HOWTOs

Wiki Specific

1. HOWTO Get Involved with the Ubuntu GNOME Team.

2. HOWTO Get the Best out of the Ubuntu GNOME Wiki Area.

3. HOWTO Create a Wiki Page.

Ubuntu GNOME Basic HowTos

Bring up the GNOME Shell

It is intuitive, but this is the most important task for the novice users. Click on Activities in the top left corner of the screen or press the Super key (previously known as Windows key) to bring up the GNOME Shell. This is the place where you can see your open windows, change workspaces and, of course, search for and run your favourite applications.

Change your desktop background (wallpaper)

1. Right-click on the desktop and select Change Background.... You can also bring up the GNOME Shell and search for Background to open the Background system settings' window.

2. Choose a wallpaper included in Ubuntu GNOME, select your own wallpaper from the Pictures folder or pick a solid color for your background or lock screen.

Change the theme and fonts to customize the look of Ubuntu GNOME

A lot of the appeal of Ubuntu in general is its flexibility. One of the most obvious ways to customize a operating system is through its look. You can do this by changing the theme and fonts.

Theme

To change the theme, it is best to use GNOME Tweak Tool – an application which is included by default in the Ubuntu GNOME installation. If not, you can install it from the Software Center or throughout the command-line (by running sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool in Terminal).

Once you have GNOME Tweak Tool installed, bring up the GNOME Shell and search for Tweak Tool. Then run the application and select the Theme tab. All the theme settings can be changed here (desktop theme, cursor theme, icon theme, etc.). Many more themes than the ones on the list are available for download. GNOME-Look.org is a great place to look for more themes.

Fonts

All font settings are available in the Fonts tab – here you can not only change system fonts, but hinting and antialiasing, too.

Change your system settings

1. Bring up the GNOME Shell and search for System Settings.

2. Here you can change your personal, hardware or system settings. Click on an item to open its settings.

Software Management

Install software

Adding software in Ubuntu is really simple, easy and fast, which is one of the advantages the operating system has over other distributions. To add software in Ubuntu GNOME...

1. Bring up the GNOME Shell and search for Ubuntu Software Center.

2. Select from hundreds of free or paid applications.

3. Click Install to install an application on your hard disk.

If you want to install a more obscure package, you will need to do some simple work in Terminal. A good place to start learning about this is on the AptGet HOWTO page.

Install software from a .deb file

Installing software from a .deb file is not normally necessary, but it can make life easier at times. For example, a newer version of your favourite application is available on the developer's official site in a .deb package, but not in the repositories of Ubuntu. Installing from a .deb file can be accomplished several ways in Ubuntu GNOME.

Use Terminal

To install a single .deb package, run the following command:

• sudo dpkg -i package-name-here.deb

OR

• sudo dpkg --install package-name-here.deb

To install several .deb packages from the same directory run the following command:

• sudo dpkg -i -R /path/to/dir/name/with/lots/of/dot-deb-files/

OR

• sudo dpkg -i --recursive /path/to/dir/name/with/lots/of/dot-deb-files/

Use Ubuntu Software Center

To install software from a .deb file using Ubuntu Software Center, simply double click on the .deb file. Ubuntu Software Center will handle the installation for you.

Install Java

Installing Java (JRE and JDK) is one of the first things that many developers will want to do. While OpenJDK works 99% of the time, some may want true Oracle Java. For those people, the Ubuntu community Java Documentation will be a good place to start reading.

Install Oracle Java

The easiest way to install the latest version of Oracle Java on your machine is by using the Web Upd8 personal package archive (PPA).

Open Terminal and run the following commands:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java

• sudo apt-get update

• sudo apt-get install oracle-java7-installer

Install OpenJRE and OpenJDK

OpenJDK can be installed using Ubuntu Software Center or Terminal.

Open Terminal and run the following command to install OpenJRE:

• sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jre

Open Terminal and run the following command to install OpenJDK:

• sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk

Advanced

Device Management

Mount a USB flash drive using the command-line

When using the graphical user inteface of Ubuntu GNOME, you can easily mount and then use a USB flash drive by plugging it in one of your computer's USB ports. In some special cases this task can be done using the command-line. Use the following command to mount a device:

• sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/Label

Where sdb1 stands for the plugged in the USB port device. In Ubuntu in general IDE devices (old hard disks) are named under the /dev (devices) directory in this way: hda is your first installed hard disk and hda1 is its first partition, hdb is your second hard disk and hdb1 is its first partition, etc. SATA and SCSI devices' (like USB flash drives) names are generated sda for your first hard drive (or other device) and sda1 for its first partition, etc. In the example sdb1 is the partition of the first plugged in USB flash drive (because sda1 is for the hard disk). If you plug in one more USB flash drive, its name will be sdc1, etc.

You can change Label with the name you want your mounted device to appear in the /media folder.

Change File Permissions

When you start compiling source code, or even downloading .JAR files that you want to execute, you will need to learn to change file permissions. File permissions simply tell your computer who is allowed to do what to a certain file or folder in the file system. To learn more about permissions have a read on Wikipedia.

Via GUI

For most beginner users, changing permissions via the GUI is the easiest. To do this, simply right click on the file whose permissions you want to change, and switch to the Permissions tab. From here, you can change individual users', groups', and others' read and write permissions, as well as allow the execution of the file as a program.

Via The Terminal

In order to proceed, you will need to have an adequate understanding of both symbolic and numeric permissions notations. There is an in depth but brief explanation of this on Wikipedia

To change file permissions via the terminal, first navigate to your target using

• cd /path/to/your/file/

Then,

• sudo chmod 0### yourfile.extension

where ### are replaced with the appropriate permissions for your needs.