Spork - Staying In - Install Ubuntu

Want to do some tweaking?

Optional Extras:

Want that cube? Fire? Wobbly windows?
Avant Window Navigator
Sharing data across your Windows network

Want that cube? Fire? Wobbly windows?

Ubuntu has some awesome desktop bling, powered by a system called Compiz Fusion.

First of all, make sure you have your graphics card driver installed (System > Administation > Hardware Drivers). If you want the absolute latest drivers, try installing EnvyNG.

You can enable basic effects by going to System > Preferences > Visual Effects, but to really get into the tweakage, you want to install compizconfig-settings-manager then go to System > Preferences > Advanced Desktop Effects Settings. To get a rotating cube, make sure the "rotate cube" plugin is enabled, and your desktop is set to horizontal size = 4 and vertical size = 1 in General Options > Desktop Size.

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Avant Window Navigator

Avant Window Navigator (or just AWN) is a tool that sits at the bottom of your desktop like the dock on a Mac. Besides being nice to look at you can use it to launch and control your programs.

You can get it from Add/Remove, but if you want the very latest version you’ll need to add a new software repository. Go to Administration > Software Sources and click on the “Third Party” tab. Hit add and put the following two lines in:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/reacocard-awn/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/reacocard-awn/ubuntu hardy main

Now if you go into Synaptic and hit "reload" you’ll be able to install “avant-window-navigator-bzr” and “awn-core-applets-bzr” and “awn-manager”. To have it start up automatically when you log in go to Administration > Sessions, click add and put an entry in that executes the command “avant-window-navigator”

Ta-daa! To add launchers for your programs go to Preferences > AWN Manager > Launchers and add a new one. You’ll need to know the correct command to launch it. You can find nice icons for it from /usr/share/pixmaps or one of the many folders in /usr/share/icons. You might want to tidy things up by getting rid of the panel at the bottom of your screen that has the trash bin on it. Right click on any icons there that you want to move to the top panel. Deselect “lock to panel” if it’s checked, then click “move” and drag it to where you want it. Right click on the panel and remove it once you’ve salvaged anything you want to keep.

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Sharing across your Windows network

If you want to share folders with Windows PCs on a home network you'll want Samba

There’s a great HowTo for Samba on the Ubuntu forums.

Setting this can be a bit fiddly, as you may have to manually edit an important file called your file system table (fstab) As long as you remember to make a backup of fstab before making any changes you should be alright. If you break it, just revert to the copy and everything will be fine. If you're not confident with manually editing files like this then maybe ask for some help on the Ubuntu forums. It's probably not as hard as you think, it's just that it's unfamiliar.

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