After signing on you get a clean environment with several applications in the 'Launcher' on the left side, and set of system utilities in the upper right corner. Now the customization process begins.
- In the upper right, find the Network pull-down. The wireless network is listed, so I just click on it to connect.
- In the Launcher, Firefox is included as one of the icons. Start Firefox and restore the previously saved bookmarks. NOTE: The user interface is much like the Apple/Mac/OS X interface. That is, the frame for Firefox itself is very clean and does not contain any top bar menu. In order to find the top menu (including 'bookmarks') you need to click on the Firefox frame, then move the mouse pointer to the top bar of the entire screen. Then you'll see the menu items for Firefox. Select 'Bookmarks -> Show All Bookmarks'. Then click on that 'Library' window, go back to the top of the screen and select 'Import and Backup -> Restore -> Choose File'. Then you can find you bookmarks file on the flash drive.
- Next, try out a few of the restored bookmarks. All of the usual news sites look good.
- Use the top right System button, and select 'Software up to date'.
- The 'Update Manager' window says that 302 updates are available. Click 'Install Updates'.
- An 'Authenticate' window pops up. Enter password and click 'Authenticate'.
- An error message pops up. 'Requires installation of untrusted packages'. Click 'Close'.
- Searched Ubuntu Answers for the error. From a terminal do:
> sudo apt-get update
> sudo apt-get upgrade
See UPDATE below - The Terminal is found by clicking on the 'Dash Home' button in the launcher and typing 'terminal' in the search box.
- Click on the 'terminal' icon to start a terminal window.
- Type the above commands in the terminal window and enter your password when prompted.
- It takes quite a while to run.
- After rebooting, opened up the 'Update Manager' again. Now there are only 2 items remaining in the list. Apparently these are the ones causing problems. Just click 'Close'.
- UPDATE: Using 'sudo apt-get ...' will work around the problem, but will not fix it for next time. Instead, use the instructions here to find and use the "Select Best Server" button. Then retry updating software through the Update Manager.
Installing Adobe Flash
- Start Firefox
- Go to YouTube to view a video. This resulted in an error message that the Adobe Flash Player is needed.
- Open 'Ubuntu Software Center' from Launcher.
- Search for 'Flash'.
- Click on 'Adobe Flash plugin'.
- Click 'Install'.
- Enter password and click 'Authenticate'.
- This results in a error message: 'Failed to download package files'.
- The 'Ubuntu Software Center' has a link named Developer Web Site. Click on that.
- At the bottom of that web-page is the following information. To install, open up the Terminal and type:
> sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree - The Terminal is found by clicking on the 'Dash Home' button in the launcher and typing 'terminal' in the search box.
- Click on the 'terminal' icon to start a terminal window.
- Type the above command in the terminal window and enter your password when prompted.
- Success. Guy on a Buffalo
- Likewise, Pandora is good.
Keeping Apps in the Launcher
The terminal is a good thing to have handy in the Launcher. Keep it in the Launcher by right-clicking on the terminal icon and selecting 'Keep in launcher'. This works for any running application.
