I made a post yesterday that has received an insane amount of traffic involving my processes and procedures for installing, setting up and tweaking Ubuntu Linux on my personal computer.

With the number of folks that have read, and commented on this article, I thought it was appropriate to follow up here with some additional thoughts.

First - please remember, first and foremost, this is how I set up my system. These settings/tweaks/application-set, etc. may not, and very possibly will not work for your specific case. My main purpose behind posting that was two-fold. First (like many of my posts) the information is for me - it’s my way of documenting things that I do, so I can go back and reference them later. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked up my articles on setting up alpine to work with gmail. I’ve also used some of these posts, such as my posts on VMware as a quick way to send someone some down ‘n dirty documentation. I use my own blog too

Secondly - please understand that no single tweak will ever be a magic bullet, and that no amount of tweaking will take slow hardware and magically make it as fast as a state of the art system. Applying tweaks are simply a way of getting the most out of your hardware. You are not going to make a Celeron with 256MB of RAM run Ubuntu as fast as a Core2Duo with 8GB of RAM no matter how many tweaks you apply.

Also, please do not take anything I post as hard fact. I’m learning new things everyday, just like you are. I am an IT Professional, but I also work mostly with Windows Servers with just a little Linux sprinkled on top (or in the case of our Xen Host Servers, Linux holding the Windows servers up ). I’m not a Linux pro, I’m a hobbyist, just as many of you are. I use Linux at home for many reasons - I like it, It’s fun, I like learning new things, and I like sharing what I learn with others.

I’m on a ton of mailing lists, I idle in IRC, I read forums, blogs and news sites all over the net - every day. I’m constantly looking for new and exciting things in technology, across the board, be it Linux, Windows, SQL, IIS, Apache, AD, whatever. I love information. Please, if you are reading my blog - research the information I put out there. Add too it, grow with it, and apply it in an intelligent way in your own environment. I then ask you to complete the circle of knowledge and share what you have learned with someone. It is a very rewarding experience.

Every year since I first started using Linux way back in 1999, people have been talking about “The Year of Linux on the Desktop”. While I don’t think we are quite there yet, it is getting very close, I think. Dell is supporting several Linux systems, not to mention the “Netbook” craze that’s going on. Linux is popping up everywhere, and I personally feel that to survive in the IT field long-term, Linux Systems Administration is a required skill to acquire. The awesome thing about Linux in general is the openness of everything surrounding it - from being able to look at the source code, to the freely available documentation all of the Internet. Please take all of this info you find, and use it responsibly!

Most of us are doing this for fun, so please keep it fun for all.

      

If you are looking for a free and easy way to create a VPN(Virtual Private Network) connection to another computer, share files, remote control or share screens between computers? Gbridge helps you to manage your multiple PCs, and collaborate works with close friends. In addition, you will be able to use it when you want to privately exchange large media files with your friends. Gbridge is a free tool which you can use to sync folders, share files, control another computer, share your desktop, or chat. It connects two computers directly and securely.

After downloading Gbridge’s Windows client, installing is relatively straightforward. Once you are done with the installation, you’ll be asked for your Gmail/Google account information, and to give a host name in the login screen as below.

When everything’s set up, you’re ready to go, but you might want to set up Gbridge on any other computers you own to create a virtual network amongst your PC’s. You can install and auto-start Gbridge on multiple computers, using the same Gmail logon, and it will keep all those computers connected and ready to trade or stream files.

Gbridge Client Window will look like this. The easiest way to use Gbridge is to create SecureShares Hit the big button for SecureShares at the top on the Gbridge client that’s doing the sharing, choose a folder, and choose the people who can access it and set a password by clicking on Create SecureShare as show below.

From here you would choose the people who can access it and set a password.

So if your friends want to quickly connect to your computer, just ask them to install the Gbridge client software and you can now send large files, instantly play MP3’s off each other’s computer, share your desktops, and even create photo slideshows from your folders and let others watch. Those files are shared through a browser link (as show below) that only works for Gbridge-connected systems.

Gbridge try multiple ways to connect, based on what works and which method is giving the highest performance. As a last resort, it can use GTalk to create a connection on top of the service. Overall, it’s a great program with a lot of features and no restrictions! You can share very large files without a problem, share your desktop, and stream music and video to your computer from another.

      

I laugh whenever I heard someone make a comment that “Linux is hard to install”, or that “Linux is only for geeks and nerds”.

