A new version of “What to do after installing Ubuntu? Run this script!” has been released. The script now has an actual name: “Ubuntu 10.04 Start”.

Instead of a changelog, I’m going to list all the features again:

  • Adds extra repositories: Ubuntu restricted, extras, Medibuntu, Getdeb, Dropbox (only if you select to install Dropbox)
  • Installs from repositories: The GIMP, Pidgin, WINE, Chromium browser, Gnome Do, Guake, VLC media player, Mplayer, SMplayer, Thunderbird, Dropbox, Codecs (multimedia, java, flash), additional archives support, DVD support and fonts, Ubuntu Tweak, Deluge Torrent, CompizConfig Settings Manager, Development tools (from build-essential to Subversion, GIT and so on).
  • Downloads and installs the following: Google Chrome browser (will download the build for 32 or 64 bit, depending on your Ubuntu version), official smiley themes for Pidgin (for all the protocols), the latest Flash Player for 64bit via Adobe’s website, Skype (32 or 64bit, depending on your Ubuntu version).
  • Tweaks:
    • Move window buttons to the right (Karmic style)
    • Change Update Manager behavior to the one in Jaunty
    • Remove mounted drive icons from desktop
    • Disable the GDM login sound
    • Enable the icons in menus and buttons
    • Disable the GDM login user list
    • Remove the ubuntu-docs package (frees up 252MB)
    • Change Gnome Calendar first day of the week from Sunday to Monday
    • Downloads, installs and configure sharp fonts
    • Fix ‘apt-get update’ delay for Google repository
    • Automatically mount NTFS drives on startup
  • Automatically accepts the JAVA license so you don’t have to
  • The Medibuntu server is currently down which made me develop a new feature: the script now tests the main Medibuntu server and 2 other mirrors and adds whichever of these 3 is working.
  • Lots of checks to make sure you run the script proprely: will check if the script is ran as root, if Synaptic, apt-get, dpkg or Software Center is running and will ask you to close it before running the script, checks the internet connection to make sure you can actually install the packages, etc.

The new version also fixes lots of bugs from the previous version.

Why would you want to use Ubuntu 10.04 Start?

The main purpose of this script is to speed up configuring Ubuntu 10.04 immediately after you’ve just installed it. This includes both installing popular applications and codecs as well as fixing some annoyances in Ubuntu 10.04.

You can search for each package in Synaptic or Ubuntu Software Center and manually install it. But then you’ll also need to go to the Skype website and manually download and install it (Skype is no longer available in the Medibuntu repository), the same for Google Chrome, and so on. You can also use Ubuntu Tweak for some tweaks (but only a few of the tweaks in this script). But this script combines the most popular tweaks which are not available in a single application with installing common packages which almost everyone uses, so the time spent configuring Ubuntu 10.04 is decreased dramatically.

The script should also help new Ubuntu users since the script configures lots of things without any input from the user (such as automounting NTFS drives on startup and so on).

Download and run the Ubuntu 10.04 Start script

remember it’s not recommended running a script without knowing exactly what it does, so I invite you to look at the code before running it.
To install Zenity (required by the script), download and run the script, copy / paste the following commands in a terminal:

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# in case you have downloaded a previous version
rm ubuntu-10.04-script
sudo apt-get install zenity
wget http://launchpad.net/ubuntustart/trunk/0.4.2/+download/ubuntu-10.04-script
chmod +x ubuntu-10.04-script
sudo ./ubuntu-10.04-script

You can also manually download it from https://launchpad.net/ubuntustart/+download

A few explanations on the tweaks:

Move window buttons to the right (Karmic style) – will move the Metacity window buttons to the right side, in the following order: Minimize, Maximize, Close

Change Update Manager behavior to the one in Jaunty – Ubuntu 9.04 (and newer) introduced a change to the handling of package updates, launching update-manager directly instead of displaying a notification icon in the GNOME panel. Users will still be notified of security updates on a daily basis, but for updates that are not security-related, users will only be prompted once a week. This tweak makes the update-manager not pop-up, but always show the updates in the notification area.

Remove mounted drive icons from desktop – removes ntfs and usb drives from the desktop; usually when mounting a drive it shows up on the desktop

Disable the GDM login sound – all the sounds in Ubuntu can be turned off from a GUI except this one. This is the sound produced when the GDM login screen loads.

Enable the icons in menus and buttons – the icons in menus and buttons were removed in Gnome 2.28 (starting with Ubuntu Karmic). However, up until Lucid, users were able to enable these from the Appearence dialog preferences. This is no longer possible so use this tweak instead.

Disable the GDM login user list – in Lucid, the user list is displayed in the GDM login screen (which IMO is a security concern). This fix will make no user show up in this list, and for logging in you must enter your username and password manually.

Change Gnome Calendar first day of the week from Sunday to Monday tweak – Gnome Calendar comes with Sunday as the first day of the week. This tweak fixes this for non-US citizens.

Remove the ubuntu-docs package (frees up 252MB): removed the ubuntu-docs package to free up 252 MB of disk space.

Install and configure sharp fonts: info about this feature, here: http://www.webupd8.org/2009/09/ubuntu-debian-script-to-install-sharp.html

Fix ‘apt-get update’ delay for Google Chrome repository – when downloading Google Chrome .deb, it automatically adds the Google repository. The same goes for Picasa, etc. This repository has a known issue which cause “sudo apt-get update” to take a very long time to complete. This tweak fixes this issue.

Add additional repositories (GetDeb, Medibuntu etc.) – Adds the following repositories: Getdeb, Medibuntu, Ubuntu universe and multiverse and lucid partner.

Note: I am no expert at BASH, so the script code will look very unpolished to some. But it works :)

Credits:

Report bugs or ask for new features (suggestions) in this post or @ Launchpad.

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