How to Install Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark

It has been a while since I have done one of these but I find it helpful to actually see the steps put in order and maybe someone else will as well (it has been a while since I have done any posts). I have distro-hopped around to many flavors but I still keep coming back to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 17.10 is out and here is how it looks to install it fresh on a new system. I'm not going to really explain the options as they are fairly self-explanatory. This is what I did, but feel free to choose what you want on your system.

Step 1 - Welcome

Step 2 - Preparing

Step 3 - Installation Type Options

Step 3 Confirmation

Step 4 - Where are you?

Step 5 - Keyboard Layout

Step 6 - Who are you?

Step 7 - Installing

Step 8 - Reboot

Step 9 - Fresh Desktop Ubuntu 17.10 install

Now that you have a fresh install of Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark, you can begin customizing it to your needs. If you have any trouble installing this feel free to head to the documentation.

First thoughts of 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin

It has been a while since I have done any writing on Ubuntu tips, but I figured that now was a good time as any to get back into it. To be quite honest the new Unity interface really turned me off for Ubuntu, but with some changes that have taken place you can always use something else like Kubuntu or one of the other derivatives that are made.

Of course whenever there is a new release of Ubuntu it is best to check out the release notes for your specific version. As a system administrator it has served me well to have this habit since there could be information in the release notes that will inform about major package upgrades that could break existing functionality.

So far I like the improvements to the desktop interface Unity. Since I use this on a EEEpc, it is not exactly the fastest laptop out there. One of the problems with Unity when it first came out was that it so extremely slow for my laptop to the point it was unusable. They definitely have made some performance improvements. The whole right sidebar is still taking some getting used to, but I think I will come to like it.

One other piece of software that I have noticed is Quickly. Now I had actually used it before but that was back in its infancy as well and it was not nearly as polished as it is now. Although it deserves a post of its own (it will get one soon), I've been using it and have found it to be pretty good for developing apps for Ubuntu. Only downside I've seen so far is that even though there is a possibility for cross-platform development there doesn't seem to be any work done so far. Hopefully this will change in the future as cross-platform development is a huge plus for me since in a single day I will use Windows, Mac, and Linux.

More to come soon and if you want a certain software discussed or need help then let me know in the comments. Thanks for reading.

Install Komodo Edit 6 on Natty

Just wanted to give a quick update on how to install the latest Komodo Edit on the latest Ubuntu. Its been a while since I posted the last article about Komodo Edit and it needed a quick refresh.

• The packages for Linux can be found here. Download the appropriate package for whether you have 32-bit or 64-bit.
• Use either the GUI to extract the contents or

tar -xvzf Komodo-version-platform.tar.gz

• In your terminal, or open a terminal if you haven't already, change to the new directory

cd Komodo-version-platform

• Run the install script. I had to use sudo before the script to get it to install.

sudo ./install.sh

• Go through and answer all of the installer prompts
• Once the installer finishes you will need to add Komodo Edit to your PATH. Personally I like the symlink method, but it does require root/sudo access.

ln -s /bin/komodo /usr/bin/komodo

Two caveats that I have found is that you probably should not install to the default because it will only work for root or if you sudo. I went ahead and installed to /opt/komodo, but you could install wherever you like to install your non-package maintained software. Second, the installer actually tells you to make the symbolic link in /usr/local/bin but I have found that is not in the default PATH of the users (though it could be added). Other than that it is pretty straight forward. Let me know if you all find any other pain points.

Replace Unity Interface

I know I am not alone when I say that I don't like the new unity interface. I am using the Ubuntu Netbook Edition on my Asus EEEpc and my biggest complaint is that it is too slow. I like the idea of a better interface, but they have a long way to go to make it usable. Until then I will be sticking with the standard GNOME interface which is still included to use. I am going to show you how to change the default session to be the regular desktop session.

• Open the Login Screen Settings dialog box.
• Change the bottom dropdown box to be Ubuntu Desktop Edition as the default session (you can see I already have mine changed). You may need to press the Unlock button and supply your password to be able to change this setting.

