Customise Ubuntu
Your installation, your way.
Manage repos
The larger open source community offers a lot more packages than you can find in Ubuntu’s official repositories (repos). Third-party repos that host Ubuntu packages are known as Personal Package Archives (PPA), and you can search for various PPAs on Ubuntu’s launchpad ( http://bit.ly/PPAsForUbuntu). Every PPA page will list its location which begins with ‘ppa:’, eg the location of the PPA for the Chromium browser is ppa:winski/chromium. You can add this PPA to your system with: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:winski/chromium . Ubuntu will now fetch the PPA’s key to verify the archives integrity. When it’s done refresh the list of repos with sudo apt-get update after which you can install packages from this PPA.
Add graphics drivers
Most video cards have open source drivers available which are usually adequate for regular desktop work. But if you plan to use your computer for gaming you might need to use proprietary drivers from the graphics card’s vendor. Before you can install the driver for your graphics card, find out its make and model using the lspci | grep VGA command. You can get more details, such as its clock speed and capabilities, using sudo lshw -C video .
The Oibaf repos is popular for getting the latest bleeding edge open source drivers to users. Add and enable the Oibaf repo with sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers; sudo apt-get update before upgrading your driver stack with sudo apt-get dist-upgrade . Similarly, to fetch the latest stable Nvidia drivers, add and enable the X-Swat PPA with sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates; sudo apt-get update before installing the drivers with sudo apt-get install nvidia-current .
For AMD cards, the best source for the proprietary driver is AMD’s website ( http://support.amd.com). Use the dropdown menus on the website to enter details about your graphics card and then download the suggested driver. Unzip it to reveal a .run script. Before you install the driver make sure you install its dependencies with sudo apt-get install dh-make dh-modaliases execstack libc6-i386 lib32gcc1 . Now run the script, such as sudo sh ./amd-driver-installer13.35.1005-x86.x86_64.run . This will launch the graphical AMD Catalyst proprietary driver installer which will also install the Catalyst Control Center GPU management software.
Customise boot loader
By default, Ubuntu sets the bootloader to boot the distro automatically in 10 seconds. There are several reasons you might want to change this behaviour, eg if you have multiple OSes on the machine, you might want to reorder them and change the default OS, or you might want to increase or decrease the time before the default operating system is booted automatically. The GrubCustomizer [ seestep5and6 onthenextpage] on is a wonderful tool for graphically modifying the bootloader. To tweak the default OS to boot, launch the tool and switch to the General Settings tab. Select the ‘Predefined’ radio button under the Default Entry section and use the drop-menu to select the default OS. If you toggle the ‘Previously Booted Entry’ radio button, instead of using a predefined default entry, Grub will boot by default into the last booted OS. You can also adjust the timeout value for booting into the default OS from within this page. When you’re done making changes, click on the ‘Save’ button and this will write the changes to the bootloader.
Stop leaking information
By default, every time you search for an app or a file in the Dash, Ubuntu also displays “relevant” suggestions from online web stores such as Amazon. If you don’t want your queries being routed to Canonical servers and then to third-parties on the internet you can turn off this feature. To selectively exclude some services from the results, click the Dash Home icon on the launcher and click ‘Filter Results’ next to the search box. Now deselect the categories or sources that you want to exclude from the search results, such as Amazon and eBay. To disable the feature for good, head to System Settings and under the Personal section select Security & Privacy. Now switch to the Search tab and turn off the option labelled ‘When Searching in the Dash: Include Online Search Results’.
Don’t record file/app usage
For easier access Ubuntu’s Dash displays all recently accessed files on your system. To prevent the distro from keeping track of particular apps, head to System Settings and under the Personal section select Security & Privacy. Now switch to the Files & Applications tab, where you can selectively turn off tracking, such as Music, Pictures, Videos, Presentation etc. If you wish to exclude the contents of particular folders, then click on the ‘+’ icon beneath the Exclude section and point to the folder you want to omit. Similarly, you can exclude particular apps as well. You can also use the ‘Clear Usage Data’ button to delete existing records of accessed files and apps. To turn off the feature for good, toggle the Record File and Application Usage setting to ‘Off’.