33 Things to do After Fresh Installation of Elementary 5 Juno

Here comes Elementary OS 5 Juno which is built with ultimate care for better user experience. This time it comes with Linux 4.15 (based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS) which brings improved hardware support and performance. Read the official release announcement and know about the added features in details.

If you already downloaded & installed elementary Juno then I will show things to do after installing elementary OS Juno for better user experience.

Things to do after installing elementary OS Juno

1) System Update

Open the command line by clicking Applications in upper left portion of the screen, and click Terminal.
To permanently become root user, type sudo su - and enter user password you specified during installation.

$ sudo su -
[sudo] password for linoxide:
root@linoxide-VirtualBox:~#

To get a list of all packages that should be updated, enter the following command

# apt-get update
Now to do the actual update, enter
# apt-get upgrade

After you accept (‘y’) the installation, it will take a while, depending on how many packages are there to be updated.

2) Gnome Tweak

Gnome tweak is a software that you can use to customize your Gnome Desktop environment such as the icons, theme, cursor theme and many other things.

# apt-get install gnome-tweaks

3) Enable tap to click for laptop users

Some Linux systems disable the tap to click so you will need to enable it in order to use it. You can enable it by going to Applications -> system settings -> Mouse & Touchpad.

4) Enable Night light

The night light feature adapts the display settings based on your location and the time of the day which reduces the amount of blue light emitted in the evenings. You can enable it by going to Applications -> system settings -> Displays. The schedule is automatic but you can set it manually

5) Configure Networking

You can need to manually edit your network configuration. This is possible via the setting by clicking Applications -> System Setting -> Network

You can add a proxy or vpn. You can need to configure a static ip address or change the dns of your network connection. Go to the advanced setting

Now go to the IPv4 tab and choose the manual configuration. Now add the address to configure and validate

Now you will need to switch off and switch on the ethernet connection

you can see the changes took effects

6) Remote Access via SSH

To remotely connect to your server via SSH, you need to install an SSH server on your Elementary OS virtual machine.

# apt-get install openssh-server

7) LibreOffice

For a free Office alternative, install libreOffice.

# apt-get install libreoffice

After a quite lengthy installation, you will get new icons in Applications for LibreOffice Base, Cals, Draw and its other application.

8) VLC Player

The fabulous VLC player is easy to install with:

# apt-get install vlc

9) Amarok

Some people prefer to play music with Amarok music player, and it can be installed with

# apt-get install amarok

10) Audacity

One of the best audio recording and editing software on Linux is Audacity.

# apt-get install audacity

11) Thunderbird

My personal preference for mail clients on Linux as well as on Windows, Mozilla Thunderbird is available for install as well.

# apt-get install thunderbird

12) Firefox

For those of you who like Firefox web browser:

# apt-get install firefox

13) GIMP

Not really a Photoshop, but this is a fabulous graphic editing tool

# apt-get install gimp

14) FileZilla

If you need to access remote FTP connections, most of the people would recommend Filezilla.

# apt-get install filezilla

15) Skype

Skype is not available from default repositories, you need to download the installation package (.deb file) from the official download page.

# wget https://go.skype.com/skypeforlinux-64.deb

# dpkg -i skypeforlinux-64.deb

If you get errors about dependencies, and you probably will execute the following command:

# apt install -f

16) Submission Client

For great torrent client called Submission, execute:

# apt-get install transmission

17) Dropbox

For this great shared storage, go to the dropbox download page

Copy the link and download the .deb package using wget

# wget 
https://www.dropbox.com/download?dl=packages/ubuntu/dropbox_2015.10.28_amd64.deb

After you most likely encountered errors, execute the following:

# apt install -f

18) GDebi

Gdebi is a tool for installation of .deb files with automatic installation of dependencies.

# apt-get install gdebi

19) Chrome

We will use gdebi to install Google Chrome. I assume you have already installed gdebi as mentioned in the above steps.

