audio file formats too. It features a few simple effects, all of the editing features you should need, and unlimited undo. This is the first and last GUI audio editor you will ever need on Ubuntu.

The GUI was built with wxWidgets and the audio I/O supports PulseAudio, OSS and ALSA under Linux.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:audacity-team/daily sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install audacity lame libmp3lame0

Jack Audio Connection Kit (Recommended if you do audio editing)

For more specific information: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/What%20is%20JACK

sudo apt-get install jack jackd jackeq

Mixxx is a DJ tool that allows for the playback and mixing of digital music (MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and Wave). Mixxx will run on the Linux, Mac OS X and Windows operating systems.

Mixxx has the ability to provide comprehensive support for any MIDI controller due to its scripting engine, and it ships with mappings for a number of popular controllers, a complete list of which can be found on the Hardware Compatibility page.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mixxx/mixxx sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install mixxx libportaudio2

Airtime an award-winning open source radio management software, has reached version 2.1, getting real-time show editing and live stream rebroadcasting.

Airtime 2.1 allows connecting remotely via tools such as Mixxx or Virtual DJ and the application will rebroadcast the stream either at a time you set or in the middle of the broadcast, using a nice transition.

Download Airtime (officially supports Ubuntu and Debian, but works on other Linux distributions too)

Ardour is a hard disk recorder and digital audio workstation application. It runs on Linux, Mac OS X and FreeBSD. Its primary author is Paul Davis, who is also responsible for the JACK Audio Connection Kit. Ardour’s intention is to provide digital audio workstation software suitable for professional use.

sudo apt-get install ardour

Traverso DAW (digital audio workstation) is an easy to use, open source multitrack audio recording and editing suite with a great user interface. You’ll find yourself doing more work in half the time thanks to the unique interface geared toward both the home user and profession musician; instead of endless menus and submenus, Traverso uses both the mouse and the keyboard together for precision and speed.

sudo apt-get install traverso

Linux Multimedia Studio (LMMS) is a free DAW (digital audio workstation) created for Linux & Windows. Although it has a rather steep learning curve, there are many tutorials and it includes several sample songs that you can learn from. Users learn the functions pretty quickly once they go through a few of the examples. LMMS come equipped with four different synthesizers. There is one that allows manipulation of samples by adding filters and a BitInvader plugin that is a wavetable synthesizer, allowing you to create a waveform for your sound. There is a guitar synthesizer and one with three oscillators.

sudo apt-get install lmms

Jokosher is a multi-track music editor. The interface uses familiar concepts to musicians rather than relying on their knowledge of multi-track recorders. Guitarists and other players who don’t want to spend the funds or the time to learn the ins and outs of multi-tracking will appreciate this software. The idea of Jokosher is to be able to ignore the software and be able to concentrate on your music.

sudo apt-get install jokosher

bristol is a vintage synthesiser software emulator suite. The application consists of an engine itself called bristol and a graphical user interface called brighton. The graphical interface is a bitmap manipulation library to present the diverse synth devices such as potentiometers, buttons, sliders, patch cables and which generates the messages to configure the synth emulator.

The engine is an infrastructure that hosts the emulator code that couples together the different audio operators required to generate the audio. The engine and GUI are started together with the start Bristol script which sets up the required environment for the two to connect together. It is not generally envisaged that bristol and brighton be started outside of the script however there are options to the script to only start one or the other. Bristol also has a command line interface that can be used rather than the GUI. Audio drivers are PCM/PCM plug or Jack. Midi drivers are either OSS/ALSA rawmidi interface, or ALSA SEQ. Multple GUIs can connect to the single audio engine, which then operates multitimbrally.

Currently the following synthesizers are emulated:

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/man1/bristol.1.html

In Terminal copy and paste to install the GUI:

sudo apt-get install bristol monobristol

Special Note: You may need to type monobristol in terminal to start the GUI or you may need to create a launcher for it manually. Sometimes it is better to run it entirely from the command line too.

Amarok

Amarok’s tagline is “Rediscover Your Music”, and its development is based around this ideology. Amarok’s core features such as the unique “context browser”, integrated Wikipedia lookup and lyrics download help users to find new music, and to learn more about the music they have.

