Now that you have Ubuntu 9.04 installed, we are going to add all the basic programs, codecs, and customizations that you may need on Ubuntu.

Services

Your new install probably has some services running that you don’t need. Let’s remove those to free up some system resources. To do this select System > Administration > Services. Unlock the services tab by entering your password. Then remove the services you do not need.

Startup Programs

Next lets disable the startup programs that you do not need by going to System > Preferences > Sessions.

Installing & Uninstalling Programs

Select Applications > Add/Remove to install any programs you may want, and uninstall any programs that you don’t.

System Updates

Now lets customize how your computer notifies you when there are updates. Select System > Administration > Software Sources.

Under the Ubuntu Software tab, you can enable or disable the main repositories for Ubuntu. One suggestion that I have is that you change which repository you are using. By default it will use the US Server (or possibly another countries server if you are located outside the US. We want our updates to be as fast as possible and Ubuntu provides a way for us to determine what the best repository server is for us. Where it says Download from: click the arrow. This will bring up a list: choose Other. A new window will pop up with a button on the right hand side that says “Select Best Server.” Click that button and Ubuntu will test the downloads from all the servers and determine which one is best for you. When it is done, the server that is best for you will be highlighted. Click Choose Server to close the window.

In the Third-Party Software tab you can enable or disable any repositories that are not official Ubuntu repositories.

The Updates tab allows you to choose which updates you want to be informed about, and how often you want Ubuntu to check for updates.

Medibuntu

To install all the “goodies” out there for Ubuntu, we need to make the Medibuntu repositories available. To do this, run the following two commands:

and

Install Restricted Codecs

Ubuntu does not ship with items such as flash, java, and some codecs due to licensing. Let’s enable the backports repository and install these items.

Locate the following lines and remove the # from the front of them:

Now lets update your system and install some codecs, including the restricted codecs.

Speed up your system

Even though Ubuntu is fast on its own, wouldn’t you like to make it even faster? Lets install an application called Preload which will monitor what applications you run and then predict what you will run and fetch the binaries and their dependencies into memory for faster startup times. Say that you run Firefox, VLC, and GIMP every day, Preload will keep the libraries in your RAM to load these programs for you faster. This is similar to Windows SuperFetch.

Other Programs

Now lets install Skype, Wine VLC, Google Earth, Java, Flash Player 10, and Amarok.

Adobe Acrobat Reader

Adobe Acrobat Reader is no longer available in the Medibuntu repositories. It is now located in the Canonical Partner Repositories. To install Acrobat, we need to enable to Canonical Partner Repositories.

Look for the lines:

and uncomment them. Now we need to update our package list and install Acrobat.

Clean it all up

Now that we have finished installing everything, we need to go through and clean up the mess that was made. We do that by running:

The End

Now you have a fully customized full-featured Ubuntu 9.04 install. Enjoy!