Installing Ubuntu can literally be as easy as typing in some very basic information, and clicking next a few times. Almost all of the time (except in rare cases of unusual hardware) you will wind up with a perfectly functional, perfectly speedy install without (like in Windows) having to go through and find drivers, and applications on your own. Those few mouse-clicks get you pretty much everything you need to use and enjoy your PC.

There is, however always some room for tweaking. I can tweak out Windows XP with the best of them, and make it an even leaner, meaner OS than it already is. The same thing applies to Ubuntu. There are many little things you can do, some very safe, some a little bit more risky that you can do to really improve Ubuntu’s speed, as well as make it a little more fun to use.

Disclaimer: Please note that these are my personal processes and procedures for installing, tweaking and configuring Ubuntu to meet my own personal needs and expectations. You may not want the same options, configurations and or risks involved. Please remember that following this guide is done at your own risk, and you accept full responsibility of anything that may happen such as data loss or corruption, a non-bootable system or your refrigerator eating your toaster. No matter what happens, I am not responsible. Also, please don’t comment or e-mail me telling me why you disagree with one of my changes, I do it my way - you do it yours. If you do have something meaningful too add that can improve my process, please do let me know! Also, if I have bad information, and you can back that up that fact with good information, please provide multiple links to that good information so I can research it (In other words, I won’t believe you if you just tell me, or if you link to a single post on the Ubuntu Forums.

First, let you tell you about my system, so you can compare it to yours, and decide which tweaks you want to consider, and note any differences that may very well affect what you configure and how you tweak.

My system is “homebuilt” with the following components:

• Intel Core2Duo e4600 2.4GHz Processor
• Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L Motherboard with the Intel P35 Chipset
• G.SKILL 8GB (4 x 2GB)  DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Memory Model F2-6400CL5Q-8GBPQ
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 512MB PCI-e Graphics Card connected to a HANNspree 22″ LCD (HF229H)
• Sound Blaster Audigy
• Three Hard Drives:

1. WD 320
2. WD 250
3. Seagate 120

There’s obviously more to it, but that’s all I think that is important here - I have some other stuff, like a case and power supply, a DVD Writer, etc., but I doubt those specifics would be important too you for the purpose of following this guide.

The first tweak starts before I even install. Well, it’s not really a tweak, but worth mentioning, at least. I always use the “Alternate Install” CD. I like the control of the traditional Debian installer better. It feels more like I’m installing an Operating System!

Now, we will get into installing Ubuntu:

Partitioning:

There are many schools of thought on this. I can’t possibly explain every possible configuration here, and I won’t attempt to. Like the rest of the guide to follow, I will tell you what I have, and what I have set up - it’s up to you to interpret this and decide for yourself how to proceed.

My WD 320GB drive is my fastest drive, and is my “boot” drive, and holds my / , /home , and Swap partitions along with a /data partition.

My WD 250GB is my second-fastest drive and get’s mounted as /virtuals and holds all of my virtual machines and ISO files.

My Seagate 120GB is my slowest drives and I mount it as /downloads and it’s basically a scratch directory, and I do store some backups, etc. on there as well. Even though it’s mounted as /downloads, it really becomes a “catch-all” drive for random files I have no better place to put, and aren’t all that important.

Filesystems:

For / and /home I stick with ext3 - for no particular reason than I know it works (and can be tweaked to be quite fast - more on that later). I know it’s silly to have a swap partition with 8GB of RAM, but I would feel weird not making at least a small swap partition - I do a lot with Virtual Machines, and I’d rather give my PC the option to swap a few bytes if necessary than have my whole sytem come crashing down.

For my /data, /virtuals and /downloads I use JFS. It’s fast, less tempermental than XFS and benchmarks very well with little CPU utilization. It’s my favorite filesystem for hosting Virtual Hard drive images.

I use the “relatime” option on all of my drives. A lot of folks think “noatime” is better, but I think relatime is a good compromise, and I can’t tell much difference anyway.

Set a Root Password:

Once everything is installed, the very first thing I do is set up a password for root. Ubuntu doesn’t use root in the traditional way, but uses ’sudo’ instead. I do the same, but I like knowing my root password just in case I get stuck in single user mode. You can do this by opening a terminal and executing the following command:
sudo passwd root

You will then be asked to “type a new UNIX password” and then “Retype password to confirm”. For your root account be sure to create a nice long, strong password. Mine has 23 characters total, and is made up of UPPERCASE letters, lowercase letters, numb3rs as well as $pec!a| characters.

