Note:- This article is targeted for new Users to Ubuntu (not Linux professionals)
Introduction
There are many articles each discussing how to install Linux. So is Linux only built around the first time installation or is there something else that should be considered. In older days installing Linux used to be so hard that if you did you were promoted to a Geek. Not now a days. Installing Linux is the most easiest part. Ok you installed Ubuntu what next? How to have fun on daily stuffs. Let me classify you to two categories of users.
a. One that will search each alternatives of what was in windows and live happily ever after
b. Will try to explore more applications. If one does not meet his demand search for another
For the category a. well, you did all the required stuffs for yourself. Keep on your journey we won't disturb. For the category b the article follows
May be you were using different applications on windows. You will not miss any of them on Linux either. If you were running applications in rather constrained way or you did not knew the fun stuffs here it follows
I will discuss running(installing and using) these stuffs on Ubuntu
a. Webcam and multimedia chat (cheese, patch, empathy)
b. News reader (liferea)
c. Listening to bbc radio, lastfm (amarok or banshee or rhythmbox), using music players, mobile phones
d. Watching youtube videos, bbc iplayer (flash plugin for firefox)
e. Downloading, ripping youtube videos ( youtube-dl, utube-ripper)
f. Editing movies, converting to different format(avidemux)
g. Making DVD Movies (ready to watch on movie players)(devede)
h. Listening crystal clear sound(pulseaudio)
I. Editing music, converting to different format(audacity, sound converter)
j. Downloading music, files, software from Pear to Pear(Frostwire)
k. Editing Photos(Photoshop with Wine)
l. Extracting 700MB movie from a 2-4 GB Movie DVD (AcidRip Dvd Ripper)
m. Some other useful tips.
Initial Settings
I assume you have gone to System → Administration → Synaptic Package Manager → Settings → Repositories → Third Party Software and ticked on http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu hardy partner (only this at first). Now add other repositories like http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt hardy main.
Here http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt is Uri, Distribution hardy and Components main. So add at appropriate places. After reload and initial package information download you are ready. Unless I specify the source of installation go to the Synaptic Package Manager and search for the name(small letter first) of the software I describe
a. Webcam and multimedia chat (cheese, patch, empathy)
Linux kernel handles the devices, so first you should have a kernel patch for webcam. It is nothing more than installing software from Synaptic. In older days however every patches were added painfully. So for web cam access and video/audio chat on yahoo, gmail, hotmail etc at synaptic search and install cheese, patch, empathy. You have to moreover install all the dependency that come with these software. Patch is the kernel patch, cheese let's you take pictures from webcam. It even captures videos. Empathy is a chat application. It supports voice and video chat(technically) along with room chat. It lets you chat all of them at once. Configuration is very easy. You will just figure out very easily once you start using it. Once you open cheese after installing the patch. You will see how easily your webcam works.
b. News reader (liferea)
Do you know what a rss feed reader is? You may or may not have used feed reader on windows. It downloads news (heading of full stories from different website at a common place) from the internet for you. You must do only is first add a rss feed and then all is done. So how do you get a rss feed. On any website if you see an orange icon on the address bar to the right side (in firefox). That's the rss feed. Just click on that, sometimes you will have to choose feed from different options. After going to the next stage just copy what is higlighted to the adress bar and create a new subscription on liferea and you are done. Each time something new happens or changes on that website you get the news. This way you don't have to visit each site everytime. Just have rss feed for them on liferea. E.g you can search a news on google. Say Music. If something new is discovered by google that says Music you get that feed on your desk. Moreover you can even play audio podcast on this.
c. Listening to bbc radio, lastfm (amarok or banshee or rhythmbox, using music players, mobile phones
First be careful if you haven't accidentally disabled Check for new hardware devices at services. They are needed for banshee. The best of the music players is amarok. Amarok is going for reincarnation. I.e it is silent for upcoming release. Totally new (supporting video playback). You may download beta version(very big, have to add repository) or old version or choose something else like banshee(new version could be enabled by adding repository, see how to do that). Let me tell you what amarok does. Others like banshee have tried to add some of the features though. Amarok let's you listen online radio (once a little portion of sound downloads you can start playback). It let's you see the lyrics of the currently playing song. Manage all your music file. Copy music to mobile phones, music players. Just insert these devices and find out where they are mounted (At terminal sudo df -h or fdisk -l to find out the new device and specifying the mount point for amarok. Select Music Players for normal phone card of mobile phone), Listen to lastfm by login from amarok, Fast and easy access of every file. For bbc and other music feed site just add the url of feed at Podcasts. Song rating, Play on the basis of context are other features. E.g find other songs by same singer e.t.c. Files under different catagories e.g random, favorite, never played e.t.c. Some features of amarok may also be included on banshee or rhythmbox. Bbc has podcast so just grab the podcast url to amarok and copy it to Podcasts. Now it starts to buffer without playing. If you find that enough is buffered to start (it will continue to buffer as you play also), just press play.
