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 use /etc/network/interfaces
and /etc/resolv.conf to configure your network. Having a DHCP server to supply network configuration is fine, everything else is making things complex. You may need to install ifupdown and disable the netplan thing to achieve this.
- Uninstall dhcpcd
- Uninstall openresolv
These 2 needed to be done on a raspberry pi running debian buster
- uninstall wicd
- disable avahi (systemctl disable avahi-daemon)
Snap
Another bad and confusing idea is snap. E.g. Jupyter I could not get working the way I want it with the Jupyter snap. Remove it like described by techwiser. First remove all snaps, then removed snap itself and make sure it will not reappear.
snap list
snap remove --purge <package-name>
rm -rf /var/cache/snapd/
apt autoremove --purge snapd gnome-software-plugin-snap
rm -fr ~/snap
apt-mark hold snapd
When using this anyhow. Some snaps (like firefox) may send daily warnings an update is pending. For some reason this does not happen automatically and you need to execute sudo snap refresh
to do the update
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 3rd 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.
Slow boot
- If /var/log/syslog is full of messages like '
failed to bind to /tmp/.X11-unix/X....
', make sure / is owned by root. - Check Networking#Interfaces for allow-hotplug
Tracker
Tracker is a part of nautilus scanning your filesystem. I don´t need that.
apt purge nautilus apt install thunar
Application management
- apt install <package>
- Install a new package
- apt remove --purge <package>
- Remove a package and all related files
- apt update
- apt full-upgrade
- Update the package meta-data and update all
- apt-get autoclean
- Remove all obsolete package files from /var/cache/apt/archives. Do this every now and then
- do-release-upgrade
- Upgrade to the latest Ubuntu release, latest LTS if that is what you run.
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;
Autostart applications
To automatically start an application when a user logs in put a link to /usr/share/applications/<newapp>.desktop or a new <newapp>.desktop in ~/.config/autostart
Problem upgrading package like 'errors were encountered while processing'
It is pretty old but some good hints can be found on journalxtra.com