Go to Google chrome download page and download .deb file. By default, file will go to the "Downloads" folder.

# gdebi google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

20) Archive/Compression Tools

The following command will install all major archive and compression tools.

# apt-get install rar unrar cabextract lzip lunzip arj unace p7zip-rar p7zip

21) Install Java

Java can be installed via OpenJDK or the official Oracle JDK.

via OpenJDK

The OpenJDK package is already present by default in the repositories. You will need to choose the version of java to install. Type the command

# java -version
Command 'java' not found, but can be installed with:

apt install default-jre
apt install openjdk-11-jre-headless
apt install openjdk-8-jre-headless

The default-jre package installs actually the version 10 of java. To install both the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) and Java Development Kit (JDK), we will use the command

# apt install default-jre default-jdk

You can install OpenJDK 11 

# apt install openjdk-11-jre openjdk-11-jdk

via Oracle JDK

You can choose to install it from the official Oracle JDK via the official PPA. For the latest version, Java 11 is the official version available because the version 10 reached the end of public updates and is no longer available for download in the official PPA

Java 11

Add the official repository for Java 11

# add-apt-repository ppa:linuxuprising/java

Install Java 11

# apt install oracle-java11-installer

and set it by default.

# apt install oracle-java11-set-default

Java 8

# add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
# apt install oracle-java8-set-default

The second command will install and set java8 as default

22) Video Processing Codecs

If you are going to process videos, you need codecs:

# apt-get install libavcodec-extra ffmpeg

23) Blender

You can install Blender, used for animation and 3D modeling as well

# apt-get install blender

24) Kdenlive

Kdenlive is used for video editing.

# apt-get install kdenlive

25) LibreCAD

You can also install computer-aided design (CAD) application for 2D design, similar to AutoCAD, called LibreCAD.

# apt-get install librecad

26) Ardour

With Ardour, you can record,edit and mix audio.

# apt-get install ardour

You will need to accept to grant permissions to jackd daemon.

27) Lmss

You can install LMSS, multiplatform digital audio workstation.

# apt-get install lmms

28) Snap Package

From ubuntu 16.04, Canonical introduced a new packaging system called Snap packaging for better user experience. As a user, it would be now more easy to install packages and no more hazard troubleshooting dependency issues. Its worth installing snap as many applications are now available on snap package store.

Run below commands to install snap

# sudo apt update

# sudo apt install snapd

29) Spotify

Installing Spotify is just a bit more complicated

# apt install software-properties-common
# apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 931FF8E79F0876134EDDBDCCA87FF9DF48BF1C90
# echo deb http://repository.spotify.com stable non-free | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/spotify.list
# apt-get update
# apt-get install spotify-client

If you already installed snap, then you can try installing spotify using snap

# snap install spotify

30) Wine

If all these programs do not satisfy your needs, and you still need a Windows version of some program, you can install Wine, which lets you run native Windows programs under Elementary OS.

Luckily, Wine is already installed on Elementary OS.

31) Install Atom

Atom is an advanced open source text and source code editor useful for programmers. It is built on Electron and developed by GitHub You can install the latest stable release

# wget https://github.com/atom/atom/releases/download/v1.30.0/atom-amd64.deb  
# dpkg -i atom-amd64.deb

or

Using snap package

# snap install atom --classic

For first time installing a snap app, you may need to restart and then launch the editor from Start menu.

When a new release is out, install updates via command line

# snap refresh atom

Now you can run your tool

32) Install PPA

It's interesting to install the software-properties-common package which provides the add-apt-repository command for adding and removing PPAs. Without it, you would need to manually add and remove PPA by editing the /etc/apt/sources.list file or any files content in /etc/apt/sources.list.d

# apt install software-properties-common

33) Install flash plugin

It's important to install the flash plugin for the web browsers which are not present by default

# apt install flashplugin-installer pepperflashplugin-nonfree

Enjoy your Elementary OS 5 Juno! Please advise if any above programs installation fails in the below comments.