Ubuntu 14.04 – post-install enhancements for Trusty Tahr

Excellent coincidence that the release of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) fell into the Easter holidays. This gives me the time to install earlier than I normally have time for. This realease being a LTS (long-term support) release means it is a fairly conservative release. There are some nice enhancements and most importantly for me the 3.13 Kernel means finally Wacom Touch devices are supported without kernel mods. Unfortunately some things are still not included (such as the boot-repair tools not being part of the standard repos). Fortunately it's relatively easy to fix most of these things. Install core packages One line to fix it (well - mostly ...). This is a very personal & subjective list based on what I need all the time. Most things would not be relevant to casual users. Ignore at will. sudo apt-get install -y vim chromium-browser filezilla owncloud-client gnome-gmail httrack keepass2 inkscape s3cmd putty openssh-server nfs-common fslint unoconv xsane libreoffice-base libreoffice-mysql-connector offlineimap pwgen getmail4 apache2-mpm-itk libapache2-mod-php5 mysql-client mysql-server php5 php5-mysql php5-common php5-xmlrpc php5-gd php5-common curl php5-curl php5-ldap php5-odbc php5-xsl php5-ldap php-pear libapache2-mod-wsgi python-django python-imaging python-pythonmagick python-markdown python-textile python-docutils python-mysqldb rapidsvn umit flashplugin-installer cups-pdf git gnome-schedule regexxer ubuntu-restricted-extras arduino gufw cifs-utils subversion sysinfo jobs-admin network-manager-openvpn network-manager-vpnc openjdk-7-jre openjdk-7-jdk icedtea-7-plugin bum mysql-workbench traceroute whois sublime-text bleachbit grive dia-gnome tintii calibre openscad pepperflashplugin-nonfree NOTE: Since Chromium Flash plugin support is broken in 14.04 (due to Chromium killing Netscape Plugin API) you need to run the Pepper Flash install script to allow flash to play in Chromium.…

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Fixing UEFI Secure Boot problems on Ubuntu 14.04

Unfortunately the mess that is UEFI Secure Boot still causes issues on some hardware. In my case it's a Toshiba Z930 Ultrabook. I have documented the procedure to get it working here. However it turns out that there is no 'Trusty' release for the boot-repair utility. The fix is relatively easy. sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yannubuntu-boot-repair-trusty.list #change the following line from 'trusty' to 'saucy' sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yannubuntu-boot-repair-trusty.list You can then just finish with sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && (boot-repair &) Another option is to boot off a USB image (or CD) created from http://sourceforge.net/p/boot-repair-cd/home/Home/.

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