An AI generated Numbat laying on a keyboard with the words Nodding Numbat and Ubuntu 24.04

Ubuntu 24.04 Install Notes

skp Install Help, Thinkpad P16s

Ok, all I have to say is, “I’m sorry”. I’ve been sitting on these install notes for almost a year. I’m currently writing this paragraph on my newly installed Garuda Linux on the first day of 2025. I’ve been using Ubuntu 24.04 for quite a long time, and I just can’t seem to get this article finished off and published.

I could come up with a lot of excuses, but the reality is that I have lost my focus on blogging. I’m getting pulled in too many other directions, and I haven’t had the time. Maybe I just haven’t made the time.

Excuses, you ask? Well, I could try to blame this on my mouse issues. These articles used to have “perfect installation” in the title, and this was far from it. To be fair, I don’t think any of it was Ubuntu’s fault or even the OS. I really don’t know who’s to blame, but boy, has it been frustrating. My mouse won’t click and drag reliably. Dragging a window across the screen or drawing a box in Inkscape just won’t work. I notice it constantly in screenshots. It’s hard to draw the area of the screen I want to shot, but then, when I try to draw a circle around something, I get multiple circles. It’s like it’s too tired to realize I was holding the button down the whole time.

Whose fault is it? I’ll never know. I tried all kinds of things. I blamed it initially on the dock because it only happens when the laptop is on the dock. Plugable was great help even though they don’t officially support Linux. They let me exchange the dock when I didn’t read the specs well enough to know that it was a DisplayLink dock. But, the Thunderbolt dock does the same thing. At one point, my laptop just stopped charging and died. I found out there was a Firmware issue and holding the power button for a long time actually resurrected it. That incident left me wondering if there’s not a driver issues with the Thunderbolt port. Then, just the other day, I decided to plug a different mouse in and that fixed it. I was pretty sure that I had tried this mouse without the dock, but that experimenting is still on going. I’ll have to update you.

This is probably what the feature image should have been. “Noble Numbat”:

Fix the tracker error

This is most annoying first impression. These tracker errors kept popping up, usually two at a time. I had to find a way to stop them.

To fix the problem, I ran the following command:

systemctl --user mask tracker-extract-3.service tracker-miner-fs-3.service tracker-miner-rss-3.service tracker-writeback-3.service tracker-xdg-portal-3.service tracker-miner-fs-control-3.service

References:

Going through the intro wizard

On first boot, this screen popped up:

This is the first I remember Ubuntu Pro getting advertised. It’s free for 5 machines, so I probably should take advantage, but I’m skipped for now.

I opted to share my system data to contribute back to Ubuntu.

It ended with this. I was surprised that it didn’t ask about connecting my accounts like Google, etc.

Passwords

AuthPass let’s me remember passwords. I installed it from the Software Center. In my last post, I said I was going to contribute back to it at some point, but that hasn’t happened yet. After install, there’s one more command to run:

snap connect authpass:password-manager-service

I did have a little issue with the font on the open dialog. It’s a problem that I’ve had before, but it’s worth noting.

I ran the following commands that I found here. I’m not sure the first two were necessary. The regular programs looked fine. My only issue was AuthPass.

rm -rf ~/.cache/fontconfig 
sudo fc-cache -r -v

This is the one that I think fixed my problem:

rm -rf ~/snap/authpass/common/.cache/fontconfig

The passwords I have on a cloud sync. I copied that over from my backup to use right away, and then I got the cloud syncing later.

I still notice the title has an issue. The title bar is mostly transparent, and you can’t tell where to click on it to move it.

Screenshots / Notes

I installed Flameshot from the command line. The Gnome Screenshot tool is really nice, but it lacks the ability to annotate. So, I’m switching to Flameshot.

sudo apt install flameshot

On past installations, I ran the commands to attached Flameshot to the print screen button. This time, I decided to follow the GUI directions from Flameshot’s docs. The keyboard shortcut settings are now located at: Settings > Keyboard > View and Customize Shortcuts

I pressed backspace to unset the “Take a screenshot interactively”. Then, I selected Custom Shortcuts at the bottom and defined Print Screen as “flameshot gui”.

