Things to do after installing Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid

Previously (in 2008) I wrote about “Things to do after installing openSUSE 11.0“. Well I felt like it was time to start this up again, but this time I’ll be expanding the “Things to do” to more distributions, including this one for Ubuntu.

So here I’ll assume that you’ve installed Ubuntu using whatever means necessary and you’re booting up for the first time. Here are some things that I typically do, when I build up a new Ubuntu box for personal use. I am also targeting this for people who are not comfortable or like to use the command line tools.

Wireless Configuration
The first thing I do is set up my wireless, so I have internet connectivity without being strapped down to a leash. My machine I’m installing on is a Dell Latitude D620. You can setup the wireless by going to the wireless icon in the top panel, and clicking on it to list available networks available.

Disable Nepomuk (Desktop Search) on KDE 4.4.2 Kubuntu Lucid 10.04

With the recent release of Kubuntu 10.04 KDE 4.4.2 will reach the masses. Unfortunately in KDE 4.4.2, Nepomuk the KDE Desktop Search tool is enabled by default.

I say unfortunate because many of you may experience times when your system is slow due to high CPU utilization caused by Nepomuk’s indexing mechanism (I experienced this on Kubuntu 10.04 Lucid RC while doing some testing)

Fortunately you can disable this feature quite easily using systemsettings (System Settings in the KMenu).

To do this open system settings, click on the Advanced tab and click on Desktop Search:

Visually Seeing Your Boot Speed With Bootchart Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

Have you ever wanted to know what your computer did while it booted? Are you new to linux, and want to understand what actually went wrong? Are you frustrated with the speed of your boot?

Well look no further. There is an awesome software called bootchart which is available via repositories for most major Linux Distributions. This software will visually chart out, what is taking the resources while booting, gives you a nice bench mark of how long it took to boot, and if you’re having slow boots, it’ll help you track down where your problem process is.

The installation on the newly released Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04 is quite simple.

You can install using:
sudo apt-get install bootchart

The above will also install the required package: pybootchartgui.

Now all you have to do is reboot your machine. This can be done via the terminal with:
sudo init 6
Note: The above switches you to runlvl 6, which indicates a restart.

Once your machine has booted back up, all you have to do is check out the .png file that was saved for you in /var/log/bootchart.

You can open the said picture, and be greeted with a great graph of your boot-up process.