What To Do After Installing Ubuntu Linux OS (Part-1)

Now that you’ve installed Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xersus) on your PC, it is time to tweak it to suit your needs and customize it the way you want it to be. Well, here’s what I did after performing a clean install of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS in my laptop. This post is the first part of the two-parts series in the ‘Things to do after installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS’.

Disk Cleaning Utility

If you were a Windows user previously, you would have known or used CCleaner definitely.  Well, CCleaner is not available for Linux because Piriform did not publish a version for Linux. Install and set up BleachBit. BleachBit is the Linux alternative for CCleaner

According to their official website,

When your computer is getting full, BleachBit quickly frees disk space. When your information is only your business, BleachBit guards your privacy. With BleachBit you can free cache, delete cookies, clear Internet history, shred temporary files, delete logs, and discard junk you didn’t know was there. Designed for Linux and Windows systems, it wipes clean thousands of applications including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Adobe Flash, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari,and more. Beyond simply deleting files, BleachBit includes advanced features such as shredding files to prevent recovery, wiping free disk space to hide traces of files deleted by other applications, and vacuuming Firefox to make it faster. Better than free, BleachBit is open source.

You can grab BleachBit for you Ubuntu 16.04 from here. You can get the most out of BleachBit by following the tips in this post from How-To Geek.

Firewall Configuration

Next is to configure the firewall. Install Gufw and you’re all set. They claim that it’s one of the easiest firewalls in the world (in terms of setting it up) and you can take their words for granted. Don’t trust me? Well, you can check it out yourself!

Click here (or apt:gufw) to install Gufw on you Ubuntu 16.04 LTS powered machine.

Web Browser

I’m not a big fan of the inbuilt-browser that comes along with Ubuntu. If you’re comfortable with Firefox, use it (also comes along with Ubuntu) else install Chromium browser.

Chromium is an open-source browser project that aims to build a safer, faster, and more stable way for all Internet users to experience the web. Chromium serves as a base for Google Chrome, which is Chromium re-branded (name and logo) with very few additions such as usage tracking and an auto-updater system.

Don’t confuse Chromium with Google Chrome. Though basically both are same, they differ in some aspects like the one stated above.

Click here to navigate and download Chromium browser from their official site.

Disk Partition Utility

Then install GParted, the disk partition utility for Linux.

GParted is a free partition manager that enables you to resize, copy, and move partitions without data loss. The best way to access all of the features of the GParted application is by using the GParted Live bootable image. GParted Live enables you to use GParted on GNU/Linux as well as other operating systems, such as Windows or Mac OS X.

Install and run it from the terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) by running the following commands –

sudo apt-get install gparted

sudo parted

CD/DVD Burner

If you perform CD/DVD burning tasks often, you will be surely needing K3b –  The CD/DVD Kreator for Linux , optimized for KDE – licensed under the GPL.

Install by running the below command in the terminal –

sudo apt-get install k3b

Torrent Client

I’m sure everyone uses Torrent technology to share large files over the web without overloading servers as it’s a peer-to-peer network protocol. Most of you must be using BitTorrent client on your Windows PCs. What about Ubuntu? No, there’s no official BitTorrent client for Linux. So I recommend you to use qBittorrent.

The qBittorrent project aims to provide a Free Software alternative to µTorrent. Additionally, qBittorrent runs and provides the same features on all major platforms (Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, OS/2, FreeBSD).

qBittorrent is based on the Qt toolkit and libtorrent-rasterbar.

Install qBittorrent from the terminal by running the below commands –

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:qbittorrent-team/qbittorrent-stable

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install qbittorrent

Gaming

If you’re a gamer, you should definitely consider installing Steam!

Steam is the ultimate entertainment platform. Play games, connect with friends, even create and share content of your own. Join 50 million of your closest friends on Steam. Enjoy exclusive deals, automatic game updates, and cross-platform multiplayer. Plus, now you take advantage of Big Picture mode, designed for use with your TV and game controller.

Download and install Steam right away by clicking here.

Well, that’s all for now. Will be updating this list in the next post… [The next post is ready and can be read from here]

Stay tuned! 😀