d. Watching youtube videos, bbc iplayer (flash plugin for firefox)
So you downloaded firefox3, installed the flashplayer10 to the firefox3 directory e.g /usr/share/firefox3. Ok if video plays and audio does not play just search at google “ubuntu pulseaudio” and you will have both pulseaudio and youtube video played. Now bbc iplayer also works great.
e. Downloading, ripping youtube videos ( youtube-dl, utube-ripper)
What you want just download one by one, or download one after another continuously until all downloads. You can use firefox, Utube ripper to download one by one. Or just install youtube-dl. After that create a text file that contains list of youtube videos like this:
youtube-dl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZMGJ_nub88 &&
youtube-dl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBAwpHEHx9M &&
youtube-dl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m-GXQF1Zdw &&
youtube-dl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=147oZh3mMMo &&
youtube-dl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DchHUXm-OWU
and save it. Just note there is not && at the last line. && is not part of youtube video. When does it become helpful. At night when you want to download many videos but have to sleep, or you have slow internet speed or any other reason. You want to download many youtube videos. Say you saved those file as name “mydownload”. Just browse to directory where mydownload is situated using terminal and at terminal type
sh < mydownload
This will download all of them for you. If you want to convert flv to other format or download youtube video using visual tool utube-ripper is also an option.
f. Editing movies, converting to different format(avidemux)
I have not played much with avidemux. There are many options though. If you want to have 3gp audio support on Linux, you have to have amrnb or amrwb. Which is supported on windows. You can however only play the video without sound. Installing amrnb or amrwb is one of the challenging tasks. I haven't been successful. So if you find someway it does in an easy way please include that and notify me. One thing you can do is use windows software (using wine) (Freez 3gp converter to convert media to 3gp (mobile) format). Avidemux provides features like converting from one format to other, changing the picture quality of movie. Separately enabling different plugins. Adjusting audio playback time at movie. Cutting and editing different portions of movies I.e editing different clips. But one thing that makes me disturbing about avidemux is the final output video has a very poor quality for playback, I think something is broken.
g. Making DVD Movies (ready to watch on movie players)(devede)
Did you always wanted to know how the initial menu of selections came at dvd movies playback. Here is the tool. So you have five different movies and want to make a dvd that has all of them and ready to be played on your dvd player. Just start devede. Choose the Video DVD button (Choose as you need). Add title (rename it as you need). For each title add Files(right side). But as you choose movie files experiment different settings. You have to lower many things to include more files. E.g Video rate, Audio rate. At advanced options Final size. You can choose the audio delay to synchronize audio and video. This is the place to choose the surround sound, subtitle and other stuffs. Before proceeding all. Just check by making some 2 Minute video first and then proceed to write all. You have to lower many things to include more files.
h. Listening crystal clear sound(pulseaudio)
Unless you keep PCM below 60% in the Volume manager you don't get crystal clear sound. Always check there and configure players like Mplayer, xmms to use software mixer. I don't know much of the crystal clear sound in pulseaudio, but one thing that makes me like pulse audio is the volume controller which controls application wise volume. What does that mean? Ok, you are listening to amarok. And suddenly your buffering at youtube completed (with pause option). And your little brother just brought some songs. Can you play all of them at the same time and only hear one of them. Yes with pulseaudio volume controller (central control) control sound from each interface. The tool or option for this is pavucontrol. This can be enabled by reconfiguring the menu option. Writing in a terminal (bad idea). Adding application launcher on the panel(best option, because from the panel you can control them all). There seems to be a nice network feature (I haven't tested yet).