Update your system:

You should see a notification in the upper left-hand corner of your screen telling you that there are updates available. Go ahead and run those now to get them out of the way. Ignore the message about “Restricted Drivers” for now (if it is telling you about any) until you get fully updated. Once the update completes, go ahead and reboot.

Restricted Drivers:

Now that you are running the latest bits availible, go ahead and install those restricted drivers. If it didn’t pop back up after the reboot, go to “System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers” to install those.

Special Note: My 22″ LCD is attached to my Vid-card via a HDMI to DVI cable, and if I don’t manually restrict X11 to 1680×1050 in my xorg.conf it “tries” to run at 1080p (1920×1080) and looks like poo-poo.

Adding Additional Software Repositories:

I add the Sun VirtualBox Ubuntu repository as well as the Medibuntu repository. See the following pages for instructions (no sense in re-typing here):

For VirtualBox

For Medibuntu

Install Additional Software:

This is where things get very personal. Everyone has different software needs. Many users will be server perfectly well by the set of applications that come pre-installed on Ubuntu, however I have this command saved in a text file on my flash drive, and it’s a good base for me to start with, although I do naturally end up installing additional stuff later:

sudo apt-get install sysv-rc-conf build-essential ubuntu-restricted-extras msttcorefonts bluefish geany gedit-plugins preload nautilus-open-terminal virtualbox-2.0 w64codecs libdvdcss2 terminator dia filezilla alpine irssi audacity compizconfig-settings-manager dvdrip epiphany-browser vlc lastfm mplayer

There are a few packages that are “meta-packages” and along with dependencies, there are quite a number of packages that get installed with that command.

One of the packages that gets installed with that command is “msttcorefonts” which give you the basic Microsoft Web fonts such as Ariel, Times New Roman, etc. I also manually install Tahoma myself since I use it as my main Interface Font. First, you have to have the Tahoma font (perhaps from a Windows Installation), you can then simply drop it into a folder under /usr/share/fonts and rebuild your font cache with: sudo fc-cache -f -v

Time for some serious Tweakage!:

Services:

If you used my install command from above, one of the packages you installed was ’sysv-rc-conf’. Go ahead an execute that by opening up a terminal and doing a sudo sysv-rc-conf.

Like the applications list, this is very personal. I don’t print from this machine, nor do I have an “cron jobs” that run, or any other scheduled tasks - I trim down my services a lot.

I disable the following:
anacron
apparmor
apport
atd
bluetooth
cron
cupsys
hotkey-setup
laptop-modules
nvidia-kernel-modules
pcmcia-util
powernowd
rc.local
rmnologin
rsync

Disable the Tickless Kernel feature:

If you are on a desktop, and planning to utilize virtualization of any type, I recommend disabling the Tickless kernel feature:

Hit alt+F2 to open the ‘Run Application’ dialog and type:
gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
Obviously, enter your password when prompted.

Now, find

#defoptions=quiet

make it look like this:

# defoptions=quiet splash nohz=off
Then:
sudo update-grub in a terminal.

Speed up boot time:

Run boot processes in parallel. Again, do alt+F2, and this time enter:
gksudo gedit /etc/init.d/rc
Find and change the line:
CONCURRENCY=none
to:
CONCURRENCY=shell

Configure Swappiness:

Again, alt+F2, but this time enter:
gksudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf
Add the line
vm.swappiness=n
To the end of the file where n equals a number between 0 and 100.

The default is 60

More than 1GB Ram, I reccomend 10
More than 2GB I reccomend 0
Less than 1GB, leave it alone!

Basically, with a setting of 100, the system will actively seek out stuff to swap, with a setting of 0 the system will rarely use swap (if at all).

Speed up ext3:

WARNING!!!

THIS IS DANGEROUS - THIS CAN BREAK YOUR SYSTEM IF YOU MESS UP!

If you do not feel absolutely comfortable trying this, and if you can not risk losing data, do not try this - PLEASE! The speed differences are neglitable. Do NOT apply this tweak if you do not have a UPS in place.

First, open a termina and execute:

Then, find the lines for your ext3 partitions.

Your / partition will also have a errors=remount-ro leave that, and add a comma (no space) and data=writeback.

