[TOC]
This is a record of almost everything I do to configure a fresh copy of Ubuntu/Mint to a point where I can actually be productive with it. I plan on keeping this up-to-date with any other important tweaks I make to the system.
Each section is pretty much self-contained. None of them really rely on any of the others. In a sense this guide could also be seen as a compendium of mini-tutorials for installing and configuring various programs and features within Ubuntu-based distros. There are some Mint-specific references throughout, though, so don't be alarmed if you can't find something in a non-Mint distro.
Take heed! This guide started out as a Mint setup guide but I've since switched to Xubuntu as of 16.04. It's alright, though, because as I mentioned earlier this guide is basically customizations I make to a Debian-based distro.
I decided to log down the partitioning scheme I use because it's simple and flexible:
- EFI System Partition, 300MB
- EXT4, /, 30GB (30720MB)
- EXT4, /home, (remainder)
- SWAP, swap, 2GB (2048MB)
Ubuntu now has UEFI support (you don't even need to turn off Secure Boot!) so the EFI System Partition takes the place of a FAT32 /boot partition I used to set up.
And I keep /home on its own partition so that I can (theoretically) easily reinstall over / and preserve all of my personal files. This of this as installing Windows on C:\ but keeping Documents/Desktop/etc... on D:\.
Speaking of UEFI and Secure Boot: there was one final step I needed to take after setting up the above partitions (making sure to select /dev/sda/ as the location to install the bootloader). Namely, I needed to tell the UEFI to trust the signed Ubuntu bootloader that was just installed:
- Go into UEFI (F2 for this particular Acer laptop)
- Set a 'Supervisor Password'
- Go into BIOS-Settings > Security
- Select HDD0
- Select EFI
- Select 'ubuntu'
- Select 'shimx64.efi'
- Enter a name to appear in the list of bootable devices, I chose 'xubuntu'
- Save changes and exit
That should get UEFI to boot the OS that was just installed. If you don't do these steps, the OS will never boot and you'll scratch your head for a couple of hours wondering what the hell is going wrong and whether you should just use Legacy Boot mode (DON'T DO THIS, GET UEFI SECURE BOOT WORKING, IT'S ONE EXTRA STEP, JEEEEZUS).
This is a pretty typical first step:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
You can also tack on a -y to the end of upgrade if you just want it to run.
I don't know why the firewall is off by default but it's easy to turn on:
sudo ufw enable
It seems silly to place this so far up the list of things to install, but I rely on my Logitech products to get things done. Unfortunately on the day I brought my new laptop into work I'd forgotten to take the Unifying Receiver off of the other laptop I was using. As luck would have it, there was another Receiver tucked inside the keyboard. Thanks to Solaar I was able to transfer both my keyboard and mouse to the second Receiver with no problem!
To get started, add the Solaar repository to apt:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:daniel.pavel/solaar && sudo apt-get update
Then install Solaar like any other program:
sudo apt-get install solaar
Japanese language entry is important to me on a day-to-day working basis. I'm partial to Microsoft's IME on Windows but, well, this is Linux and I've come to prefer the Google-IME-derived Mozc IME. It's an extension of IBus, though, so first we have to enable IBus.
I went the GUI route to install this in Mint:
- Click Menu, then search for 'language'
- Click Language Settings, then select the Input Method section
- Click the Add support for IBus button
You can also install this via the command line:
sudo apt-get install ibus ibus-clutter ibus-gtk ibus-gtk3 ibus-qt4
You should be able to install Mozc with this command:
sudo apt-get install ibus-mozc mozc-server mozc-data mozc-utils-gui
Accept any prerequisites it might need.
Mozc needs to be enabled from within IBus Preferences:
- Click Menu, then search for "ibus"
- Click Keyboard Input Methods, then select the Input Method tab
- If you're prompted to start the IBus Daemon, go ahead and click Yes
- Check the Customize active input methods box if it isn't already
- From the dropdown, click Show all input methods, select Japanese, then click Mozc
- Click Add to add Mozc to the list of input methods
By default you can switch between English and Mozc with Ctrl+Space.
