The new Ubuntu 20.04 distribution is very good and well worth installing for trying out Linux for the first time or just to try a new version.
Getting started after installation is very easy. Just open up a terminal app and then run this command to get all updates installed if required.
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade |
After that command completes, we can then move on to the next part of the process.
Run this long command to install some very useful software packages.
jason@jason-virtual-machine:~$ sudo apt install mc mpv audacious ubuntu-restricted-extras ubuntu-wallpapers-* |
This will install a very nice movie player, a player for your music, and the codecs required for music playback with other music players on Ubuntu.
If this is a virtual machine in VMWare, install this package for copy-paste functionality, as well as a properly resizing desktop when running in a window.
jason@jason-virtual-machine:~$ sudo apt install open-vm-tools-desktop |
Another good tweak for Ubuntu is to put the dock on the bottom of the screen, this is very useful for saving space horizontally. Make the icon size as small as possible and then move it to the bottom of the screen. I just wish we could have it automatically shrink to fit the contents instead of being full length. That would be a very good feature.