Some sensible defaults for Ubuntu

Among Linux distributions, Ubuntu is the undisputedly most well-known for its user-friendliness (with a tip of the hat to Fedora, though Red Hat aren’t spending as much time advertising it as Canonical, Ubuntu’s parent company, does). In most cases when I’m not being a gearhead with Gentoo, and want to use Linux as a sensible desktop environment, Ubuntu is my choice. Canonical have put a lot of good engineering work into it and that’s shown by its ever increasing popularity among Linux users. Canonical attempts to ship a set of sensible default applications, themes and other preference settings so that when one installs it, they have a ready-made desktop that’s all set to use. Like all operating system vendors though, they chose what in some cases, I think, are a dubious set of defaults. So, as with MacOS X and Windows, when I install Ubuntu I go about customizing it and choosing some better applications. These are listed here:

• Change default theme to Clearlooks and add Blended 1.6 window style from gnome-look.org
• Change default font to FreeSans 10, window title 12 point bold
• Remove Evolution mail reader and install Mozilla Thunderbird + Lightning extension
• Remove Empathy IM client and install Pidgin
• Remove Totem Movie Player and install VLC Media Player
• Remove F-Spot photo manager and install Google Picasa 3 + Shotwell Photo Manager
• Install Google Chrome

This is a much shorter list than in years past, and can be accomplished with the graphical admin tools Ubuntu ships with. One I’ve finished customizing as per above, I’m ready to go!