kozaru

A week ago I took delivery of a shiny new Dell XPS M1530 Laptop. Specs:
Core 2 Duo T9300 2.5Ghz
4Gb RAM
15.4″ Ultrasharp screen
256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
64Gb SSD (Solid State Drive)
Slot load DVD burner
Fingerprint reader
Intel Wireless-N
Bluetooth
SD Card reader
other stuff now considered standard.

It came with Vista Home Premium, which I looked at, considered because it supports the TV card that also came with the system, then decided I don’t watch TV much anyway cos I download stuff, so wiped my 64Gb of solid state-ness and whacked on Ubuntu Hardy 64 Bit.

This will cover what I had to do, and then what I did for the sake of configurating.

First, the touchpad is all screwy, even on the live disk, so at boot time from the CD, we have to make a change.
When booting the live CD, hit the option to edit the boot settings. Edit the entry and add
i8042.nomux=1 to the end of the line. Your touchpad should now work nicely… slowly… but nicely.
Install Ubuntu. I did a full disk guided partition, which means my home directory is all mixed in with everything else, so I’m a bit hamstring if I reload or upgrade. Oh Well.

Once Ubuntu is all installed, you’ll notice your touchpad is all screwy again. Not to worry, we can fix it with the keyboard.

Press ALT-F2 to bring up the run dialog, enter “gksu gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst”, put in the sudo password and look for #defoptions = quiet splash
and change it to:
#defoptions = quiet splash i8042.nomux=1
Save and exit, using the keyboard.
Next, press ALT-F1 to open your main menu. Use the arrow keys to navigate to the Terminal app.
In your terminal, enter
sudo update-grub
Enter the sudo password. When it’s done, reboot by pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL then CTRL-R, or in the terminal type shutdown -r now

Now that you can work your touchpad, let’s get into it.

Other than the touchpad thing, you’ll notice everything just works (or will do, see below). The wireless card works, at least in a/b/g mode, haven’t connected to an N network yet, bluetooth, screen res, sound, media buttons, everything. YMMV, but for me, it all came up easily.

Unless I say so, I installed each of the following from the Synaptic GUI. There are a few commands that are easier to run in the terminal, but mostly I just search from Synaptic, and go from there. Keep that in mind when I say “Install…”. What I mean is, “Open Synaptic, click Search and type in the name”
Also, have a quick browse of your main menu items to see what gets added where when you install stuff.

1. Install EnvyNG
This is a nice little app that grabs the latest NVidia drivers. Yes, your laptop works with the restricted glx driver, but I found this to work better.
Remember to close Synaptic before you run EnvyNG. It will ask a question or two, then merrily go off and grab and install what it needs.

2. Compiz settings manager.
This is once of those easier-from-the-line things. C&P the following into a terminal.
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager gnome-art usplash startupmanager
When that’s done, go to Preferences -> Appearance fing the advanced effects setting and switch it on. Then you can fiddle with Preferences -> Advanced Desktop Settings.
Personally, I switch on Desktop Cube, Rotate Cube and 3D windows just to get started.

** Ok, here comes a lot of stuff. It’s all command-line, but just copy/paste **

3. Archive formats – XIP, RAR, etc.
sudo apt-get install unace rar unrar zip unzip p7zip-full p7zip-rar sharutils aish uudeview mpack lha arj cabextract file-roller

4. Extra fonts. Yes, all of this. This is a long one, probably time for coffee.
mkdir mkdir -p /usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1 sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts

sudo apt-get install ttf-larabie-straight ttf-larabie-deco mplayer-fonts xfonts-terminus-dos xfonts-terminus xfonts-terminus-oblique xfonts-mona tv-fonts ttf-tuffy ttf-sjfonts ttf-sil-padauk ttf-sil-ezra ttf-paktype ttf-georgewilliams
ttf-fifthhorseman-dkg-handwriting ttf-farsiweb ttf-essays1743 fonty ttf-opensymbol ttf-nafees ttf-mgopen ttf-gentium ttf-freefont ttf-dustin ttf-devanagari-fonts ttf-dejavu-extra ttf-dejavu-core ttf-dejavu ttf-bpg-georgian-fonts ttf-bitstream-vera ttf-alee

5. Nice media player. PLays everything.
sudo apt-get install vlc

6. CODECs so that you can watch DVDs and stuff.
sudo apt-get install mpeg2dec a52dec vorbis-tools id3v2 mpg321 mpg123 libswfdec0.3 libflac++6 ffmpeg cdda2wav toolame libmp4v2-0 totem-mozilla libmjpegtools0c2a tagtool easytag id3tool lame lame-extras nautilus-script-audio-convert mozilla-helix-player helix-player libmad0 libjpeg-progs libmpcdec3 libquicktime1 flac faac faad sox toolame a52dec ffmpeg2theora libmpeg2-4 uudeview flac libmpeg3-1 mpeg3-utils mpegdemux

7. More video related stuff.
sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mpegdemux gstreamer0.10-gl gstreamer0.10-gnonlin gstreamer0.10-pitfdll gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-farsightgstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-sdl gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse gstreamer0.10-schroedinger gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse totem-gstreamer

8. And yet more :)
sudo apt-get install gstreamer-dbus-media-service gstreamer-tools

9. Java runtime.
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-bin sun-java6-fonts sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin
sudo apt-get install equivs ttf-sazanami-gothic ttf-sazanami-mincho

10. Most of the above can also be installed with sudo apt-get-install ubuntu-restricted-extras so I ran it last to tie up the loose ends.

** Phew. It gets easier now **

11. Install gnome-do
This is a totally useful app that pops up a nifty little box, into which you what you want. I use it to run firefox, thunderbird, open my home directory, all sorts. It learns your preferred action from keystrokes, too. Stick with it, it’s low learning curve, and it will save you time hunting for an icon on a menu bar.
Once it’s installed, open up Preferences -> Sessions and add it to your startup as the command gnome-do --quiet This starts it up without displaying itself.

12. Thinkfinger for your fingerprint scanner.
From the Thinkfinger Wiki. I found this to work really well.

13. Emerald
This is a window themer/decorator for Compiz. It’s bringing sexy back.

14. Skype
This how-to covers it well.

15. Avant-Window-Navigator (awn)
Again, the forums have the how-to you need.

And that’s pretty much it. Just a tweak here, a tweak there, and you’re on your way to a nice little system.

Here’s a screen shot of my desktop:

What hardware and software are you running? Dual boot? Linux only? Something else? Let me know in the comments, I’m interested to find out.
Also, if you have a suggestion to add or improve to the list above, just post it.