Ubuntu 20.10: System Setup and Tweaking

This is part of my Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla install. In the last post, I installed my essential applications. In this one, I’ll run through the tweaks and system setup that I did on my install.

Applications

To make AppImages work better, I installed the daemon:

cd ~/Downloads/
wget "https://github.com/AppImage/appimaged/releases/download/continuous/appimaged-x86_64.AppImage"
chmod a+x appimaged-x86_64.AppImage
./appimaged-x86_64.AppImage --install

Than, I also installed Flatpak to support those apps.

sudo apt install flatpak

Normally, I put the flatpak files in my ~/bin directory. It just picks them up from there and adds them to the menu.

Utilities

Here are some of the utilities that I use to manage or tweak the system:

• menulibre: I like to use this to add application launchers to my menu for programs that didn’t get added automatically
• 7zip: for compressing and uncompressing files
• synaptic: makes working with deb packages easier since I don’t have to remember the command-line syntax
• Gnome Tweak Tool: has some additional settings to tweak in Gnome

sudo apt install menulibre \
      p7zip-full p7zip-rar \
      synaptic \
      gnome-tweak-tool

Settings Tweaks

On the regular settings App, I made the following changes:

• Date & Time, changed the Time Format to AM/PM
• Power, turned on Show Battery Percentage
• Users, added a profile picture to my user

Then, I launched the Gnome Tweaks tool (just called “Tweaks” in the menu). I made the following changes there:

• Top Bar: checked Weekday under Clock
• Windows: unchecked Attach Modal Dialogs

Gnome Extensions

You can view Gnome Extensions from the Tweaks tool, but you can’t install them from there. Instead, you have to have a Chrome extension to install and manage from the browser. You can install the extension from the Chrome Store.

Then, you need the following package to make it work:

sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell

Then, these are the extentions I installed:

• Caffeine: tool for locking the machine from going to sleep (I used Keep Awake before, but for some reason, it isn’t working in 20.10)
• Bing Wallpaper: automatically sets the desktop background to the Bing image of the day
• Clipboard Indicator: clipboard manager allowing you to access copy/paste history
• Do Not Disturb Button: allows you to stop notifications from popping up during meetings
• GSConnect: connects my android phone to my laptop with the KDE Connect app on the phone
• Notification Alert: helps me not miss notifications
• Sound and Input Device Chooser: allows me to change which speaker/microphone the laptop uses from the system menu rather than going all the way into the settings.
• Compiz alike Windows Affect: Wobbly Windows!