9 Things To Do After Installing Elementary OS 5.0 Juno

World Opensource
6 min readMar 2, 2019

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If you are considering migrating from Windows or Mac to Linux, you need to have a reason to stick around. You will be requiring an Operating system which is beginner friendly, fairly stable and looks decent. Now there’s plenty of Distribution(OS) available in the world of Linux. However, as a newcomer, I would like to suggest you Elementary OS.

Elementary OS perfectly matches with the above-mentioned obligations. The team behind this distribution are active and have a clear vision to make this OS one of it’s kind. For more information about this amazing distribution, kindly visit the official page here.

The official page

I have been using this amazing OS as my daily driver for quite a long time and today I will be sharing some of the best things you should/ need to do after installing Elementary OS. Though the tweaks and changes fairly depend on the person’s personal requirement, however, I am quite confident that this article will help you to find something that you have maybe missed earlier.

1. Update your system

This is the first and foremost step you have to perform after installing any Linux distribution. This procedure will offer you update all the files and packages in the repository as per the latest one. You will be get notified when the updates arrive from the software “AppcCemter”. Or you can use the Terminal to update your system. Here is the command:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

The update is here!

2. Get access to PPA

I want to be clear at this point, the devs from Elementary OS doesn’t like the installation of software from PPA, so to get things moving you need to do a little tweak. If you still don’t know what a PPA is, a little bit of research will help you gain the answer. Well, let’ go to the tweak and this one quite simple. Open your terminal and use this command:

“sudo apt-get install software-properties-common”

And you are good to go!

Installing software-properties-common

3. Tweak Elementary OS

If you are looking to tweak your elementary OS, Elementary Tweaks is the best, easy to use tool you can rely on. Again, the developer team doesn’t endorse the use of tweak tool, however, it’s not a crime! I have been using this tool for almost 2 years now and never faced any issue. With this tool, you can add window control button, increase or decrease animation speed, increase the output volume to max and many more. So how you install this awesome tool? Well here is the command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:philip.scott/elementary-tweaks

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install elementary-tweaks

The Tweaks Tool

4. Install Basic Tools

Few Apps you must have no matter what your OS is, and by using the terminal you can get those Apps within minutes. Here are a few Apps you need to have to start your journey:

Office Suite: sudo apt-get install libreoffice

Media Player: sudo apt-get install vlc

Browser: sudo apt-get install firefox

Image editor: sudo apt-get install gimp

5. Install Apps from Appcenter:

All the paid apps which are listed in Appcenter can be installed for free. However, your support will help the developer to work on their App more so, in the end, you will have the latest feature and bug-free experience. Kindly donate as much as you can to the developers so things can go on……

Ready to install some goodies!

6. Get Mac like Icon Zoom Effect in Plank

Icon zoom effect like Mac doesn’t come out of the box in Elementary OS. If you love that effect, here is the command you are looking for:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/docky

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

Once the update is completed, reboot the machine or kill plank then press ctrl+right click to go to preference and there you will have the icon zoom effect.

ZoooooooooM

7. Always on Numlock:

Don’t want to press the “Numlock” button every time you restart the PC? Well, the good thing about opensource is your imagination is the limitation. Open file manager as root, go to /usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/40-io.elementary.greeter.conf.
Open the file with your favorite text editor and paste “greeter-setup-script=/usr/bin/numlockx on” at the last.
That’s it. You don’t have to think about Numlock again!

Always on Numlock

8. Keep Backup:

If you are new, after getting this much flexibility, it is certain that you would love to try new things, and with that, you can face a few problems here and there. Now you can always take your query to the respective forum and I am quite sure they will help you. Like they did to me. However, how about taking care of a few things about yourself? To do that, timeshift is the app! This app will take your system backup and whenever you face any serious issue, launch the App and you will know what to do! Here’s how you will get the App.

sudo apt-add-repository -y ppa:teejee2008/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install timeshift

9. App Recommendation

There’s plenty of great Apps available in the Elementary AppCenter, and here are some of the recommended Apps that will enhance your computing experience.

Monitor- Display usage of system resources, filter and manage processes.

Agenda- “A task manager to help you keep track of the tasks”.

Fondo- “Find a variety of the most beautiful wallpapers from Unsplash”.

Quilter- “Focus on your writing and write beautiful solid stories with the Focus Mode in tow in this Markdown editor”. ( Typing here!)

Screencast- “A simple screen recorder”.

Memories- “A very fast image viewer designed extra for large local libraries”.

Melody- “A very fast music player designed extra for large local libraries which also supports online radios and downloading album covers”.

Bookworm- “Read the books you love without having to worry about the different format complexities like epub, pdf, mobi, cbr, etc”.

Torrential- “A speedy, no-frills torrent client. Comes with a sane set of default options and none of the overwhelming information you don’t need”.

The AppCenter

There you go. Things to do to have a great Elementary OS experience. Was it helpful? Do you think I have missed something? Want to add something in this post? Kindly let me know.

P.S: As this is my first post I would love to know your feedback, from any prospect. Hit me with that!

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