I. Editing music, converting to different format(audacity, sound converter)
You all what audacity can do. Main features which I use are editing clips and amplify effects. Sound converter is a little software which does what it name does. Converts audio from one format to other. For mp3 conversion you need some gstreamer plugin( I don't remember quite it should be either gstreamer plugin bad or ugly).
j. Downloading music from Pear to Pear(Frostwire)
Do you know Limewire? If not Limewire is a pear to pear file download software (it's like you share a folder consisting of music (see the legal issue), software, and share it with all others. So do others. If two persons have same file your download becomes fast. If you download the same file now it becomes with three and others can download from 3. So isn't it great. Limewire releases two software each time. One(Limewire) is free but limited in functionality and other with full feature called (Limewire pro). You need pay money to get Limewire pro. Now what if the same developers(including some more from community) developed Limewire pro and named it Frostwire free to be downloaded on Linux. That's what Frostwire is.
k. Editing Photos(Photoshop with Wine)
Some open source advocates may be arguing with me, saying you should promote Gimp. I say Gimp lacks some cool features like liquify and CMYK color mode. There is a feature called Iwrap in gimp too but it is hard to use due to it's hard to use interface, and does not have all the functionality as in Photoshop. So if these features are in photoshop, why not use photoshop on Linux. Just install the latest version of wine (the repository is at the beginning of this document) and install Photoshop. Google developers have invested some time to make wine run photoshop. It may not run as smoothly as in windows, but it does all what it is capable of in Linux also. There is no shame on using Windows software on Linux. Even google uses many windows software to provide different functionality to applications although they have Linux as the server. And there is no shame on saying that Linux lacks decent photo editing or image manipulation software. This is one of the reasons why photo artists still hesitate to come to Linux. If you don't want to buy photoshop and use free tool. You can even use Raw Therapee, and others like Rawstudio(I think it is too early to include this. I don't know how it works). And Gimp is always a option too.
l. Extracting 700MB movie from a 2-4 GB Movie DVD (AcidRip Dvd Ripper)
Ok your aunt brought their trips movie in a Dvd( 3.5 GB) and they are leaving tomorrow. They want you to copy the movie so that other family members can watch the movie later. Moreover you have some 5 GB space only and tomorrow your friends are going to bring your picnic video(3.7 GB) so that you can watch it later. What will yo do. Will you throw away the aunt's video or you will not put your picnics video. The answer is reduce the size and keep them both. But remember to convert any file at first time you may have to have a greater space than the original source itself (I have not tested it, so note this point if something goes wrong). Just put the Dvd inside the dvd drive and Open AcidRip. Specify the size of the movie. For a single movie 700MB is a good size. Be careful more space means good quality and less space means average quality. Resolutions like 576 x 240, 480 x 270 , 608 x 256 are not bad. So choose some.
m. Some other useful tips.
Find some cool theme (Metacity and Icon) for Ubuntu. Why? Do you want your such a functional Linux to look just a normal. How will you say to your friends I did this on Linux. Find a nice resolution (Use at terminal “sudo displayconfig-gtk” to get resolution for your monitor). So why then Linux Geeks always shout Terminal is great then GUI tool. Cause we did so much stuffs without using terminal so why then terminal. Actually they are right. Much of the small applications we use on Linux are just a constrained front end to a very powerful but sophesticated shell script or terminal program. I don't say about all. How would you do openoffice on terminal. I said small applications. Ok you browse through different directories using nautilus. Would it not be great if you could open terminal and run some programs at a particularly directory. For Open in terminal install nautilus-open-terminal. How great would it be if you could do different related stuffs on each folder. E.g open as administrator for certain files. At image folder stuffs like rotate (rotate in place) so that you can make all stand straight, resize, encrypt to hide the content or sign with some certificate key. At music folder convert to different formats and stuffs like that. For that you have to install nautilus-scripts. You will find many stuffs in the synaptic package manager also and at gnome-looks also there exist many. You just have to add them to Actions Configuration. To watch bbc video install real player. Ok got some problems on real player on ubuntu. E.g it won't play or it crashed on play. Go to Tools->Preferences->Hardware and choose OSS. Gmail notify can notify new mail. If some local settings go wrong. E.g you put a bad setting at compiz, or you selected some bad setting at mplayer. How to make them as they were originally. Just go to the home folder. I.e /home/yourusename and at Nautilus View → Show Hidden Files and delete the hidden folder (starting with . ) that has same name as your application. If you don't find them, just check the .config directory also. If you delete those folders your application will be reset (reset means totally original configuration). All bookmark at firefox will go if you delete .mozilla. Put your mostly used application on top panel. Use add to panel to put stuffs like network monitor, Notification area if it's gone. A force quit. You can also add to panel from the Applications Menu. Add firefox, terminal and others you require. Add pavucontrol, liferea, Frostwire, and other frequently used. They are very handy and save a lots of time. Be careful more applications at Desktop means more time to load desktop. OpenOffice took too much time. To improve this if you have more hardware resource can enable at Tools-> Options->OpenOffice.org->view different 3d view settings. Can disable Java, and at memory No of objects can be changed to 100. I usually don't prefer enable systray.