It will look something like this:
/               ext3    relatime,errors=remount-ro,data=writeback 0       1

Your /home will not have the errors=remount-ro and will look something like this:
ext3    relatime,data=writeback        0       2

While you are here, make note of what “devices” are ext3 (/dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 for example).

go back to your /boot/grub/menu.lst (alt+f2: gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst) and go back to that #defoptions= line and add

rootflags=data=writeback

to the end of that line.

Again, in a terminal do:
sudo update-grub

Now, go back to where you noted what devices where ext3 partitions, and in a terminal run the following command for each ext3 partition:
sudo tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback /dev/sd(x)(#)
for example, for my root partition, it’s:
sudo tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback /dev/sdc1
and for my /home partition it’s:
sudo tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback /dev/sdc2

Yours will most likely be different.

REBOOT!

Random Settings/Tweaks:

Here are some other things I do:

• Remove user switcher applet from panel
• Add System Monitor applet to panel, and configure to show CPU, Memory and Load
• Configure gnome-terminal to display white on black
• Change number of workspaces to 4.

Trim down my GNOME Session:

Go to System -> Preferences -> Sessions:
Uncheck everything except:

1. Power Manager
2. Pulse Audio Session Management
3. Update Notifier
4. Volume Manager

Configure Fonts:

See screenshot:

Please note, that you will not have Tahoma if you did not install it manually - it is NOT part of the msttcorefonts package. If you do not have the means to install Tahoma, I recommend leaving everything set to default except for “Fixed width font:” you can change that to Andale Mono.

Also, I set up Firefox to use Sans-Serif as default, with Ariel for Sans-Serif, Times New Roman for Serif and Courier New for Monospace.

Finishing Touches:

• Customize theme (I prefer the “Human-Clearlooks” theme to the default “Human” theme, small subtle differences, but different).
• Grab a cool wallpaper from the net (I like www.interfacelift.com).
• Customize Compiz (i like the cube better than the ‘wall’ for example).

Wow - that was a lot of typing! I hope this helps someone out there. If you are new to Ubuntu, don’t let this scare you, but know there is more that can be done after installing the system to make it perform better. If you are a Ubuntu (or Linux) veteran, have fun, and above all, Happy Tweaking!

      

I’ll be the first to admit it - when it comes to Linux, I am a habitual “Distro-hopper”. I don’t like being a distro-hopper, and I haven’t always been a distro-hopper.

I started off with (and used briefly) Red Hat (before Fedora) on the recommendation of a friend, and I used KDE (long-term) because he said it was better. I soon migrated too (and loved - well, still love) Slackware, and I used it for a few years. I used Slackware exclusively until I got my first AMD64 machine back in 2005, and I wanted a x86_64 distro to run on it. I had been hearing a lot about this new distro called Ubuntu - it was quickly becoming the most popular Linux distribution that had ever been created, and I checked it out with version 5.04. YUK! GNOME! and it was BROWN! I soon discovered there was a “sister-distro” called Kubuntu that used KDE instead - “ahhhh - much better” I said to myself. I used Kubuntu almost exclusively (with some experimenting, and side-tracking) from 5.04 all the way until 7.10 when things majorly broke apart for me. I never could get the 7.10 release of Ubuntu (in neither Ubuntu nor Kubuntu form) to work for me. This resulted in some major distro-hopping. Once I started, I simply couldn’t stop - I had to see what was out there, and if it was better, and once I found something I liked, I’d read a blog-post about some other distro, and I’d have to try that out - even if what I was using was working. Since around November of 2007, I have loaded (and ran for at least some time), Fedora, Mandriva, Debian, CentOS, Scientific Linux, SLED, openSUSE, Frugalware, Slamd64, BlueWhite64, Studio64, Slackware (yes I even abandoned x86_64 during the process), Foresight, Mint, Zenwalk, sidux, Pardus, Parsix, DreamLinux, Arch, PCLinuxOS, Sabayon - and probably a few others I’ve forgotten about!

Some of these I blogged about, some I didn’t. There was always SOMETHING that didn’t work in some distro that would send me looking elsewhere. Recently, I’ve burnt myself out on all of this, and I had decided I’d had enough, but I wound up doing the same thing in Windows - with different variants, so I had to step back - take a break and “cleanse my palate”.

I gave myself a week to play - find what I wanted to test - test in a structured environment (taking notes) and making a decision, and committing to it, and to finally stop all of this non-sense. So here, are my trials, tribulations and some of my notes about what I tried, what I liked and what I didn’t like.