If you're coming from the Microsoft IME, you might be more comfortable using Alt+` (grave) to change languages. It's possible to use this same shortcut in Mint, but by default Mint has this bound to the *Cycle through open windows of the same application shortcut. To reassign this shortcut, you must first disable it:
- Click Menu, then search for 'shortcut'
- Click Keyboard, then click the Shortcuts tab
- Under General, click Cycle through open windows of the same application
- Beneath it, select the keyboard binding that says
Alt+`, then press Backspace to clear it
Next, change the IBus language switch shortcut:
- Re-open IBus Preferences
- Click the ... button next to the Next input method textbox
- Click the ... button next to the Key code textbox
- Click the disabled text to start key recognition mode, then press the
`(grave) key - Under Modifiers, click Alt, then click Apply
You should now see <Alt>grave in the Next input method textbox and immediately be able to use it to switch between input methods.
By the way, I tried using <Super>space to switch IMEs (this is how Windows 8/10 handles it) but I had to hold down the key combination to get it to fire. The delay is probably caused by this key combination being assigned somewhere else in the OS but I wasn't able to find out where (yes, I searched all the Keyboard shortcuts!). Alt+` is just as familiar so I stuck with it instead.
Grab the installer for Sublime Text 3 from the official website: http://www.sublimetext.com/3
In preparation for another step later on, go ahead and install Package Control.
Just in case you try to transfer files using a USB stick formatted as exFAT:
sudo apt-get install exfat-fuse
The repository with up-to-date versions of Virtual Box needs to be added manually. Start by editing additional-repositories.list:
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list
Add this line to it:
# Change 'trusty' to your repo's code word!
# From https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads:
# "According to your distribution, replace 'vivid' by 'utopic', 'trusty', 'raring', 'quantal', 'precise', 'lucid', 'jessie', 'wheezy', or 'squeeze'."
deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian trusty contrib
To download from this repository we need to add the Oracle public key to our system:
wget -q https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
Once you've done that, install VirtualBox:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install VirtualBox-5.0
When you're done, I'd highly recommend grabbing the VirtualBox Extension Pack from https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads. The file's the same for all OSs. When it'd done downloading you should be able to double-click it to have VirtualBox install it.
Additional Linux installation information can be found here: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads
Install Mercurial, and TortoiseHG to assist in writing commit logs:
sudo apt-get install mercurial && sudo apt-get install tortoisehg
TortoiseHg comes with a useful GUI for managing commits. You can activate this from any Mercurial repo by running thg from the terminal while in a folder containing a .hg subfolder.
Git is already installed, so we just need to install a graphical frontend to make it easier to write commit logs
sudo apt-get install git-cola
From this point on you can activate git-cola by navigating to a repo folder containing a .git subfolder and running git-cola via the terminal.
First, let's install pip3:
sudo apt-get install python3-pip
Python 2 isn't going anywhere any time soon. For backwards-compatibility reasons it's a Bad Idea™ to try and point the python console command to Python3. Just deal with typing python3 and pip3 instead, at least until you get virtualenv installed. After that everything should be developed inside a virtual environment, within which python will point to python3.
On that note, let's install a couple of global Python tools:
sudo pip3 install virtualenv
sudo pip3 install httpie
sudo pip3 install pep8
I also find a longer max-line-length more comfortable to work with, and I prefer to set the longer length system-wide. This'll manifest most directly within Sublime Text, which calls pep8 via SublimeLinter.
Simply put, add the following to ~/.config/pep8:
[pep8] max-line-length = 100
And that's all it takes.
If you're not picky about what version of PostgreSQL you install, grab both with the following command:
sudo apt-get install postgresql && sudo apt-get install pgadmin3
They'll both get installed with default settings. You can then access PostgreSQL from the command line:
sudo su - postgres
psql
While you're here, go ahead and set a password for the postgres user:
postgres=# \password
Enter new password: <Enter password>
Enter it again: <Confirm password>
postgres=#
You'll need to enter the new password into PGAdmin when you're setting up the connection to localhost.
