5 Things to do after installing Ubuntu

Update your Software Sources:

The immediate thing to do after installation is to update software sources from where you can download.Open up terminal or press Ctrl+Alt+T and then type in or copy the following command. sudo apt-get update


This requires user password that you might have provided during installation. This takes up a few minutes. All that is required is an Internet connection and some patience.

Install Media Player:

Ubuntu comes with some open source codecs but not all.So you may have to download codecs for each format. Not required. VLC to the rescue. VLC Media player is available for Windows,Linux and Mac. You can download VLC from Ubuntu software center or using command line. Open Terminal and type in the following command.

sudo apt-get install vlc

Download VLC from Ubuntu Software Center:



You can install vlc plugin for Mozilla Firefox using the following command:

sudo apt-get install mozilla-plugin-vlc

Install Google Chrome:

Ubuntu comes with Mozilla Firefox installed. Though Firefox is awesome you still miss the chrome web browsing experience.With Flash already installed and chrome sync that’s all you wan’t from a browser. Unfortunately it is not available directly from Ubuntu software center. Though you can download chromium browser which is completely open source it is not quite like Google chrome. So here is what you can do to install chrome. One way is to use command line to add repository and install from terminal.Otherwise download from Google and install the .deb package which has some dependencies and you will have to resolve it manually.

Using command line:

wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add -

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google.list'

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable

Alternatively you can download Google chrome .deb for your version of Ubuntu i.e. 32-bit or 64-bit from here: https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/ .To install Google chrome run the following command in terminal.

sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb

This might show some unmet dependencies. You can install any package using sudo apt-get install . Some of the common dependencies are libgconf and libxss1.

sudo apt-get -f install libgconf2-4 libxss1

Ubuntu Restricted Extras:

Install Ubuntu restricted extras from Ubuntu software center or using command-line.This includes audio & video codecs,Adobe flash plugin,fonts and unrar (for opening compressed archives).

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

Online Accounts:

With Ubuntu 12.10 you can integrate your Desktop with online accounts. Integrate your applications with Gmail,Facebook,Twitter,Yahoo,identi.ca,Foursquare,Windows Live and many more. Update statuses, receive notifications, search photos and share right from Desktop. Search for Online Accounts and provide the necessary details.