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You have just installed Ubuntu, logged in for the first time and don’t know what to do next? It’s understandable that the system should be configured the way that would ensure decent experience. Of course, depending on your needs you may want different software to be installed. So we would recommend you to check the following steps and list of applications in order to choose the ones which may be useful for you.

1. Enabling all the repositories

Repositories represent software archives were thousands of programs for Ubuntu are stored. Repositories make it very easy to install new software onto Ubuntu using an Internet connection. In addition to that they provide a high level of security, as each program available in the repositories is thoroughly tested and built specifically for each version of Ubuntu. Thus enabling all the repositories you ensure the access to the bigger amount of applications.

It should be mentioned that Ubuntu software repositories are organized into 4 separate components, according to the level of support offered by Ubuntu. Here is the list of those components:

• Main – Officially supported software.

• Restricted – Supported software that is not available under a completely free license.

• Universe – Community maintained software, i.e. not officially supported software.

• Multiverse – Software that is not free.

There are two ways to enable/disable repositories:

a) System > Administration > Software Sources

b) System > Administration > Synaptic >> Settings >> Repositories

Here is the window you get, which gives you the opportunity to choose the repositories you need:

As soon as you’ve done which choosing enabling/disabling of repositories (we suggest you to enable all of them), click “Close” button to save your changes. A dialog box should appear, asking whether you’d like to update the list of repositories. Select “Reload” to update the list. Make sure that you click “Reload” button, because repository information will not be updated until the “Reload” is selected.

IMPORTANT: In case you use Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) all the repositories are enabled by default, so you can skip this step.

The last thing to mention about repositories is that you can use command line instead of graphical interface to manage them. Here you get more info about this method.

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Nowadays computer provides us a great deal of opportunities (of course, the majority of users can easily go without many of them), but with no exaggerations “surfing the net” represents one of the most important and essential ones. People who use Linux OS argue that given operating system is perfect for Web. In fact it’s hardly possible to disagree with them; however before you can start surfing the web the first thing you need to do is to configure network interfaces.

What are the network interfaces? They represent devices that are used to transmit and receive packages of data. The examples of network interface devices are: Ethernet card, ISDN adapter, modem and etc. You can imagine that a network interface is a mailbox or an end of pipe, where you can send information and receive an answer. The integral attribute of network interface is address.

Generally users encounter with IP (Internet Protocol) networks. In the given review we are going to consider IPv4 (4th version of IP addresses), which are still very popular among the end users. After that we will discuss how to setup a network connection in Linux, taking as an example Ethernet card (which presents an interface allowing to connect a PC to the net with the help of copper twisted pair cable with the data transfer speed of up to 1GB/s). You can setup other interfaces in a similar way. To setup the interface in Linux the following steps should be completed:

• Physical installation of the card in the system (we suppose you’ve already done this step or the interface is in the motherboard of your computer; moreover don’t forget to plug in the cable as well)
• Installation of the proper drivers, so Linux can work with your card
• Specifying IP address and some other parameters, which are needed for IP network

In Linux OS network interfaces (as the majority of other devices) are set up with the help of text files, which can vary depending on distributions, for example:

We are going to review it by Ubuntu example.

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Every single user while thinking about changing operating system, in particular Windows to Ubuntu, tries to make sure that new OS will allow him/her to do everything he/she got used to, i.e. it won’t lack functionality. As you remember, we had already reviewed Microsoft Office and Instant Messaging Clients alternatives for Linux distributions, so now it’s time to check how things stand in the other aspects. In the given post we are going to find out if Ubuntu multimedia capabilities are decent enough to be compared with the ones of Windows.

It’s quite an understandable fact that each of you has favorite apps for movies, music, Internet radio and so on. Moreover it can be just one single app, which you really like, thus willing to get at least comparable alternative. Fortunately there are a lot of things to choose from, so you can easily find the one corresponding to all your needs.

Here is the full list of the most popular multimedia applications to be reviewed (in alphabetical order):

1. Amarok
2. Audacious
3. Banshee Media Player
4. Dragon Player
5. Exaile Music Player
6. Juk Player
7. Kaffeine Player
8. Listen Music Player
9. Movie Player (Totem)
10. MPlayer
11. Quod Libet
12. Rhythmbox Music Player
13. SMPlayer
14. Songbird
15. VLC Media Player

As you understand the amount of programs deserving attention is much bigger, so if you encountered a nice app that wasn’t included in the list, please let us know.

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