My Ubuntu Desktop

By default, a bunch of stuff happens in Ubuntu. On a newly installed FreeBSD desktop, nothing happens -- it's like you barely have a functioning desktop. The Ubuntu distrabution picks some crap programs and some good programs by default. In FreeBSD, you have to pick everything and make all the mistakes yourself. This page is mostly for me, so I can remember what software I like to install regardless of the OS. With so much open-source stuff it is hard to remember at times.

Here are some notes:

  • CD ripping: shit can sound juicer and install Grip. Install lame, offvorbis, and faac/faad if you plan on doing anything with audio and iPods. [System->gt;Preferences->gt;Removable Media and Drives->gt;MultiMedia Tab]
  • Video: shit can totem. Totem doesn't work in Firefox as a plugins, and doesn't play DVDs well. I use VLC for DVD watching and mplayer for my firefox video plugin. apt-get remove totem-mozilla && apt-get install mozilla-mplayer
  • aterm is great, what is the default Terminal? I don't even know or care. Shit can it.
  • Email: Evolution? I really, really tried to like it. I spend a month with it: shit can it, and use Thunderbird, especially if you are familiar with Thunderbird already. It's a fricking miracle if you can get evolution to stop spitting up errors everytime you run when you ISP uses a self-signed SSL cert on their mail server. (FYI, self-signed are MORE secure than ones where a 3rd party holds you keys... 3rd party certs are like dropping off a set of your car and house keys at the corner liquor store.)
  • Web Browser: Firefox with Adblock Plus and FireFTP extensions! Firefox seems to crash on Ubuntu more often than on FreeBSD.
  • Music playing: I like Rythmbox and xmms. You have to jump through some hoops to get m4a files to play. I don't know what made it work, as I did a marithon gstreamer plugin install... apt-get all this crap:
  • I do like how it recognizes my digital camera and runs gThumb to import stuff... also, when I installed GIMP, the ACQUIRE menu item calls xsane which recognized my USB scanner without me having to configure anything.
  • ditto with printers, Ubuntu has got that figured out. In FreeBSD land, I don't know if I ever figured out how to print to the office printer... with Ubunut, I just plugged in the IP.
  • crashes... more things crash on Ubuntu. Ubuntu is really a binary distrabution set, where in FreeBSD you can do that (pkg_add -r gimp) or build everything form source (cd /usr/ports/graphics/gimp && make && make install clean). Either Linux/Ubuntu is just less stable than FreeBSD, or building everything from source makes things more stable. Not sure which is true. Probably both. :)
  • Ubuntu sees my ivtv PRV-150 card, no problem. The HOW-TO on the ubuntu site made it trival to set up.
  • Graphics: gimp and inkscape -- they seem to work equally well on both.

    Transitioningt from FreeBSD to Ubuntu has been difficult for me.

  • The defalult packages are not my favorite
  • The mouse doesn't cut and paste properly. For all you slow mousers, you have no idea what I am talking about, for the rest of you here in the future, if you are moving your mouse at about 30 characters per second .05 seconds after clicking the mouse, you miss the stuff that was under your mouse when you first clicked. This is a drag for sysadmin work where you are copying stupidly long unix commands.