As I have been trying to make some decisions about what Linux distributions and desktop environments to use going forward in 2012, I accidentally found this great guide for configuring and tweaking, as well as tip-top software recommendations in Ubuntu Linux. It is written somewhat like a junior high book report - very straight forward without the hysterical opinionated prose that fills up computing forums on a regular basis of late.
There are lots of screen-shots to quickly see and understand what is being offered, and there are loads of codes that can be pasted in the terminal to quickly follow the steps of the guide. Additionally there are ratings such as "Prerequisite and required" for things that improve the functionality of your desktop, and Windows equivalents named for software to get a sense what programs actually do (I find these things sometimes unclear with shortened package names and poor repository information). The side bar offers other posts such as "How-to Install Minecraft in Ubuntu" and RSS-feeds to an array of relevant Linux forums from critical security patches, to open source computing news, to various and sundry tutorials.
A geek weblog Nirvana.
(Link.)
8 comments:
Very cool - I might actually move my XP laptop back to Unbuntu now =D
I hope there is no "mission critical" data on your laptop. XP from 2001, no longer supported by Microsoft, and well known for its security back-doors. It could very well be a pirated-photo-shop-russian-hacked-zombie-computer-of-doom.
My XP hard drive is a sleek streamlined Terraria game console. Sort of like a +3 talking longsword with ego 15 it whispers to me, "You need no other data, you will not install any other programs . . . you only need the digging game to fight evil!"
Though after my recent botched Microsoft system and re-install I am thinking there has got to be a more efficient way. Setting that all up takes forever and is mind numbingly dull.
Running something like Clonezilla to take a snapshot of your drive is a common practice.
That site is a good resource. I now have it bookmarked.
Nuked my laptop and now running 11.10 on it.
At first, Unity made me want to rip my eyes out, but now that I've switched to the "2d" version, it seems functional enough.
I see where Canonical is coming from with it, but it's still *totally* half-baked; It's slow as hell compared to Gnome 2 and, while I like the general UI scheme, it seems to skimp on the razzle-dazzle where I'd expected to see it (the launcher - which right-clicking does nothing on! WTF?!) and have it all over in places I didn't really anticipate (Dash home - which I actually like).
8-B
Yep. I ran Unity 2d for several months in 2-d mode, as well. I didn't mind the universal menu or the taskbar. They're actually quite nice space-saving accordances. I much prefer a vertical taskbar, also, something Gnome 2 didn't do very well at all (XFCE & KDE do it fine, though).
Two things drove me away from Unity.
1. The time it takes for the menu to appear. Gnome 3 and Unity have functionality meant to mimic Gnome Do, Launchy or Kupfer. The general idea in both Gnome 3 and Unity is to press Super then type the first two or three letters of the application or bookmark you want, and off you go. Unity's menu can take three or four seconds to come up, obliterating any efficiency I may have had using the keyboard.
2. I didn't find the workspace management so great in Unity 2d. I quite like that Gnome 3 has a separate mode for organizing your workspaces and spawning applications. I use a lot of workspaces when I am doing code/art projects.
P.S. If your stuck in Windows at work. I highly recommend Launchy. I also spent some time during a coffee break at work today installing KDE for Windows. You can't make Plasma your window manager quite yet, but Dolphin beats the pants off of Explorer as far as file managers go.
Ugh. KDE for Windows is terribly unstable.
Hey Alex. Here are some installation instructions specifically for digital painting. Mint instructions should carry over to Ubuntu, as it is an Ubuntu derivative. Link
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