What do YOU do to a fresh instal to "customize" it for YOU???

[rec9140]

I am going to start this off with a preface and note; This is NOT a post to debate the pros and cons of any actions be it removing x, or adding x! (Hey a pun too!) Period. You can guess the package(s) I am referring to!
This is a DISCUSSION to see what others do to customize their new installs. To meet their needs....YES some of these are very very VERY PERSONAL CHOICES for well, reasons.. This is not about the reasons why, good or bad. I got my reasons why I do things, you got yours. You don't most likely agree with my choices on removes/adds, etc.. Not the point here.

I think this makes the point to keep the rhetoric on point.

The backstory to all this is that over the past 5-6 may be more years there has been more and more and more that I need to change from the base install. Some of these changes leave me scratching my head, some are rooted in the reasons I mentioned above.

I am working to a goal here which is to create a SCRIPT, likely a BASH script to do all this stuff I have to do to a base install to get it back to "normal." This is true since 26.04 is likely to be the LAST HURRAH for me and the sheer number of machines I've got to update, and the time to do that is well daunting to say the least.

BUT

I am curious as to what others do to a FRESH INSTALL to customize for YOU?! Why? Curiosity - how far off the deep end am I? A: Probably very very far! , discussion, and maybe there is stuff I am missing to tweak.

Things I do:

DM change - LightDM as I require XDMCP - Did this since the demise of KDM and KDM 2.0 , not an option - see above.

Install Xserver-Xephyr for the above

NEW: Reinstall X11 - remove wayt**** I am BRUTE FORCE REMOVING THIS. As the proper way will nuke the desktop, ask me how I know!? NO I don't want it laying around. A little sudo rm on stuff and bye bye! It won't show in LightDM or work if you try it! Good riddance

NEW: chmod reboot/shutdown so it REQUIRES sudo on local use - shakes head.

Disable ALL automatic updates of any thing. No thanks. See above.

Desnap everything and block any snap installs

Reinstall firefox via DEB
-Lots of firefox customizations ie: ad block, cookie eaters etc.. not sure that any of that is scriptable.. sigh...

Disable power saving -

Revert to PROPER 24H time on digital clock in taskbar and lockscreen and LightDM

NEWish - Fix dmesg to NOT need sudo. Nope, don't agree on this one.

RESTORE Unix mouse click ie: SINGLE CLICK

Install openssh-server - I think I know the reason why and meh.. again, see above.. Just a statement of I disagree, nothing more.

Install krfb - krdc is installed? but krfb is not Ummmmm.. ok...

Install the basic netools package for DNS stuff etc.. this is sort like KRFB.. these were there in the past. NO I don't subscribe to the less is more on the ISO.. I been on the "wrong" side of this debate since Knoppix and doing ISDN DL's. so..

Install synaptic - even though it appears its still borqd for the proper search mode - Although I thought that was addressed doesn't seem to have propagated... sighhh.

Install various SDR related packages for systems which do it.

Set Konsole to have its profile transparent for.

NEW: install btop - nice little enhancement.

NEW: I am possibly adding KVM support packages to this, but I have issues in re networking on KVM ie: bridge and possibly X11 issues ie: XDMCP in a VM.... If I can't resolve them, then KVM is not an option. I may have a solution in one, networking but its a kludge I find not needed, ie: 2nd LAN card. Ran into a snag on the box I wanted to test this with, and have to try on something else (its a box itself issue, its weird honestly). I'd really love to use KVM in place of VBOX, I ditched VMW a long time ago, and the last nonsense with them sealed their demise....

Things I'd love to do, but have not found them since KDE 4!

RESTORE the GLORIOUS COLOR OF KDE3 ! I have a box that still used KDE 3 (This one will be a casualty as I have a replacement for it built) and the startup screen and the bouncing icons, and the BEAUTIFUL COLORS of the taskbar v. the Gulag Theme of KDE 4 and since??!? Good grief.. bland. bland bland. I've tried every "theme" I can find to try to get the vibrant KDE look back.. I finally gave up.. Gulag it is. This I've never gotten.

SO whats YOUR MUST HAVE tweaks for a fresh install (remember keep the first graf in mind! Some reasons is fine, arguing over the pros/cons of a package or choice is NOT!)

[Snowhog]

NEW: install btop - nice little enhancement.

That's kinda sweet!

[jlittle]

I've customized my desktop a lot, and the last time I started from a clean install it took weeks before things were in shape. The overarching practice is to make notes of every change, though some of them cover a lot, like, for example, "restore dot files", or "rebuild vim with my changes".