I have been using X11 instead of Wayland, but periodically I tried Wayland. Flameshot doesn’t work by default with Wayland. I found an article mentioning that you need to install two packages to make it work:

sudo apt install xdg-desktop-portal-gnome \
                 xdg-desktop-portal

Shortcuts

I installed MenuLibre (Menu Editor) to be able to easily add items to the menu. Note: some of the shortcut files, I restored by copying them from ~/.local/share/applications.

sudo apt install menulibre

Note: For Gnome, it doesn’t matter what folder structure, I put the shortcuts into. But, if I get an app into the menu structure, then it will open up when I search for it from the Gnome interface.

Application Packaging Systems

In order to make some of the programs work, I need AppImage and flatpak. Here’s the instructions for AppImage:

cd ~/Downloads/
sudo apt install libfuse2
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

And, for flatpak:

sudo apt install flatpak

I learned from the flathub website, that this plugin will enable the flatpaks to be installed from the Software Center:

sudo apt install gnome-software-plugin-flatpak

Then, I added the flathub repository:

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Browsers

Ubuntu comes with Firefox, but I typically use Chrome as my daily driver. I do like a variety. I downloaded the apt packages from their websites:

Work Software

VMware Horizon / VMware View is the remote desktop that I use most at the moment. The website has a deb package that’s easy to install.

Teams is the next necessity. I’ve been using the unofficial Teams client, and I’m very thankful that it is kept up to date. It seems easier to keep up to date if I download and install it from GitHub. I went to the project page and installed version 1.4.30.

The last item on this list is PostMan. Previously, I downloaded it from their website, but this time, I found it in the App Center. So, instead, I just installed it from there.

Clouds

In the Settings app, there’s an Online Accounts section. I used that to connect Google. I’m still deciding on how many of these options make sense.

Insync is the other product that I use. I just downloaded it from their website. After launching, I was able to log in and select the folders to sync.

Networking

There’s not much to do here. I installed all the VPNs so they are easy to setup if needed.

sudo apt install vpnc \
    network-manager-vpnc \
    network-manager-openconnect \
    network-manager-openconnect-gnome \
    openconnect \
    network-manager-iodine \
    network-manager-openvpn \
    network-manager-strongswan \
    network-manager-openvpn-gnome  \
    network-manager-iodine-gnome \
    network-manager-vpnc-gnome

I added my custom host names to the hosts file (/etc/hosts).

Usually, Remina comes preinstalled, but this time I did a minimal configuratinon. So, I had to install it.

sudo apt install remmina

It just so happens, I am currently working on a connection that might use this www plugin:

sudo apt install remmina-plugin-www

Productivity

This is the first time that LibreOffice wasn’t pre-installed. I think it had to do with my choosing minimal on the install wizard. I like to add the repository anyway to keep it more up to date.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa
sudo apt install libreoffice

I’ve had issues in the past with Xiphos, but it installed fine this time:

sudo apt install xiphos

Later on, at some point, xiphos quit launching for me. I’m not sure what changed, but some update seems to have broken it. I found a workaround was to launch it with this setting:

WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER=1 xiphos

I intended on writing up a blog post and adding that variable setting into the menu with menu-edit, but I never got that done.

I had switched to Joplin for my note taking program. It’s still my main note program for anything needs to be shared. I installed it easily from snap. After installing, I used the Synchronize to go through the process to connect to the cloud.

snap install joplin-desktop

Logseq is the new note program that I am using. I like the way it links the notes together. A huge plus is that I can paste images into it too.

snap install logseq

After installing, I clicked on the “Add a graph” button on the title bar to restore the directory where it keeps the notes.

Zotero is sort of like a note app, although, it’s more of a research app. I followed these steps:

sudo apt install curl
curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/retorquere/zotero-deb/master/install.sh | sudo bash
sudo apt update
sudo apt install zotero

Last productivity app: Xournal++. I installed that for annotating PDFs.

sudo apt install xournalpp

Settings and Utilities

Here are a couple of utilities that I like to have readily available:

sudo apt install p7zip-full p7zip-rar \
       synaptic \
       gnome-tweaks

Mission Center is a nice looking task manager that I learned about from OMG Ubuntu. With Flathub setup, I could just install with:

flatpak install flathub io.missioncenter.MissionCenter

I use BalenaEtcher for putting iso files on my thumb drives. I installed the AppImage from the website into my ~/bin directory.