Windows equivalent : iTunes

Amarok also features integration with last.fm, giving users suggestions about what to listen to next and which artists may fit their mood, as well as with Magnatune integration, allowing no-cost full listening of all the music in their catalog, and DRM-free purchasing.

sudo apt-get install amarok amarok-common

Access it through Applications → Sound & Video → Amarok.

gtkpod

gtkpod is a graphical user interface for the Apple iPod for Unix-like systems, written using the GTK+ toolkit.

Windows equivalent : iTunes

This application allow you to connect to your ipod, shuffle, idohickeythingamabob so you can access your music, mp4s, and tranfer them, copy them, rename them, with Ubuntu or Debian systems. It’s all kinds of good stuff for apple media users.

sudo apt-get install gtkpod

OpenShot Video Editor is a free, open-source video editor for Linux licensed under the GPL version 3.0.OpenShot can take your videos, photos, and music files and help you create the film you have always dreamed of. Easily add sub-titles, transitions, and effects, and then export your film to DVD, YouTube, Vimeo, Xbox 360, and many other common formats.

OpenShot provides extensive editing and compositing features, and has been designed as a practical tool for working with high-definition video including HDV and AVCHD.

Copy and paste in Terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:openshot.developers/ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install openshot frei0r-plugins

Kazam is a simple screen recording program that will capture the content of your screen and record a video file that can be played by any video player that supports VP8/WebM video format. You are able to have a mic enabled and background soundtrack too.

Optionally you can record sound from any sound input device that is supported and visible by PulseAudio.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kazam-team/stable-series sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install kazam

recordMyDesktop is a free and open source desktop screencasting software application written for GNU/Linux. The program is separated into two parts; a command line tool that performs the tasks of capturing and encoding, and an interface that exposes the program functionality graphically. There are two front-ends written in python with pyGtk (gtk-recordMyDesktop) and pyQt4 (qt-recordMyDesktop). RecordMyDesktop also offers the ability to record audio through ALSA, OSS or the JACK audio server. RecordMyDesktop only outputs to Ogg using Theora for video and Vorbis for audio. It has plenty of options when it comes to video quality, brightness, and gamma correction.

sudo apt-get install gtk-recordmydesktop

PlayOnLinux is Linux software which allows you to easily install and use numerous games and applications designed to run with Microsoft Windows OS. PlayOnLinux brings a cost-free, accessible and efficient solution to running Windows software in Ubuntu Linux. It is recommend that new users check with the Wine App Database first to see if whatever Windows application or Windows program has been tested to work and perform well with Wine on Linux before attempting to use Wine to run whatever Windows software you are interested in running.

And be aware that the installation of PlayOnLinux can take some time because there is a problem with the font installation and eventually it will kickout a font error and then you can start using PlayOnLinux at that point. It is always recommended that you try to locate a native Linux application in the Ubuntu Software Center that is the equivalent to whatever Windows App or Windows program you need to run. And only use PlayOnLinux if no Linux equivalent exists already in the Ubuntu software repositories for free.

To install Wine in Ubuntu copy and paste into Terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install wine1.5

PlayOnLinux

To install PlayOnLinux in Ubuntu copy and paste into Terminal:

sudo wget http://deb.playonlinux.com/playonlinux_precise.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys E0F72778C4676186 sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install playonlinux

TeamViewer is a free for non-commercial use, software application for remote control, desktop sharing, and file transfer between computers, great for meetings, presentations, tech support and more. It runs on Windows, Mac OSX, Linux (even though it comes in a .deb or .rpm, it uses Wine which comes bundled with it) as well as Android or iPhone. You will need to modify GUFW firewall settings in order to connect if you have it enabled.

Windows: LogMeIn, GoToMeeting, MS RDC

http://www.teamviewer.com/en/download/linux.aspx

Citrix Systems Reciever ICAClient (w/Firefox Plug-in):

Citrix Receiver is a lightweight software client that allows access to virtual desktops and apps including Windows, Web or SaaS apps on any PC, Mac, netbook, tablet or smartphone. Works for both 32-bit and 64-bit version of Ubuntu. You need to download two deb packages to have it working correctly. You need the installation package for either 32-bit or 64-bit, and the supporting usb deb package, and then you will need to also install the USB support deb package as well.

