Taking complete charge

All the important details to do on a fresh Ubuntu install.

Set up online accounts

Not everyone will be keen to use proprietary services, but for those who don’t mind sullying their open source credentials can use some of the popular online ones, such as Gmail, Google Docs, Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, Google+ and more in Ubuntu 15.10 by configuring the distro to grant access data housed inside these services.

To get started, bring up the System Settings by clicking on the gears icon in the top-right corner of the screen and head to the Online Accounts option. Once you’ve added an account, you can search for content on these online services from the Dash. Just as you would search for local content, the Search lens will also display documents on Google Docs and the Photos lens will show pictures from Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa. Similarly, you will also be able to publish photos from Shotwell directly to a Picasa album or a Facebook album or on Flickr, if you have added those accounts.

Configure backups

One of the first things you should do before you start using your new installation is to configure the built-in Backup application. Ubuntu ships with one of the simplest to use backup tools called DéjaDup. The application has a very minimal interface and you’ll need to configure it before putting it into action.

Again bring up the System Settings window and click the ‘Backups’ option under the System section to launch Déja Dup. In the application, switch to the Folders to Save tab and use the ‘+’ button at the bottom to point the application to the folder you wish to save. After you’ve selected the folders to backup, switch to the Storage location tab to point the tool to the location where you want to house your backups. DéjaDup can save backups on a separate partition or on a remote location accessible through SSH, FTP, Samba or WebDAV.

While creating a backup, DéjaDup will also, optionally, allowing you to encrypt the backups. Creating the initial backup usually takes quite some time, but subsequent backups are much faster because the tool only backups data that has changed.

Share files

Most users will want to share files from their Ubuntu computer with other systems on their network which can be easily done using Samba, the free software re-implementation of the SMB/CIFS networking protocol. You can install Samba along with its graphical configuration tool simply enough with the following: sudo aptget install samba samba-common systemconfig-samba.

To begin sharing, open the graphical Samba configuration application and add the folder you want to share and set up its access permissions. Then give it a name; which is what others will see when they’re browsing network shares on your machine. Last, you’ll have to select whether you wish to restrict access to specific users or grant access to everyone. Now right-click on the folder that you want to share and open the share options to select the ‘Share this folder’ option. It’s worth noting that Samba uses a separate set of passwords than the standard Linux system accounts. Use the smbpasswd command to create a Samba password for your user [see tutorialsp68 for more details]: sudo smbpasswd -a bodhi

“Ubuntu ships with one of the simplest to use backup tools called Déja Dup.”