Ubuntu insights, Programming in groovy, java, et als!

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Ubuntu 11.10 - First Thing's First


 What I did after Ubuntu 11.10 installation, the journey so far!
  1. Installed Oneiric Ocelot (64 bit) with partitions spaces 50GB for Ubuntu root / and 150 GB for /home .

  2. Ubuntu restricted areas for audio and video codecs. (Can be installed either from Ubuntu software center or from the terminal using the
    sudo apt-get install ….

  3. Downloaded Launchy, an opensource keystroke launcher, my all time favorite system utility to easy index files. (Comes as a deb package by default, one can open the deb package with Ubuntu Software Center to proceed for installation or from the terminal using..
    cd .. //to the downloaded directory location
    dpkg -i packagename.deb
  4. Cairo Cock : Another personal favorite of mine for easy access. Cairo dock overrides few things that unity lack in terms with ease of access. Well, for everything else, you've the terminal. Nevertheless, I find Unity a lot more complete than what it was in Ubuntu 11.04. I personally like Unity, it is just a matter of breaking conventionality to realize the potential of what something new and innovative could offer.
  5. Chromium, a much better and faster web browser than Firefox.
  6. Rhythmbox, to manage audio. I am not a big fan of the music players suggested in the Linux world, although I haven't tried out all of them. The newer Winamp like interface is what I personally love. Have been looking around for such but again, Rhythmbox seems to be the better among the bad lot. (And nothing can beat itunes for managing music on my ipod. One reasons why I also have windows as a dual boot. All other ipod sync plugins provided by any of the Linux players suck.)
  7. VLC player for videos.
  8. Was also looking at installing Tweetdeck but still need to look through this as Tweetdeck requires Adobe AIR and sadly AIR has stopped its support for Linux compatibility. May be version 2.6 will do, but then, even Tweetdeck appears to have some installation errors on Ubuntu offlate.

Other stuff
Programming in Ubuntu has always been heaven, cannot really give you reasons why but I just love it on Linux!
  1. Installed Oneiric Ocelot (64 bit) with partitions spaces 50GB for Ubuntu root /, 150 GB for /home .
  2. Java and groovy for Linux.
  3. Eclipse Galileo with groovy plug ins.
  4. SCITE and scintilla, an open source text editor that I've been recently introduced to, highly powerful and capable of supporting many languages like C, C++, python, ruby, perl, et al. Highly customizable for a programmer and lot more powerful than the standard gedit of Ubuntu.
  5. Changed etc/xdg/autostart to startup apps like Launchy on Ubuntu login, so that I don't have to do it manually each time.
  6. I am also looking at auto mount of external disks that share space between Windows and Ubuntu to escape the manual labor each time at startup. A simple bash script or etc/fstab may be? Need to look through..

Well, That's it for a brief start of a long journey with Oneiric Ocelot.

Launch Applications on Ubuntu Startup

You can always add programs/applications to linux startup without having to launch them maunally, meaning, the application you wish for will launch itself automatically as soon as you boot into ubuntu after logging in.

For instance, let us say you are looking at adding firefox web browser to your start up list, all that is needed to be done is, to copy the firefox.dekstop file from user/share/applications folder to the etc/xdg/autostart folder.


Via Terminal :

  1. Ctr+Alt+T to open terminal
  2. Type in the following command and hit eneter
    sudo cp /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart

Via GUI :

  1. Hit Alt+F2, type in
    gksudo nautilus

    //This will ensure deliberate copy of the desktop file albeit the file permission issues if any.

  2. Browse through Filesystem -> usr -> share -> applications
  3. Copy the desired .desktop file (firefox.desktop in this case)
  4. Browse through Filesystem -> etc -> xdb -> autostart and paste it in the folder.
This will start firefox on ubuntu startup. Similar approach can be adapted for any other application installed.