I try to track the settings I do on a normal basis:

  • In “System” > “Date & Time”, I changed the format to am/pm and selected “Week Day”
  • In “System” > “Users”, I added my avatar and my finger prints
  • At the bottom of “Power”, I checked “show Battery Percentage”
  • On “Show Home Folder”, I unchecked “Show Home Folder”

The settings I change in the Tweaks application seem to decrease each install. I think they are slowly getting moved to the main Settings UI. The only thing left now is unchecking “Attach Modal Dialogs” under “Windows”.

Finally, Gnome Extensions. By restoring my Chrome profile, I had the extension installed. Then, I installed the OS side that makes it work. Note, that also installed the “Extensions” app that allows you to update and disable the extensions.

sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell

These are the extensions I installed:

Graphics and Video Programs

I like Inkscape for Vector drawing. Unfortunately, the apt version is horribly out of date. The apt package installed was 1.2, but on the website, you can download version 1.3.2. I downloaded the AppImage, made it executable and put it in my ~/bin directory.

For Gimp, I installed it from deb package.

sudo apt install gimp \
         gimp-data-extras gimp-plugin-registry

For the sound-related programs, I made these installations:

sudo apt install audacity \
           soundconverter \
           musescore3

For video-related programs, I installed these programs:

sudo apt install mplayer \
       vlc \
       kdenlive \
       yt-dlp

(I also installed fre:ac from the App Center)

OBS Studio is a little more involved. I try to keep it a little more up to date. Previously, I used to install the loopback device driver to use OBS output as a webcam. I found that’s no longer needed.

sudo apt install ffmpeg
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:obsproject/obs-studio
sudo apt install obs-studio

For 3D drawing and rendering, I use Blender. I’m using the snap version.

sudo snap install blender --classic

Finally, I want all of the codecs.

sudo apt install \
      libdvdnav4 \
      libdvd-pkg \
      gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad \
      gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly \
      ubuntu-restricted-extras
sudo dpkg-reconfigure libdvd-pkg

3D Printing

I haven’t done a lot of 3D printing, but some. I have been designing my prints with OpenScad:

snap install openscad

Next, I installed Cura for slicing the models. I downloaded the AppImage from the website and put it in my ~/bin directory. On the first start, I had to login during the intro wizard. I chose the Monoprice Select Mini V2 printer.

Programming Tools

These are just a few of my favorite programming utilities.

sudo apt install \
        vim-gtk3 \
        git \
        meld
mkdir ~/.vimtmp

Git needs a little configuration with these two commands:

git config --global user.name "my name"
git config --global user.email my.email@email.com

Flutter

Flutter is kind or more involved than other stuff. First, are a bunch of prerequisites:

sudo apt-get install clang cmake ninja-build pkg-config libgtk-3-dev

Then, I installed Flutter with snap:

sudo snap install flutter --classic
flutter doctor

This time, I noticed that Android Studio was in the App Center. I just installed the snap from there. After opening, I installed the Flutter and Dart plugins from the settings. Finally, I needed to install the command line tools component. That’s in Settings > Languages & Frameworks > Android Sdk > SDK Tools: “Android SDK Command-line Tools (latest)”.

VirtualBox

I have a few Virtual Machines that I run with VirtualBox. I downloaded the latest version from the website. I also downloaded the Extension Pack from the main downloads page.

I did run into a problem with dependencies:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 virtualbox-7.0 : Depends: libvpx7 (>= 1.10.0) but it is not installable
                  Recommends: libsdl-ttf2.0-0 but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

I did install the “recommends” package:

sudo apt install libsdl-ttf2.0-0

Still, the easiest fix was to install Virtualbox from the repositories instead of the website. I still installed the Extension Pack that I downloaded.

sudo apt install virtualbox

Wine

I installed Wine from the command line and restore my wineprefixes.

sudo apt install wine

When I tried to run my Peoplesoft App Designer, I got an error message about wine32 not being installed. I don’t quite understand it because App Designer should be 64-bit. Still I tried to follow the instructions:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt update
sudo apt install wine32:i386

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