Linux Citrix user Advisory: The Citrix installation deb isn’t as current or maintained as it should be and you might want to post a message to their forums to let them know about it so they can update their software installation package for Ubuntu 14.04 and I am having a hard time keeping up with the problems each Ubuntu release in order for it to be included on this list. If they won’t maintain their software to stay current with Ubuntu releases then I can’t continue to recommend their product for new users, and so if you need this software on your own production systems, please do take the time to inform them and let them know how you feel. The Citrix deb installation packages have minor bugs, but they have been on-going for a couple of years now, and the work-arounds are getting much more complicated over time to keep it functional for Ubuntu debian systems. If they don’t update their product by the next LTS release then I will just delete this product from my do-to list instead and Citrix users will have to continue using 12.04 indefinitely if they require Citrix on debian systems. Just a heads up there! Thanks.

Special Note (Important for 14.04 users) Here is another Citrix patch and work-around since certain dependencies were removed in 14.04 and will not install properly:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2166020&page=3

You will find both on the Linux download page on the following link:

http://www.citrix.com/downloads/citrix-receiver/receivers-by-platform/receiver-for-linux-121.html

And then copy the certificates to the proper directory:

sudo cp /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/* /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts

Tutorial on how to install Citrix Receiver in Ubuntu:

Special Note: There is a error in the deb installation package that you download from Citrix. If you are running 64-bit Ubuntu and trying to install Citrix the installation will FAIL. Here is how to resolve this problem with the installation package for 64-bit Ubuntu:

1. Install the .deb and let it fail using gdebi package installer. Instructions for how to install gdebi are back the beginning of this To Do List guide at the top. Don’t use the Ubuntu Software Center because it crashes it.

2. Edit /var/lib/dpkg/info/icaclient.postinst

sudo gedit /var/lib/dpkg/info/icaclient.postinst

3. Replace the line that says

echo $Arch|grep "i[0-9]86" >/dev/null

with

echo $Arch|grep -E "i[0-9]86|x86_64" >/dev/null

4. Run dpkg –configure icaclient

sudo dpkg --configure icaclient

And restart Firefox so the plugin is installed correctly.

I really hope Citrix fixes this problem with their 64-bit installation deb package for 64-bit Ubuntu soon. And the other thing that is missing from the installation package is the certificates.

Make sure to always copy the certificates to the proper directory so Citrix can connect properly with your Citrix host:

sudo cp /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/* /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts

Hard Disk Partition Manager

Windows equivalent : Norton Partition Magic

Ubuntu equivalent : GParted

GParted is a GTK+ front-end to GNU Parted and the official GNOME Partition Editor application.

It is used for creating, deleting, resizing, moving, checking and copying partitions, and the file systems on them. This is useful for creating space for new operating systems (works with Vista / Windows 7 System & Data partitions), reorganizing disk usage, copying data residing on hard disks and mirroring one partition with another (disk imaging). It is useful for tasks such as: creating space for new operating systems, restructuring disk space to separate user and operating system data, and copying partitions to enable upgrading to a larger hard disk drive. Your hard disk drive or USB flash drive can be subdivided into one or more partitions. GParted enables you to reorganize your disk partitions while preserving the contents of these partitions.

sudo apt-get install gparted

Oracle VM VirtualBox (formerly Sun VirtualBox, Sun xVM VirtualBox and innotek VirtualBox) is an x86 virtualization software package, created by software company Innotek GmbH, purchased in 2008 by Sun Microsystems, and now developed by Oracle Corporation as part of its family of virtualization products. Oracle VM VirtualBox is installed on Ubuntu as an application; this host application allows additional guest operating systems, each known as a Guest OS, to be loaded and run, each with its own virtual environment. For example, here we have installed Andriod 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS virtually inside of Virtualbox for App development purposes.

To install Oracle VM VirtualBox copy and paste into Terminal:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian $(lsb_release -sc) contrib" >> /etc/apt/sources.list' sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian $(lsb_release -sc) contrib" >> /etc/apt/sources.list' wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/oracle_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add - sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install virtualbox-4.3

Ubuntu Builder is a simple tool to build your own distribution. I just tested it today, and it works great. It allows to download, extract, customize in many ways and rebuild your ubuntu images. You can customize i386 and amd64 images.

