Ubuntu-Installog

Quick guide of building usable ubuntu system. Some personal settings could be useful if you're reinstalling Ubuntu. online-> https://git.io/JLiWk :heavy_check_mark::heavy_check_mark::heavy_check_mark:

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Personal Settings

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7. change the theme with Tweaks

7.1 install tweaks and its extensions

$ sudo apt install gnome-shell-extensions gnome-shell-extension-dash-to-panel gnome-tweaks adwaita-icon-theme-full

then logout and login system or reboot.

7.2 change menu style

(extension: applications menu) Note: turn on this extension could display the app manager like windows starting menu. Here I just changed the margin of the application and hide the application’s icon and show the desktop’s button (like windows).

7.3 change the wallpaper

7.4 change the panel and put icons on the desktop

The default style of the dock is not same as Windows, and the desktop is not very important while using Ubuntu, but here the idea is to change Ubuntu looks like Windows in every detailed area, so here, we still need to do two things: put icons onto the desktop and change the original style of dock.

There are several paths that could include installed applications, which means we need to go to different folders to find those icons. The paths below are some possible locations you need to check. Then just drag out and put the icon onto the desktop. You will see these icons become files like *.desktop, don’t worry, just double-click them and click ‘Trust and Launch’, then they could change back to the normal icons.

/usr/share/applications
/var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications
~/.local/share/applications

Then we need to use Tweaks to change the panel/dock.

Open Tweaks -> Extensions 
      -> turn on the 'applications menu' 
      -> turn on the 'Dash to panel' -> open settings
            -> Location and Style
                  -> panel location -> bottom
                  -> panel size -> 45px
                  -> icons margin -> 5px
                  -> indicator -> open settings
                        -> height -> 0px (we hide it by this)
                  -> clock location -> right
                  -> task panels -> left
            -> Behaviors
                  -> turn off 'favoriate applications'
                  -> turn off 'applications icon'
                  -> turn on 'show desktop'
                  -> turn off 'cancel applications' group'

Till now, the basic theme set has been finished, and the style now is very similar (98%) to the Windows desktop. (screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/y7safc9.png)

8. unimportant changes

8.1 add support of Chinese

Go to Settings 
-> Region & Languages
    -> manage installed language
        -> if get the message of 'installed not complete' then just install
            -> click 'Install/Remove Languages' 
                -> choose Chinese then install (maybe need double-click)
            -> then in 'Language for menu and windows' 
                -> drag Chinese up to the 1st position
-> now in 'Region & Language', the Language has been changed to Chinese automatically.

Note: After reboot, System now could be displayed by Chinese. If you get the message about ‘change public folder names’ like Downloads, Pictures, Videos, then I suggest that let the system keep the old/English name, cause Chinese characters could be hard to use in terminal or code.

Note: Download the package from Browser, Linux_64-bit.deb. Then, just click the deb file and click ‘install’. If you use an old Ubuntu version, just follow this page. After that, you also need to reboot the system.

$ sudo apt install fcitx
then, go to Settings
    -> manage  installed language
        -> change the  'Input System'(default is IBus) to fictx
        -> then click  'apply system-wild'
-> Now , you'd better to reboot, then
    -> find 'keybord icon' in the task bar (default location is top-right corner)
        -> click 'configure current input method'
            -> then you could see SogouPinyin has been there. 
                 We can delete that 'Wubi' so that we just keep English and Pinyin for us.
 Now we finished all stuff. The default change-key is the single click of 'Shift'.

Note: the above three parts are not the same thing, please set them one by one. And always remember to reboot the system or you maybe can’t see the additions. If you think the panel of SogouPinyin is too small to watch, then you can modify it in its settings.

With Chinese support, we can then set more slight changes with Tweaks (screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/l5sLZwZ.png).

8.2 change screen resolution

Firstly, we need to get some specific parameters.

$ cvt 2560 1440
//the output here is what we used in xrandr below
$ xrandr -q
//check display monitors, we need to make sure the ID of the primary and second screen, here are eDP-1-1(primary) and HDMI-1-2(second). 

(just 3 lines)：

xrandr --newmode "2560x1440_55.00"  284.00  2560 2744 3016 3472  1440 1443 1448 1489 -hsync +vsync
xrandr --addmode HDMI-1-2 "2560x1440_55.00"
xrandr --output HDMI-1-2 --mode "2560x1440_55.00" --output eDP-1-1 --off

quick way :
    -> just put these 3 lines into the end of /etc/profile,
    -> then, reboot, you could find the monitor was switched by itself.

Note: the original system doesn’t support higher resolution more than 1080, so we need to add new resolution and trigger the change.

8.3 add support of Windows software

like tencent qq, or redalert2, or other applications.

Note: I found a quick way to use the wine qq in Ubuntu, even you DON’T need to install wine. To do this, you need to go to this Github page and download the *.AppImage file from its release. Then, just use two commands to run it. That’s all. this appimage includes a minimum wine inside and you just do nothing, download then use it!