I've got some scripts I use all the time that use X11 tools, that aren't easy to port because wayland says "don't do that". Like, "start a blue konsole? if the blue konsole is already running raise and switch to it". In principle kwin scripting will, at least one day, do what I want but that's a steep learning curve.

[claydoh]

This is a DISCUSSION to see what others do to customize their new installs. To meet their needs....YES some of these are very very VERY PERSONAL CHOICES for well, reasons.. This is not about the reasons why, good or bad. I got my reasons why I do things, you got yours. You don't most likely agree with my choices on removes/adds, etc.. Not the point here.

But then:

NEW: Reinstall X11 - remove wayt**** I am BRUTE FORCE REMOVING THIS. As the proper way will nuke the desktop, ask me how I know!? NO I don't want it laying around. A little sudo rm on stuff and bye bye! It won't show in LightDM or work if you try it! Good riddance

Just sayin' it sort of invites.....debate lol, not that (m)any of us here will get into that too much.


I don't think I do tons, But it depends on the computer:

Main PC
KDE neon (latest Plasma but is very minimal)
Install a few things:
yakuake, mc, virt-manager, openssh-server, htop, tailscale
Chrome and Chromium.
Timeshift (for BTRFS filesystem snapshots, not their file-based rsync recovery thingy)
filelight, Libreoffice, my VP client
Kontact (because I am a masochist??)
Steam, Kisak PPA (mesa),

It already has remote desktop installed, via krdp and freerdp, which works very well here on my local network, compared to krfb/vnc and is integrated into Plasma. Kubuntu 26.04 does not seem to include it by default, but I have not checked in recently.

Add my wallpapers, add my favorite Plasma Style (not a whole global theme), add the Panel Colorizer widget
move my main panel to be vertical and fit-to-contents and in the 'middle' of my dual monitor setup

After that I add or install things as I find I need them. I realized I haven't used Gimp in close to two years now (??)
I add a couple of other PPAs for things like qbittorrent, Openshot, OBS as needed.

I did use Intel's PPA for the Arc B580 GPU, but I am still not sure if that was necessary, except for LLM work.
ooh, I forget, ray tracing needs this.

I set up Kup backup for my various file backup schemes for versioned and synced options, sent to different drives
Install and set up rclone for cloud storage of some of those backups.

Add a second activity used primarily for email and messaging, and will add new Activities if a job or project fits such a use case.

Secondary PC
Kubuntu 24.04 standard install
Mostly stock in appearance.
Add yakuake openssh krfb mc htop tailscale docker podman
Enable Flatpak.
Wallpaper
VPN, qbittorrent (flatpak because the latest version that supports the Qt version is noticeably slower/lacks as many peer connections than the current)

And at the moment this finicky beast of a thing for ripping the 1000s of DVDs the mrs has.
Jellyfin via podman for serving those shows and movies until I get my NAS PC shipped overseas ($$$)
I was using the snap for Jelly which was super easy to setup and use, but I decided to move to docker since the ripping system uses it, then to podman but I don't remember why. I like Podman over Docker for my uses, but the ripper doesn't seem to like it, or more likely I have no clue what I am doing here

I will upgrade this to 26.04 as soon as I can, there is no reason for me to keep using Plasma 5.


I am sure I am missing a lot of stuff, but even for "gaming" purposes I do very little.

[skyfishgoo]

first thing i do is install timeshift and set it up to put snapshots onto a separate drive from where my OS is located.

[rclarksworld]

This is the script I run on 26.04 after installation and updating to get started:

#!/bin/bash
sudo apt update
sudo snap remove --purge firefox thunderbird
sudo snap remove --purge gtk-common-themes
sudo snap remove --purge gtk-theme-breeze
sudo snap remove --purge icon-theme-breeze
sudo snap remove --purge bare
sudo snap remove --purge gnome-46-2404
sudo snap remove --purge mesa-2404
sudo snap remove --purge core24
sudo snap remove --purge snapd
snap list
sudo systemctl disable snapd.service
sudo systemctl disable snapd.socket
sudo systemctl disable snapd.seeded.service
sudo apt autoremove --purge snapd
sudo rm -rf /var/cache/snapd
rm -rf ~/snap
sudo apt-mark hold snapd
sudo apt install kubuntu-restricted-extras flatpak default-jre linssid 7zip 7zip-rar
wget -qO - https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/npreining:/debian-ubuntu-onedrive/xUbuntu_25.10/Release.key | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/obs-onedrive.gpg > /dev/null
echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/obs-onedrive.gpg] https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/npreining:/debian-ubuntu-onedrive/xUbuntu_25.10/ ./" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/onedrive.list
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
sudo flatpak install org.mozilla.firefox org.mozilla.Thunderbird com.google.Chrome com.google.EarthPro org.kde.kdenlive org.stellarium.Stellarium org.audacityteam.Audacity fr.handbrake.ghb fr.handbrake.ghb.Plugin.IntelMediaSDK fr.handbrake.ghb.Plugin.dvdcss eu.scarpetta.PDFMixTool com.github.phase1geo.minder io.github.alainm23.planify com.pojtinger.felicitas.Sessions page.kramo.Sly org.blender.Blender org.darktable.Darktable org.gimp.GIMP org.inkscape.Inkscape net.scribus.Scribus org.remmina.Remmina com.transmissionbt.Transmission com.github.johnfactotum.Foliate com.github.xournalpp.xournalpp com.rafaelmardojai.Blanket com.obsproject.Studio org.videolan.VLC org.gnucash.GnuCash com.bitwarden.desktop​

[claydoh]

This is the script I run on 26.04 after installation and updating to get started:

What is it doing? Why are these specific packages needed, or rather what do they provide?


Why so many steps? Uninstalling snap via apt alone does most of those anyway.

You can eliminate all the steps before sudo apt autoremove --purge snapd as this command does all of them. Though the "long" way is not harmful or anything.

[Schwarzer Kater]

off topic:

[…]
Why so many steps? Uninstalling snap via apt alone does most of those anyway.

You can eliminate all the steps before sudo apt autoremove --purge snapd as this command does all of them. Though the "long" way is not harmful or anything.

Although in *Ubuntu 26.04 all these steps may not be necessary anymore, in the "earlier days" of snapd its post-removal script was not that great. IIRC it was especially between 20.04 and 22.04 (prior to 20.04 Snap was not even on my radar for desktop installations). It may also have been the case in later releases, I honestly can't remember…
Back then if you didn't remove e.g. the Chromium or Firefox Snap at first and did things in a certain order, errors occured.

Some more off topic for example:
In my "get rid of Snap" script I do all sorts of different steps (and yes: I am no "programmer" and never will be - but I try to compensate this through extensive testing and tools like ShellScript)
to a) be backwards compatible all the way to 20.04,
b) as far as possible take the peculiarities of individual releases into account and
c) inform the user that specific Snaps that could have officially been installed by the Kubuntu installation process are being removed.

I hope this will give you some kind of satisfying answer…


on topic:

• First thing for my personal installations: disable automatic updates,
• then I also follow all the steps and "bonus things" of my "important things to do after an installation" guide - with some variations like e.g. swappiness, vfs_cache_pressure and other memory values according to my individual hardware,
• also depending on hardware: modify things in e.g. /etc/modprobe.d/ and/or /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/, etc.,
• mount some local partitions,
• install a bunch of additional KDE stuff, like e.g. KTeaTime (of course!), Yakuake, Filelight, Kompare, Marble, kde-config-cron, etc., etc., etc.,
• install other software like e.g. Back In Time, TeamViewer, FileZilla, VirtualBox, net-tools, nmap, jre, Signal, Brave, etc., etc., etc.,
• install some Flatpaks like KeePassXC, GIMP, Krita, digiKam, Strawberry, Telegram, sometimes some games, etc.,
• install ssh server, samba server, set up my network,
• set up existing virtual machines and remote clients,
• install missing language components,
• install fonts, colour schemes, skins, icon sets, etc.
• set up my backups,
• set up other hardware like printers, scanners etc.,
• finally configure the rest of Plasma System Settings to my liking (e.g. enable Wobbly Windows, Magic Lamp, Eye on Screen, Fall Apart for "Closed Windows", etc. ),

… and then the "real" work begins (those first two of the final three steps take up 75% of the time for the whole installation/setup):

• configure the layout, look & feel, user interface - however you may name it - e.g. top panel and left and right side panels, Plasmoids like Advanced Radio Player, etc., etc.,etc.,
• set up all the programs and stuff (e.g. dotfiles) to my liking and necessities,
• have the 17th cup of tea & kiss my other half.

Ready to go!

[tenplus1]

- Do a minimal install.
- Disable snaps and install .deb Firefox and Steam.
- Customize desktop to my liking.
- Install extras like mpv and git.