The Perfect Desktop - Kubuntu 11.10 - Page 2

3 Update The System

Before we go on, we should check if there are any updates available for our system. Click on the update-button on the bottom right of the screen appearing when there are updates available or start the Muon Package Manager (All Applications > System):

Click on Check for Updates. This will show you a list of available updates. Now you can either manually install the ones you want by rightclicking them and choosing the appropriate action or update all of them in one click with Install Updates (it is recommended to install all available updates):

Type in your password:

Afterwards the updates are being downloaded and installed:

When the update is complete, you can close the window (if a new kernel was amongst the updates, a system restart is required to make the changes effective. If this is necessary, you will see a Restart button. Click on that button to restart the system.). The system is now up-to-date.

4 Inventory Of What We Have So Far

Now let's browse all menus to see which of our wanted applications are already installed:

You should find the following situation ([x] marks an application that is already installed, where [ ] is an application that is missing):

Graphics:
[ ] The GIMP
[ ] Shotwell Photo Manager
[ ] Picasa

Internet:
[ ] Firefox
[ ] Opera
[ ] Chromium
[ ] Flash Player
[ ] FileZilla
[ ] Thunderbird
[ ] Evolution
[ ] aMule
[x] KTorrent
[ ] Vuze
[x] Kopete
[ ] Skype
[ ] Google Earth
[x] Quassel IRC
[ ] Gwibber Social Client

Office:
[x] LibreOffice Writer
[x] LibreOffice Calc
[ ] Adobe Reader
[ ] GnuCash
[ ] Scribus

Sound & Video:
[x] Amarok
[ ] Audacity
[ ] Banshee
[ ] MPlayer
[ ] Rhythmbox Music Player
[ ] gtkPod
[ ] XMMS
[ ] dvd::rip
[ ] Kino
[ ] Sound Juicer CD Extractor
[ ] VLC Media Player
[ ] RealPlayer
[ ] Totem
[ ] Xine
[ ] Brasero
[x] K3B
[ ] Multimedia-Codecs

Programming:
[ ] KompoZer
[ ] Bluefish
[ ] Eclipse

Other:
[ ] VirtualBox
[ ] TrueType fonts
[ ] Java
[x] Read/Write support for NTFS partitions
[ ] gDebi

So some applications are already on the system. NTFS read-/write support is enabled by default on Kubuntu 11.10.

5 Configure Additional Repositories

Some packages like the Adobe Reader are not available in the standard Kubuntu repositories. The easiest way to make such packages available to your system is to add the Medibuntu repository.

First we open a terminal (System > Terminal):

First off, we edit /etc/apt/sources.list. To do that, we install a handy text editor called vim-nox. If you don't experience any problems with kate, you can also do it with that, I however prefer vim nox.

sudo apt-get install vim-nox

Afterwards, open sources.list like that:

sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list

... and enable the oneiric partner and Ubuntu Extras repositories (if they are not already enabled):

[...]
## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Canonical's
## 'partner' repository.
## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by Canonical and the
## respective vendors as a service to Ubuntu users.
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu oneiric partner
deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu oneiric partner

## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by third-party
## developers who want to ship their latest software.
deb http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric main
deb-src http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric main
[...]

Then save the file.

To enable the Medibuntu repository, please do the following:

Import the repository:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

Import the gpg-key and update your package-list:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update

6 Installing The Synaptic Package Manager

I prefer the Synaptic Package Manager over Kubuntu's built-in package manager, therefore I install it as follows (still in the terminal):

sudo apt-get install synaptic

Then run

sudo update-apt-xapian-index

to make Synaptic display packages from third-party repositories.