So far it supports Ubuntu 12.10, 12.04, 11.10, and 10.04.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:f-muriana/ubuntu-builder sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install ubuntu-builder

For other releases, download and install the .deb package from this page.

Redo Backup and Recovery is so simple that anyone can use it. It is the easiest, most complete disaster recovery solution available. It allows bare-metal restore. Bare metal restore is not only the best solution for hardware failure, it is also the ultimate antivirus: Even if your hard drive melts or gets completely erased by a virus, you can have a completely-functional system back up and running in as little as 10 minutes.

http://redobackup.org/

Clonezilla is a free disaster recovery, disk cloning, disk imaging and deployment solution. Clonezilla is designed by Steven Shiau and developed by the NCHC Free Software Labs in Taiwan. Clonezilla SE provides multicast support similar to Norton Ghost Corporate Edition.

http://clonezilla.org/downloads.php

MultiSystem is for creating a multiboot live USB flash drives or thumb-drives. Instead of carrying around a bunch of different flash drives for all of your different live operating systems, and restoration images, now can move them all onto one large USB flash drive. Simply drag and drop your .iso files. It is very similar to Xboot in WinOS.

sudo apt-add-repository 'deb http://liveusb.info/multisystem/depot all main' wget -q http://liveusb.info/multisystem/depot/multisystem.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add - sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install multisystem

BleachBit (recommended) quickly frees disk space and tirelessly guards your privacy. Free cache, delete cookies, clear Internet history, shred temporary files, delete logs, and discard junk you didn’t know was there. Designed for Linux and Windows systems, it wipes clean 90 applications including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Adobe Flash, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari, and more. I highly recommend installing this on your system at some point, and making sure to have it automatically run at system login as a reminder. Even though Ubuntu doesn’t have issues with Viruses and Spyware, however your system can become slowly bogged down with tmp cache files in Mozilla Firefox and Chrome with heavy use, so it makes sense to run bleachbit periodically to speed up your system.

Windows equivalent : CCleaner

Beyond simply deleting files, BleachBit includes advanced features such as shredding files to prevent recovery, wiping free disk space to hide traces of files deleted by other applications, and vacuuming Firefox to make it faster. Better than free, BleachBit is open source. If you have a system that seems to be running slower than normal, it’s always a good idea to try running Bleachbit to see if it may resolve your performance issues that you may be experiencing. I personally recommend that heavy internet users run this at least once or twice a month.

sudo apt-get install bleachbit sudo bleachbit

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Ubuntu/ Linux Video Tutorials !

Thursday, March 10, 2016

PS/ Download : Every Ubuntu default wallpaper — from 4.10 to 16.04

Or Download : The New Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Default Wallpaper

PS/ you can download my favorite wallpapers HERE

Ubuntu is sponsored by the UK-based company Canonical Ltd. Canonical generates revenue by selling technical support and services related to Ubuntu, while the operating system itself is entirely free of charge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLRF7o3HPJk

For more specific information (recommended):

Download Ubuntu 14.04 Desktop:

Download Ubuntu 14.04 Server:

Download Ubuntu 14.04 – Torrent (Faster Download) Desktop

Download Ubuntu 14.04 – Torrent (Faster Download) Server

In addition they can be found at the following links:

Existing Mac users can use these instructions on how to install Ubuntu for the first time:

Existing Windows users can use these instructions on how to install Ubuntu for the first time if you are new to Ubuntu Linux. Find out out if you are running 32-bit or 64-bit hardware. I recommend using a USB Flash Thumb Drive to install Ubuntu OS. (Recommended):

If you are currently running Windows:

Special Note: Tutorial on how-to disable Windows UEFI “Secure Boot” if you have a newer Windows PC:

Here is where you can download Parted Magic iso image to burn onto a blank cd-r/dvd-r disc:

Installation of Ubuntu OS: Make sure you select and place checkmarks next to “Download updates while installing”, and “Install this third-party software” on the following screen. (Required)

If this is your first time using Ubuntu on your computer here is a quick example of how to use Terminal to install software using this to-do list guide (make sure to switch the video to HD)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj81tC63Q4g?version=3&rel=0&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent]

Okay, if you rebooted your computer after installing and your computer fails to start correctly you can try to fix grub bootloader with the following program called Boot-Repair.

