…if any?

This is the guide I wish I had that cold november morning 6 months ago when I installed Ubuntu for the first time.

It’s a guide with those informations you can’t avoid to learn at some time or another using Ubuntu.

The guide is not written to reveal new amazing things you have never heard of before. Instead the primary goal is to ease the first steep learning period a little, by provinding links and describtions of things that you ought to know.

So read on, you might learn something you didn’t know, and if not I don’t think you will waste your time anyway.

As the heading indicates, this guide contains 5 topics that I intent to write a few words about. So let’s get started. The first and most important thing you really need to know is of course the Terminal:

1. The Terminal

Although Ubuntu is praised as completely desktop-ready from time to time, you’re not going to avoid to use the terminal one time or another, so you might as well get to know it.

When you look around for help about a specific topic, you will typically be told to write some lines. Now where exactly that line is supposed to be written is not specified, but it is indeed the terminal you need here!

You’ll find the terminal in the menu: Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal

This information is of course trivial for mest linux-users, because they take for granted that everybody knows what the terminal is, and how to use it. Nevertheless I remember first time with Ubuntu trying to install Opera and not having a clue about what to do with the line: "dpkg -i opera.deb"… Where the hell was I supposed to write that? In my browser window?

Well, now I know, and I’ve learned that the terminal, though old-fashion as it might seem, is a valuable tool when using linux.

It might seem frightening at first but you might just end up liking it in the end!

2. Ubuntu-Guide

One case where basic knowlegde of the terminal will come in handy is when you want to use the Ubuntu-Guide. It can be found here: http://UbuntuGuide.org

The guide is what compares to a Ubuntu f.a.q. of immense proportions. Here will be answers to most of your questions in the first many days after you’ve installed Ubuntu. Go ahead, bookmark it and I’ll bet three good sheep that you’ll need it sooner or later.

For many of the guide’s solutions you will need to use the terminal. Why not just take some screenshots, you might ask but the answer is that in the end it’s both faster and easier for you to copy and paste some simple commands into the terminal. With this method you’ll be sure that you do exactly what the guide is trying to make you do, and don’t misinterprent the information provided.

FYI you paste in the terminal by pressing shift+insert

3. Easy-Ubuntu

The guide will probably solve most of your problems, but there is an easier way to get some of the more common things fixed. Easy Ubuntu (which you can find here: http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/) is a comfortable way to get rid of common annoyances.

Take for example codecs for playing normal proprietary media-formats. Ubuntu doesn’t provide them automatically when installed because they aren’t ‘free’ as in ‘free software’. This task isn’t especially tedious in dapper, but with Easy-Ubuntu it’s just this much easier that it makes Easy-Ubuntu worthwhile to install.

Besides, Easy-Ubuntu does a lot of other nifty things for you, so don’t hesitate to go and get it!

4. Ubuntu Wiki

In case you want more specific instructions than the Ubuntu-guide provides you, you might wan’t to take a look at the Ubuntu Wiki, located here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/

The wiki includes detailed descriptions on a vast number of topics, that will give you a lot more help than just the command you need to run.

For example https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RestrictedFormats has helped my a lot when installing codecs and flashplayer, while https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OperaBrowser has been a great help installing the opera browser.

Look around a little, and I guarantee you learn something.

5. The Ubuntu forums

In case neither the guide nor the wiki is capable of solving whatever problems you might have, and even the almight google can’t help you, there is only one thing to do. Visit the fora.

You’ll find the fora here: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/

But before you go ahead and ask your questions, be sure to search any relevant forum first, to see if someone else has asked the same question. If not, then go ahead. The ubuntu community is a very pleasant experience :)

A little note in the end

I wish you good luck as a new Ubuntu user. A linux based computer might be a pain at times, but I predict that before long you will miss linux every time you use a windows machine. It is worth it!

If you are looking for other english articles, look here: ifany.org/category/english/.

- Jonas