Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a linux distribution derived from debian. It's a very nice plug&play OS with all features I need.

cat /etc/os-release

cat /etc/lsb-release

lsb_release -a

Show the currently installed version. os-release has most information.

Modfications made

The few things I needed to tweak are listed here.

NetworkManager

Networkmanager is a bad idea, just disable it and use /etc/network/interfaces to configure your network.

apt-get purge network-manager
vi /etc/network/interfaces
auto <interface>
iface <interface> inet dhcp
    wpa-ssid <ssid>
    wpa-psk <password>

For interfaces that may not be connected use allow-hotplug instead of auto.
The bootprocces now does not wait for an DCHP-answer on disconnected interfaces. Saves you about 5 minutes during startup.

Settings GUI

One day I could not start the settings GUI anymore. Removing the unity-control-center fixed the problem one time. On another install it didn't.

sudo apt-get remove unity-control-center

Display

When I connect a monitor to my laptop on HDMI automatically a 3^rd VGA display is found.

xrandr --listactivemonitors

Show all active monitors

xrandr --output VGA-1-2 --off

Turn off the VGA display. The name may differ on other configurations.

Add applications

To add an application to the 'Open with' list edit /usr/share/applications/newapp.desktop.

For opening jupyter notebooks I added jupyter.desktop that looks like below. I don't think everything is needed but it works.

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Version=1.0
Name=Jupyter
GenericName=Jupyter notebook
Comment=Prototyping and documentation 
Exec=jupyter notebook %F
Icon=jupyter
Terminal=false
Categories=GTK;Development;IDE;
MimeType=text/plain;text/x-python;
StartupNotify=true
Keywords=Python;Editor;