But hopefully, if all went well, you should now be logged into your brand new Ubuntu 14.04 desktop at this point.

To install Classic Ubuntu “Flashback” Desktop Environment, open Terminal and copy and paste:

Then log out and select “GNOME Classic” at the LightDM login screen. You need to click on the the little-gear-looking-icon next to where you type your password to change your session to Ubuntu Classic “Flashback” session.

After you are logged into your Ubuntu Classic session you can move the top bar to the bottom (like in the screen capture at the top of this article) by first clicking and holding the ALT key and dragging it down to the bottom of your screen.

Unhappy with Unity? Want your old Gnome 2 desktop back? Just when you thought Gnome 2 was gone forever. It’s back!

More info here: http://mate-desktop.org/

How to install older Gnome 2 “Mate” Desktop Environment in 14.04:

Then log out and select “MATE” at the LightDM login screen. You need to click on the the little-gear-looking-icon next to where you type your password to change your session to Mate session.

Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems. It aims to be fast and low on system resources, while still being visually appealing and user friendly for old school users.

Now log out and select “Lubuntu” at the LightDM login screen. You need to click on the the little gear looking icon next to where you type your password to switch your session to Lubuntu.

Adding Medibuntu Package Repository (Discontinued) (Optional Alternative):

The only thing this does is provide you with DVD codecs to playback DVD movies. If you don’t have a DVD drive, or you don’t watch DVD movies on your computer you can ignore these packages.

Special Note: w32codecs and w64codecs are no longer available.

To disable the Medibuntu repository and/or enable the new libdvdcss repository, use these commands:

Enable Partner and Independent Repositories in Ubuntu Software Center (Prerequisite and Requirement) :

Open Ubuntu Software Center and select “Edit” and then select “Software Sources”:

Make sure both Canonical Partner repositories have check marks next to them and make sure it looks something like this and click close:

Now hopefully your system is completely updated, and no more updates are found.

Okay, in the rest of this guide we will be using Terminal to install software and add additional software repositories. You can find Terminal here:

Synaptic Package Manager (optional)

To install Synaptic Package Manager copy and paste in Terminal:

To install Gdebi software installer copy and paste in Terminal:

Do a search for “Software & Updates” and click on it.

Then click on the “Additional Drivers” tab.

After you have installed your drivers, and restarted your system, you need to run this in terminal to check to make sure your video driver were completely installed and hopefully you have all “yes” displayed:

Here is how you can upload your hardware specifications to pastebin online for sharing with Ubuntu Forums support:

Here is how you can find our your currently installed video adapter hardware specifications to copy and paste:

Copy the pastebinit link and video hardware specification output these commands provide you with to Ubuntu Forums requesting technical support with your hardware configuration.

Make sure to also provide them with your unity support test results from the first unity test above.

Be patient as wait time may be 24 to 48 hours for a forum reply

How to remove all the SPAM and ADS from your Ubuntu (very highly recommended):

Here is a great explanation of why:

If you would like to disable these features you have two methods to choose from:

Manually: To disable a Dash plugin (scope) in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr, open Dash, go to the Applications lens (either do it manually using your mouse or use the Super + A keyboard shortcut), click “Filter results” on the right and under “Type”, select “Dash plugins”.

Automatically: If you are in a big hurry and you don’t want to worry about this kind of commercial and potential tracking/annoying stuff again, to simply disable all the shopping Dash plugins scopes from the command line, use the following commands at the following link (very highly recommended):

Open up the Software Center and install “Activity Log Manager” if your system doesn’t come installed with default Privacy options. Or you can cut and paste this in Terminal:

If you are using Ubuntu Classic session, it is located in System Settings.

How to Share Files over the Network

Auto Mount Windows NTFS Partition in Ubuntu 14.04

Now, launch ntfs-config from the Unity Dash Home. Click Advanced Configuration and check the partitions you want to auto-mount at start-up.

Open your Terminal, copy and paste: