XubuntuSetup

This page started as a Xubutu installation log. I turned it into a public web page in case it might be helpful. The computer is working well.

Preparation

The computer is a Fujitsu Lifebook T1010 touchscreen Laptop with

  • Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 CPU @ 2.4GHz
  • 2GB RAM
  • 120GB Hard Drive

This computer is vintage 2008. It was running OK, but losing its "zip", when Windows XP's life ended earlier this month (April, 2014). Here's hoping Linux can breathe some new life into it.

Xubuntu is a "lighter weight, highly efficient and optimized" build of Ubuntu that uses the minimalist Xfce destop environment instead of Canonical's (unpopular) Unity desktop environment.

14.04 LTS is a long-term support release. It will be supported until 2019.

{Release day for Xubuntu 14.04 LTS is right around... tomorrow(!), so I downloaded the Daily Build of Xubuntu. The image is called trusty-desktop-amd64.iso but i renamed it to xubuntu-trusty-daily-29140416-amd64.iso so it is identifiable.}

Download the current Xubuntu .ISO file (choose your country under Mirror Downloads) and use that. These days the 64-bit version (e.g. xubuntu-14.04-desktop-amd64.iso) is almost always the right choice unless you have extremely limited hardware.

I've all but given up on writing my .ISO images to CD/DVD optical media. Instead I use the Rufus bootable-USB-drive utility and write the image to a USB memory device, which is much easier and more reliable.

Installation from .ISO Image

Boot the system from the USB drive. At the "Welcome" screen

 Select English and "Install Xubuntu"

At the "Preparing to install Xbuntu" screen

 Check everything
  Computer has everything the install recommends
  Check to the two optios so everything is checked
   Download updates while installing
   Install third-party software
 Continue

At the "Installation type" screen

 Choose "Something else"
 Continue

Partition the 120GB hard drive

  /boot   300MB  primary  ext3
  <swap>  3GB    primary  <swap>
  /       10GB   logical  ext4
  /home   40GB   logical  ext4
  /backup 50BG   logical  ext4
  <none>  16.7GB unallocated
 Install

At the "Where are you" screen

 Set the time zone
 Continue

At the "Keyboard layout" screen

 Choose English (US) / English (US)
 Continue

At the "Who are you" screen

 Set the Name, Username, Password, and Computer's name
 Require password, Don't log in automatically, don't encrypt home folder
 Continue

At the "Welcome to Ubuntu 14.04" screen

 Installation takes a while

At the "Installation Complete" screen

 Restart Now

First boot

Xfce lookes nice and clean. In the past Xfce certainly wasn't something you could "show the CEO", but it looks pretty respectable now.

Clean up Desktop a bit

 Move Trash icon to lower-right
 Remove the File System icon
  Settings -> Desktop -> Icons

Start Firefox and configure it

 Tools-Options (Windows)
 Edit-Preferences (Linux)
  Privacy 
   Tell sites I do not want to be tracked
   Use customs settings for history
    Keep cookies until I close Firefox
    Clear history when Firefox closes
  Security
   Uncheck Remember passwords for sites
  Advanced
   General - Warn me when websites try to redirect or reload
   Data Choices - Uncheck Health Report and Crash Reporter
 View - Toolbars - Bookmarks Toolbar
 Tools - Add-ons - Extensions
  AdBlock Plus - Blocks most ads (Adblock Edge also blocks Google ads)
  Context Search - Expands the context menu's 'Search for' item
  Ghostery - Privacy add-on to display and block web trackers
   Block all trackers / Block all cookies
   Advanced settings
    Dismiss alert bubble after 3 seconds
    Block new elements by default
    Delete Flash and Silverlight cookies on exit
  NoScript - Extra-protective script-blocker (breaks sites - advanced users only!)
 Add SSL Search Bar add-ons
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/collections/sslsearch/ssl-search-bar-add-ons/

To be continued [...]

Partition Choices Explained

In the past I would create a lot of separate partitions when installing Linux. I did it for very good reasons, some of which probably no longer apply. :-)

Now it seems reasonable to separate only /home, /boot, and a swap partition. Keeping /boot separate ext3 partition adds a small margin of safety. Keeping /home separate allows it to persist if the OS is reinstalled.

I also create a /storage partition. /storage can be used for backups and for shared storage among multiple users on the system ("shared documents"). Files on the /storage partition remain intact if the OS is reinstalled.

I habitually leave some unallocated space, in this case only a small amount (16.7GB). That space can be used for something that might not be anticipated just now.

The partition sizes were carefully considered. Here's a brief summary of why the size of each partition was chosen:

 300MB boot partition is very large
 3GB swap is huge and probably won't be used.
 10GB / (root not /root) partition is also ample
 40GB /home is ample local storage
 50GB /storage is plenty for to hold e.g. system recovery data
Page last modified on June 07, 2014
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