Big Trev

Following on from my earlier post here, rather than doing 4 upgrades (8.04>8.10>9.04>9.10) I’m doing a clean install of Karmic. And in much the same way, and going from my previous post, I’m going through what I do to get this sucker setup. From what I’ve been reading, this is a bit more user friendly for a GUI/Windows refugee such as myself, so I’m interested to see what’s different! I’m also going to try and do everything through the GUI, as an exercise (I know some stuff is easier through the shell, but I want to see how much you can get done).

So here goes:

1. Install from CD - I’ll assume you know how to do this!
2. System > Administration > Software Sources. Change “Download From” to iiNet (my ISP)
3. Click on the Restricted Drivers pop-up that comes up near the clock. Enable the NVIDIA driver. Restart when done. I installed the recommended one, v185.
4. Set to 5.1 sound. The sound settings have changed, and now longer defaults to digital even though I have analog speakers - Niiice.
5. Setup a printer. System, Administration, Printing.
Click New, it searches for my network printer, found it, and installs the driver. I still like this bit in Ubuntu!
6. Updates. Go System, Administration, Update Manager, and Check and Install updates. This still takes a little while, although since I’m pulling it off iiNet’s servers, I get 600-700Kb/s.
7. For this, I’m not going to install the ms-core fonts, at least not yet. I want to see how I go without them.
8. I’m going to change to a static IP through the GUI this time:
System, Preferences, Network Connections
Changed to static IP, with local DNS server etc.
9. Looks like there’s no way still to do a permanent mapping to a windows share without editing files and stuff, so the way I do this is:
First off, make sure you can browse to the Windows share and connect to it (Places, Connect to Server)
And I’m putting this into /media, so it shows in Places.
apt-get install smbfs

mkdir /media/fileshare

Add to /etc/fstab
//server/share /media/fileshare cifs exec,credentials=/etc/cifspw 0 0

create a file /etc/cifspw, and enter the following (and save it)
username=bigtrev
password=YouGottaBeKidding

Then run:
chmod 600 /etc/cifspw

and then
mount -a

10. I still need winbind enabled, so still do this bit as well (it’s probably something to do with how my network is setup, or not setup as the case may be!)
Add WINS support:
edit /etc/nsswitch.conf
change the line that says
hosts: files dns (and maybe some other stuff)
to have wins in the line as well.
Then apt-get install winbind

11. Install OpenSSH
apt-get install openssh-server

12. Now I’m interested in seeing how Flash runs on this new install. Basically, I browsed to a webpage that needs Flash installed (out of interest, after reading this post, it was http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/). I selected to install the Adobe version from the 3 available, and let’s see how it goes on Youtube (which was always it’s nemesis, at least for me). AND IT WORKS BEAUTIFULLY! Flash video was always the biggest problem I had with this as a desktop OS!

All in all, I’ve been impressed with Karmic - It’s easier to install than ever, and all sort of pretty-like too!