10 Fun and Necessary Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu 20.04

After Ubuntu 20.04 released and you installed it, here is the list of suggestions to do from UbuntuBuzz.com. You will find here five sections discussing activities around Ubuntu system using only built-in applications; they are: taking care about visual, settings, remote desktop, applications, and Official Flavors. All pictures below are in high resolution albeit they might look small so click one to display it in full size. I tried several things different at this chance and I hope this traditional article helps everyone getting started with Ubuntu. Cheers!

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1. Taking Care of Your Screen

[ Resolution ] [ Appearance ] [ Language ] [ Launchers ]



Lower resolution consumes lower battery power and easier on hardware resource. To reduce your current display resolution, select between resolution options such as 800x600 or 1024x768 should be sufficient for today's computers.



Now Ubuntu Focal includes Appearance changer to switch between white, black, and standard themes aside from autohide, and turning the left panel position and icon size.



You can place shortcut icons ("launchers") of applications, folders, documents, and other files on wallpaper area.

For language other than English such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, etc. there is Language Support you can access from System Settings > Regions > Language Support > and then install language you wish and apply to system wide.

2. Taking Care of Your System

[ Volume ] [ Microphone ]

Test your voice input volume. This is essential if you are a teacher teaching with video conference. You can help yourself by having GNOME Sound Recorder application to record your own voice.


[ Disks ] [ Disk Usage Analyzer ] [ Automount ]



Disks (gnome-disks) application is the central of disk drive management in Ubuntu. You can see your partition map in it –which something you cannot see with Ubuntu Files–. You can later make a partition automounted –see next section–.



Disk Usage Analyzer (baobab) is something like Xinorbis Disk Examiner on Windows which ranks folders size and also visualizes them in beautiful chart. This application is always included in Ubuntu since very long time. Among the purposes is to see which folders eats up disk space the most on your Home.



Automount is what you enjoy to have all partitions opened since startup time without you individually clicking them first –similar to your experience with Windows–. This enables you to quickly access all your bookmarks on Ubuntu Files left panel. To make a partition or drive automounted, use Disks application and activate Mount at system startup option.

[ Default Apps ] [ Power Management ]



Change default application to open PNG to Shotwell instead of Image Viewer: right-click a photo > Properties > Open With > select Shotwell instead of other apps > Set as default > try to open PNG once again. This scheme is applicable to any other file format against any other application.



Save your battery power by going to System Settings > Power and determine time as short as possible to suspend.

3. Taking Care of Other Computer

[ Remmina ] [ DejaDup ]

You can control your MS Windows computer with Remmina Remote Desktop Program –it represents as the TeamViewer of Ubuntu–. Not only that, for you working as sysadmin Remmina can also connect via secure shell to your server. Alternatively, instead of using remote desktop protocol (rdp), it also can connect using virtual network computing protocol (vnc).

You can backup your current 20.04 system and store it on another computer or your local network storage system thanks to DejaDup Backup Tool.

4. Taking Care of Your Applications

[ Repository ] [ Reload ] [ Disabling Things ]

Ubuntu installs all applications from a central source in the internet called repository. Fortunately, there are many repositories available locally in almost all countries worldwide and perhaps you are nearer to a local repository than to original one in the United Kingdom. For example, as I live in Indonesia the Indonesia University at Jakarta repository is of course nearer and faster to me than the any repository at United States. I change my repository from the original one to my local one. To do so, open the application named Software & Updates.

After changing it to nearby repository, do reload command line and once finished you can use Ubuntu Software Center to install apps.

$ sudo apt-get update

By disabling things above I mean disable automatic updates completely if your internet connection is very limited or expensive or simply if you feel it annoying. You can do that under the Updates tab by turning all updates into Never. Nevertheless, you can still do every updates manually by command lines.



[ Firefox ] [ Ads Blocker ] [ Security ] [Startpage.com]

Ubuntu Focal ships with Firefox 75 plain and blank. To enhance your privacy and security, install must-have addons, uBlock Origin and HTTPS Everywhere, respectively to block advertisements & online trackers, and force encrypt every of whole of your browser connections.



Once you got aware about 2013 Global Surveillance, when you use Mozilla Firefox you realized that the default search engine is still Google. Change it to Startpage.com and make it default instead. This way, every time you search you will always use Startpage instead of Google.

5. Collecting Other Official Variants

[ Transmission ] [ All Download Links ]

Lastly, Ubuntu has seven siblings they are Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Budgie, and lastly Ubuntu Kylin. They are all fun operating systems, available gratis, free/libre and open source software, and awesome to try out. The fun thing is to download them using torrent way instead of normal one. Follow the tutorial here so you can do high speed downloading using the built-in Transmission application. Enjoy your new journey!

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