$ chmod a+x TIM-x86_64.AppImage
$ ./TIM-x86_64.AppImage.AppImage

(In my machine, the appimage of QQ can’t work well with some problems about showing characters, so I just use TIM instead.)

If you want to open it by icons, then you can make a *.desktop file by yourself, then put this file into ~/.local/share/applications, after that, you can find your desktop icon in ‘applications’ (search it), right-click and add it to the favorite, then, you will find your own desktop icon appears in the dock.

Firstly, get qq.png and make your own desktop file (any path is ok, mine is Downloads/)

$ wget https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/TianZonglin/tuchuang/img/qq.png
$ vim QQ.desktop

Secondly, copy the content, save and quit.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=QQ
Exec=/home/tzloop/Downloads/TIM-x86_64.AppImage
Icon=/home/tzloop/Downloads/qq.png
Type=Application
StartupNotify=true

Then, right-click the file, in permission page -> allow it execute as application

Finally, copy it to your system applications’ folder.

$ sudo cp /home/tzloop/Downloads/QQ.desktop ~/.local/share/applications

8.4 some unessential changes with Tweaks

The default font family  (4 items) are :
    Ubuntu/11, Ubuntu Regular/11, Sans Regular/11, Ubuntu Mono Regular/13.
then I set 1-3's font family to Ubuntu Medium with the same font-szie but zoom ratio is 1.3.

8.5 other useful tools and settings

8.5.1 brightness control

I use RedShift here, other similar software like F.lux is good as well. Using RedShift is simple:

-> install it with `sudo apt-get install redshift-gtk`, gtk means visual version.
-> open location service: Settings -> Privacy -> Location service -> open. (this step is ESSENTIAL)
-> open redshift, if you can't find the icon, just search it in 'applications'.
-> then, brightness will be changed
-> finally, with its menu, you can set it open with your system.
8.5.2 vscode preferances

@theme

File -> Preferences -> Color Theme, I’d like to use Tomorrow Night Blue, which is also a kind of dark theme but could also work well in the day time.

@font

File -> Preferences -> Settings, then we use ‘search’ (search ‘font’) to locate the items that we need to change, I’d like to set these parameters by JSON format, and the programming stuff settings are as below:

{
    "terminal.integrated.fontFamily": "monospace",
    "editor.fontWeight": "600",
    "editor.fontFamily": "monospace",
    "editor.fontSize": 15.5,
    "terminal.integrated.fontSize": 12,
    "workbench.colorTheme": "Tomorrow Night Blue"
}
I like this combination, it worked very well in my 2k screen.

If you want to make the font same with vscode in Windows (specifically, it’s Consolas), then you need to install new fonts manually, you can’t use new fonts if you don’t install them at first.

$ wget https://down.gloriousdays.pw/Fonts/Consolas.zip
$ unzip Consolas.zip
$ sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/fonts/consolas
$ sudo cp consola*.ttf /usr/share/fonts/consolas/
$ sudo chmod 644 /usr/share/fonts/consolas/consola*.ttf
$ cd /usr/share/fonts/consolas
$ sudo mkfontscale && sudo mkfontdir && sudo fc-cache -fv
//check the installed fonts
$ fc-list

@terminal’s location

Just search ‘location’ in settings and change Workbench › Panel: Default Location from bottom to left, because I want to have more vertical space to read long codes while we usually don’t write long sentences/codes in lines, so it has more free horizontal space that we can settle the terminal.

@files display order in Explorer (left area)

Just search ‘explorer.sortOrder’ in settings and set it sorted by ‘type’, it’s useful for some make/cmake projects, which has a lot of *.cpp or *.o files, they’re mixed with the default setting, but it should be sorted by type so that we can have a clear group of different files.

The final view of vscode in my Ubuntu like this: (screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/g7OehEL.png)

##### 8.5.3 picgo

Everytime you want to share or publish your screenshot or othem images, then try to use PicGo. It’s a useful tool that includes many kind of image-bed, the usage of it in Ubuntu is similar to the wine qq.

Firstly, get picgo.png and make your own desktop file (any path is ok, mine is Downloads/)

$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TianZonglin/tuchuang/master/img/opic.png
$ vim QQ.desktop

Secondly, copy the content, save and quit.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=PicGO
Exec=/home/tzloop/Downloads/PicGo.AppImage
Icon=/home/tzloop/Downloads/opic.png
Type=Application
StartupNotify=true

Then, right-click the file, in permission page -> allow it execute as application
Finally, copy it to your system applications' folder.

If you want to upload images by clipboard, you need to use sudo apt install xclip to install xclip. The quick settings of Github’s image-bed are below.

repository name -> TianZonglin/tuchuang
branch name -> master
token -> get a new one from Github (Settings -> Developer Settings -> Personal access tokens)
storage path -> img/
custom domain name -> https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/TianZonglin/tuchuang
8.5.4 install and set git