Folks, this is gonna be a long one, so only read on if you are truly interested in what I found, and what I picked.

My first decision was that although I’d been using GNOME for a while now, I wanted to step back in and see what was up with KDE 4.1.

First Test (short): Fedora 10 w/ KDE

Fedora 10 Beta KDE x86_64 Live CD - wouldn’t boot on my machine - no matter what I did! (not getting into details - trying to keep this as short as humanly possible!)

Second Test: Feodra 9 w/ KDE

I discovered by browsing the updates repo, that I could install Fedora 9, fully update it and be on KDE 4.1. Initial boot and install went beautifully! I did my full update and I was on 4.1 - yes, it was a lot better than 4.0 - by a mile. Here is where Fedora failed - no ATI drivers (even in Livna). Not Fedora’s fought - ATI’s fought for not supporting the new version of X11 that is in Fedora.

Third Test: Kubuntu 8.10 Alpha 6

Yes, I know it was an Alpha version. It installed perfectly, would boot, but I couldn’t get X at all - I could switch to Virtual Terminals, and access the console, but never could get X to start.

Fourth Test: Kubuntu 8.04 w/ KDE 4.1 packages from PPA

I discovered that Kubuntu had packages for 4.1 via this news post (at the time of this writing there are 4.1.2 packages in that same repo if you are interested in trying them out). I made two attempts at this one. On the first attempt I installed from the Kubuntu-KDE4 Remix CD, which installed 4.0.x, and then followed the instructions on the news-post I linked too earlier to upgrade to 4.1. Somehow, I ended up in a huge mud-puddle of instability. I’m not sure what went wrong, but something definitely did. I then re-installed, and hit F4 at the boot prompt and chose to install a Command-Line only system. I added the PPA repo, and did the 4.1 install. This time things went much better, but it still wasn’t right. I had occasional plasma crashes (at random), and overall, using the desktop, I felt as thought I was going to break it. I knew this couldn’t be a long-term solution for me.

Fifth Test: openSUSE 11.0 with 4.1 packages from the Build Service

Having learned my lesson from installing Kubuntu 8.04 and upgrading form 4.0.x to 4.1, I added the Build Service repo at install time, and installed KDE 4.1 fresh. Initially, I thought this was it! However, although it took a little longer to start happening than it did with Kubuntu, KDE 4.1 started dissolving around me - Plasma crashes, and the general feeling I was going to break the Desktop by simply clicking on something. I was very disappointed in this trial, because I actually fully expected this to be my solution.

Sixth Test: Kubuntu 8.10 Beta

By this time, the Beta for 8.10 was released. Same problem as Alpha 6 - no X.

Seventh Test: Mandriva 2009 RC2

Sorry - I just can’t get used to Mandriva - I don’t feel comfortable here. Also, had some random Plasma problems as well.

Side note: By this time I actually considered returning the RAM and going back to XP Pro

Sorry KDE guys, I’m just going to have to step away still - KDE 4.1.x just isn’t ready (or at least I’m not ready for it) just yet. I will check back w/ 4.2, but for now, I’ve gotten used to GNOME, and I actually like it better now.

The real results of this test aren’t distro specific, they became desktop specific. I could go down that same list of distro’s, and with the exception of not having ATI drivers available for Fedora, any of those distro’s would work for me under GNOME (including Mandriva). What did I pick?

Eighth Test (and defeat): Ubuntu 8.04.1

It just works. Plain and simple. It works, and it works better (at least for me) better than anything out there - Plus, it’s an LTS release so I can relax and just run for a while.

I think it’s great that there are hundreds of Linux distributions out there, and dozens of Window Managers and desktop enviroments, but Ubuntu (running GNOME) has become insanely popular, and has come closer than any Linux distro before it of becoming “Mainstream”. Dell is offering how many machines with Ubuntu pre-installed now? I think it’s 6! Can you get any more mainstream than Dell?

For me the choice was simple - Ubuntu (in my opinion) is going to be the future of Linux on the Desktop - like it or not. I’m not trying to be a “fanboy” so don’t flame me here, but I think like it or not, Ubuntu isn’t going anywhere, and it’s only going to get bigger and more popular than it is now. There will always be the countless number of Distro’s available, and there will be die hard users of both the “big ones” and the “little ones” but I think slowly, but surely more and more people are going to discover that Ubuntu is a distro that simply works, and works better than others out there.