•  You should just be able to log out and back in and then you will get the familiar GNOME desktop.

This will not actually remove Unity from your installation so at what time you think you might want to use it again you could. I've read a few posts that take you through the steps to remove it, but I don't see it necessary since it can be easily disabled through the login screen.

Install Cherokee from PPA

Lately I've been researching different options for web servers and I've been keeping my eye on Cherokee. I've been watching it for some time and have seen that the project is very active, but so far I haven't tried it out. After checking that the Ubuntu repositories did not contain the latest version Cherokee I decided to look for a PPA. Thankfully there is an up to date PPA with packages for all the latest distributions of Ubuntu. Here are the steps that got me set up on Ubuntu 10.04:

1. Add the PPA to our sources.list. If you are running 9.10 and above you can run this command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cherokee-werbserver/ppa

But if you are running 9.04 or lower you will need to add them manually:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/cherokee-webserver/ppa/ubuntu UBUNTU_VERSION main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/cherokee-webserver/ppa/ubuntu UBUNTU_VERSION main

2. Now update sources and install Cherokee. It is only necessary to install cherokee. The other two packages are for SSL and server statistics respectively.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cherokee libcherokee-mod-libssl libcherokee-mod-rrd

Once apt-get finishes you should have a fully functioning Cherokee web server. If you fire up your browser and head over to http://IP_ADDRESS_OF_MACHINE/ (e.g. http://localhost/ if you you are using the same machine that you installed on). You should be greeted with the Cherokee default page which is slightly more informative than Apache's "It Works."

Now you are of course wondering how to configure Cherokee right? Well apparently you really shouldn't have to edit configuration files by hand (see picture last paragraph). There is a very well put together web application distributed with Cherokee called cherokee-admin. This webapp can be deployed by opening a terminal and launching this command:

sudo cherokee-admin &

This will launch the webapp and give you the username, password, and URL with which you can access it. It is meant to be launched only when you need it for security and performance reasons. That was as far as I got with my install of Cherokee, but I will be trying out Drupal, Wordpress, and other CMS systems with it to see how well it performs.

Eclipse Install with Lucid

I am merely posting this to give a quick update to the process for installing Eclipse with Lucid. It seems that the Ubuntu repositories have finally caught up with the latest release of Eclipse so there is no need to download the package off of the Eclipse website. Just a few terminal commands will do it:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install eclipse

This should work quite well and it will install Eclipse SDK 3.5.2. You can then proceed as usual with your normal set-up and install of plugins with Eclipse. Enjoy!

Using Appcelerator Titanium with Ubuntu

As anyone can tell by reading other posts in this blog, I am a programmer and I try and use various programming languages and methods all the time. I found Titanium a few months ago and started using it when it was only version 0.7. It has matured very quickly since then and it makes for an interesting platform to develop on. To describe it in a just a sentence it allows for crossplatform desktop application development using only HTML and Javascript. You can also use PHP, Python, and Ruby, but you don't have to. There is also a mobile development side that works quite well also. For a full desciption of what it can do head over to Appcelerator.com.

Follow these steps to install for Ubuntu 9.10:

1. Navigate to Appcelerator.com and click download Titanium.
2. Click on the link to download either 32-bit or 64-bit Linux. If you are unsure just use the 32-bit.
3. Extract the archive and put the extracted folder anywhere you want. Personally I have a folder where I keep any downloaded programs in my home folder.
4. There is an executable file called "Titanium Developer" inside of the extracted that you can then run and follow the directions to install it. I usually choose to install it into my home folder because I had problem with installing it anywhere else.
5. The last thing you may want to do is create a shortcut either on the desktop or in the menu so you can easily start Titanium Developer. This can be done with the alacarte program.

Go ahead and start creating your desktop programs, and relish in the fact that you did not have to use any other language besides the ones you already use for web development.