Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary) Install Notes

CD ISO files can be freely downloaded from Ubuntu’s download page or CDs can be ordered for free from the Ubuntu shipit initiative.

Once you have the disk in hand (you want the install disk, not the Live CD), you pop it in your CD-ROM drive and turn on the computer. The installation is very straightforward and merely asks you a couple of basic questions. Be sure to have an ethernet cable plugged in when installing!

The only part requiring any decisions at all is when you have to create your user. Just enter your name, your unix account name, and a password of choice. At one point in the installation, it does ask you about moniter resolutions. Be sure to use the arrow keys to move down to the option 1280x1024 and hit the spacebar to select it. The default resolution is 1024x768, but the LCD moniters works best at the higher resolution.

After the installation is complete and the installer has downloaded and install all the updates, you will be presented with a login screen. At this point, you might want to stop and adjust your LCD. To do so, hit the left button on the LCD (labeled [1]), and then hit the one second to the right (labeled [2]). Once that is complete, you can type your username and password created during the install to login.

Once the login is complete, look in the upper-right hand corner of the screen. You will notice a red icon that is notifying you that additional updates are available. You will want to click on this icon, enter your own password, and allow the updates to run. Once the updates are complete, this icon will disappear and only appear again when there are additional updates.

The next step is to run the initialization script that will setup a couple of additional programs, install some of the development related software and establish some common settings.

If you are familair with Unix/Linux, you may be asking yourself, "How do I become root? How do I get root access?" The answer to the first question is you don’t and the answer to the second is with sudo. Sudo it a tool for Unix/Linux that grants specific users superuser access for a single operation. Ubuntu is configured to use sudo for all administrative operations. When using sudo, instead of typing in the root password, you actually type in your own password instead.

If, for whatever reason, it is necessary to get access to a root shell, you can simply type:

Any other single operation that you would like to execute with root priviledges, simply prefix the call with sudo

Linux uses the smb protocol to browser windows shares. It is possible to view the "Network Neighborhood" by selecting the desktop menu item Places > Network Servers. To jump directly to a shared named "Public", follow these steps:

You can access the windows network using the file prefix smb://, so in the case of the so-called "public" drive, the address is: smb://sharehost/Public

After installing, it is always customary to tweak the desktop to your likely. We have included some options here which you may or may not choose to use. If you have a strong opinion to how your desktop and windows operate, I encourage you to click on the System > Preferences menu and take a look at each of the available option screens. There are enough to keep you busy for a while.

It is possible to share your desktop with VNC (for both windows and linux users), connect to remote linux desktop with VNC enabled or connect to a remote windows desktop using RDP.

For those of you that might have splurged on a 7+ button mouse, these instructions will help you to enable the "back" and "forward" buttons on the mouse for use in browsing the web and the local file system.

xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 4 5" ` . Logout and Restart X (Ctrl-Alt-Backspace)

In order to get the most out of your graphics card, you may want to go the extra mile and install the official nvidia drivers. Please see the Ubuntu wiki for installation instructions.

If you would like to read more about tweaking and configuring Ubuntu linux, follow the links below to the setup guides.

Some of the package repositories have been left disabled since they are 3rd party packages and not supported directly by ubuntu. In order to manage the repositories, open the Synaptic Package Manager and select the menu Settings > Repositories. In that dialog screen, click on the button "Settings" and check the box "Show disabled software sources". Enabling this setting actually gives you the control to enable or disable sources at will.