Just go ahead and grab Slack's official Linux client: https://slack.com/downloads
I have a wireless Brother printer that won't work if you just try to install the printer as its detected in Mint's Printers menu. A better way is to use Brother's well-documented, and highly-Linux-supportive Driver Install Tool:
Download the bash script, extract it, and then run it:
sudo bash linux-brprinter-installer-2.0.0-1
Choose yes when prompted whether or not you want to specify a DeviceURI. Then you can connect to the printer by IP, or by its automatically created connection URI if you're doing this after trying to install it via Printers.
I discovered the joy of soft links so I went ahead and started moving program configs into cloud storage to preserve them during reinstalls. I created a Settings folder in Copy for these settings. To create a soft link and trick your programs into using these relocated settings, follow this general workflow:
cd ~/.config/sublime-text-3/Packages
# Delete ./User/ if it exists
ln -s ~/Copy/Settings/SublimeText3/ User
This should create a softlink at ~/.config/sublime-text-3/Packages/User/ that points to ~/Copy/Settings/SublimeText3/. In this example Sublime Text is none the wiser as to where its settings actually reside, and from that point on any change made to its settings will get synced up to cloud storage.
The trickiest part is figuring out which files to back up. It appears that most programs are nice enough to drop their settings into ~/.config/, so that's a good place to start looking.
Dropbox is still a useful program, even if their plans are a bit inflexible. You can install it with a simple apt-get command:
sudo apt-get install dropbox
Afterwards, if you want Dropbox-specific options in Thunar's right-click menu, you'll need to install the integration plugin:
sudo apt-get install thunar-dropbox-plugin
From that point on you can perform various Dropbox tasks (including getting shareable links) by right-clicking from within the Dropbox folder.
Note that if you're using another file manager you'll want to track down its specific Dropbox integration plugin. I'm using Thunar because it came integrated with XFCE.
There's a bug with Dropbox and the newer version of Ubuntu's notification area. This manifests as a red 'not permitted' icon appearing within the notification area. The fix is pretty simple for now - to start, shut down Dropbox:
dropbox stop
Then, go into Sessions** and Startup > Application Autostart** and find the entry for Dropbox. When you do, double-click it and replace the dropbox start -i command with the following:
dbus-launch dropbox start
You can run that same command in the terminal to bring Dropbox back up. The familiar white box icon should now be visible.
The Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 wireless card in my new laptop was too new so I had to grab updated drivers for it. Fortunately it was made by Qualcomm so I could simply grab the official open-source drivers for it:
# From http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2323812&page=2
sudo rm /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/*
sudo wget -O /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/board.bin https://github.com/kvalo/ath10k-firmware/blob/master/QCA6174/hw3.0/board.bin?raw=true
sudo wget -O /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/board-2.bin https://github.com/kvalo/ath10k-firmware/blob/master/QCA6174/hw3.0/board-2.bin?raw=true
sudo wget -O /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/firmware-4.bin https://github.com/kvalo/ath10k-firmware/blob/master/QCA6174/hw3.0/firmware-4.bin_WLAN.RM.2.0-00180-QCARMSWPZ-1?raw=true
Once these three updates drivers are in place, a restart was all it took to get back wireless and Bluetooth functionality.
For future reference, I was also able to verify the model of my wireless card with the lspci command:
matt@acer-mattspire:~$ lspci ... 01:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 32)
And while diagnosing this issue I ran dmesg | grep 'ath10k' to see messages like this that helped identify the actual error:
[ 3.657434] ath10k_pci 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath10k/cal-pci-0000:01:00.0.bin failed with error -2 [ 3.657630] ath10k_pci 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/firmware-5.bin failed with error -2 [ 3.657632] ath10k_pci 0000:01:00.0: could not fetch firmware file 'ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/firmware-5.bin': -2 [ 3.722223] ath10k_pci 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/board-2.bin failed with error -2
- Currently tesing out the RAVEfinity theme and icon set:
- Theme: http://www.ravefinity.com/p/download-ambiance-radiance-flat-colors.html
- Icon Set: http://www.ravefinity.com/p/vivacious-colors-gtk-icon-theme.html
- Current Theme: Radiance-Flat (Blue-Spring-Pro)
- Current Icon Set: Vivacious-Light (Blue)
- Window Style: Radiance-Flat (Blue-Spring)