Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Installing Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope): Update?

In a previous post, I detailed the steps I took to install and configure 64-bit Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope). A few months later, I had an opportunity to install 64-bit Jaunty again - this time on a laptop. I used that previous post as an installation guide. This post refines and summarizes the steps detailed in that previous post.

First, in Ubuntu, choose these options: System > Administration > Update Manager > Check. (This one would ideally be postponed until you've done a couple of these other steps, but it may insist upon being run early in the process, in which case you may want to repeat it later.) Install updates. Restart if advised, and then run Check again, until there's nothing left to update. Applications > Add/Remove > Show All Available Applications. Then search for "restricted extras." Check the box next to "Ubuntu restricted extras." Click Apply Changes > Apply. System > Administration > Hardware Drivers. I was using an nVidia graphics card, and here I saw that my system was not using nVidia drivers, and that I did have a couple options to choose from. I chose to activate the recommended driver. I had to reboot before it would take effect.

System > Administration > Software Sources. Go to the Ubuntu Software tab > Download From > Other > Select Best Server > Choose Server. Also, go to the Third-Party Software tab, click Add, and type (or copy and paste) these lines, one at a time, from Launchpad's X-updates webpage into the "APT line" box:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates/ubuntu jaunty main

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates/ubuntu jaunty main

(Each of those is a one-line command.) I had to click "Add Source" after each one in order to be able to install the next one. I also checked the boxes next to the two archive.canonical.com sources on that Third-Party Software tab. Then click Close. This called for a Reload of current software information. Before doing the reload, open Terminal and type these two lines:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys [OpenPGP key id]

sudo apt-get update

The OpenPGP key id came from the same (in this case, Launchpad's) webpage. What appeared on that webpage was "Signing key: 1024R/AF1CDFA9." The part that I needed to paste into the "sudo apt-key adv" command (above) was the part after the slash, i.e., AF1CDFA9. (If you don't get a "Reload" option when you click Close, go back into Third-Party Software and unclick and then re-click some item and try again.)

Remove Partition Icons from Desktop. A mere tweak, but it's easy. Alt-F2 > gconf-editor > Run > apps/nautilus/desktop. Unclick volumes_visible. Close the Configuration Editor. System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager. Search for each of these items and mark for installation when it comes up: boinc-manager; cups-pdf; fdutils (if you expect to be using a floppy drive); flashplugin-installer; gparted; ntfs-config; ntfsprogs; p7zip-full; pysdm; sun-java6-jre; and sysinfo. Also, optionally, uninstall evolution. (If numerous items come up in response to your search, click on the Package heading to sort them alphabetically. If some are already installed, no worries. Some of these may ask if you want to "Mark additional required changes?" Click "Mark" and go on to the next one.) Then click Apply > Apply. Then run System > Administration > Update Manager once more.

Optionally, move and/or reconfigure panels (i.e., the bars running across the top and bottom of the screen) and/or items on panels. Example: to make the bottom right-hand corner of the screen more similar to that of Windows, right-click on the left edge of the segment of the top panel that containts the date and time, unlock, move, and relock.

At this point, in a problem that had not come up during my previous installations of Ubuntu 9.04, I was not able to get the system to recognize my external USB hard drive. I have detailed the process of fixing that in a separate post. That problem ultimately involved wiping my hard drive and starting over with a new Vista-Ubuntu dual-boot installation.

3 comments:

raywood

Another thing to do while working in Ubuntu's System > Administration > Software Sources > Third-Party Software: click on Add and type this in the APT line space:

deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt jaunty main

This will require more software updates. In my case, this gave me this: "An error occurred. The following details are provided: W: Failed to fetch http://wine/budgetdedicated.com/aptjaunty main." The sharp-eyed will see that I got this because of a typographical error.

When I fixed that, I go another error: "W: GPG error: http://wine.budgetdedicated.com jaunty Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 58403026387EE263." One recommended solution was to type these two lines into Terminal:

gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv 58403026387EE263

gpg --export --armor 58403026387EE263 | sudo apt-key add -

Then, in the Third-Party Software tab of Software Sources, I unchecked and rechecked the Wine entry that I had just added. After I clicked on Close, this provoked the thing to say, "The information about available software is out-of-date." I clicked on Reload; it downloaded package information; and then, after a few seconds, the dialog disappeared. I re-ran the uncheck-recheck and the same thing happened, so apparently the updates had not been reloaded. I tried unchecking and rechecking one of the other lines under Third-Party Software and got the same result. I deleted this newly added line from Software Sources and tried the unchecking-rechecking routine again, but this did not fix the disappearing dialog problem, so I was not sure whether this new "fix" had screwed up the Software Sources setup, or if it had already been screwed up before I tried this fix. Anyway, I went to http://www.winehq.org/download/deb and followed the instructions for adding the WineHQ APT repository. The Software Sources dialog once again disappeared before that process seemed to be complete. This appeared to be related to (but not exactly the same as) a bug that had supposedly been fixed in "Karmic Koala," the release of Ubuntu due in October 2009: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/software-properties/+bug/357617

raywood

Also install firefox-3.5 and firefox-3.5-gnome-support in Synaptic, as well as googleearth-package.

raywood

Also install webhttrack in Synaptic.