Senior author, Open Source enthusiast.

Thursday, May 18, 2023 at 15:56

What To Do After Installing Ubuntu 23.04 Lunar Lobster

This is a collection of useful suggestions, tips and tricks for you to do for the first time after installing your computer with Ubuntu 23.04. We have been traditionally published similar collections like this with Jammy Jellyfish, Kinetic Kudu and now Lunar Lobster and we worked hard to make them easy for beginners to follow. We hope this will help you a lot.

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1. Software Update

First: sudo apt-get update

Second: sudo apt-get upgrade

Third: sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Open up Terminal and run three command lines above one after another. It will take you some amount of time and some hundred MBs of data. Once finished, computer will ask you to restart so please restart. Now your Ubuntu box is ready to work. You can read our recommended apps and games in the end of this article.

2. Multimedia Playback

Ubuntu, like Fedora, does not play MP4 or MP3 multimedia by default. To fix this, play any MP4 video you have -> Videos player will show -> click 'Find Codecs in Software' button -> click 'Install' to FFmpeg codec option -> installed -> you can play it now. If in any case you cannot do that, simply run sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-libav in Terminal. See below a yummy croquette recipe video (Thank you Chef Devina!) playing on Ubuntu.

3. Tiling

We like gTile, it makes our desktop quarter tile once again and that's productive. See section 1 above for the picture. Follow this tutorial to get gTile works on your Ubuntu.

4. File Manager Convenience

Automount: it's not productive to mount (click) every disk every time. Let's make it automatic like in Windows. Run Disks from Activities menu and follow our automount tutorial. As a result, your work will be easier.

Bookmarks: run Files -> open your favorite folder -> press Ctrl+D -> bookmark added to the left -> repeat this for any other favorite folder you have. As a result, your workflow will be faster. See picture below.

(Files with automount enabled and 3 bookmarks to left panel)

5. Desktop shortcuts

Drag and drop your apps or your documents onto desktop area. That will create shortcut icons. You should note that apps should be taken from /usr/share/applications. Yes, you can do it now in Ubuntu 23.04. See below some of our favorite apps, books and folder are there.

Recommended Apps and Games

After finishing section 1 above, you can install most of these using Software or Terminal to start with Ubuntu:

Scrcpy - Screen Copy, a visual remote control for Android phone. See first picture above for demonstration. See tutorial to use it.

Inkscape - an illustrator program.

KeePassXC - a password manager everyone should have.

Xonotic - a beautiful and futuristic 3D shooting game with single as well as multiplayer modes.

Super Tux Kart - a funny 3D racing game you can play with your kids.

UBlock Origin - an adblocker on Firefox that is very useful to remove ads, save bandwidth, and good for your privacy.