Ubuntu is pretty good out of the box, but personally I need a few more things to make it feel like my computer. Before I start I install w32codecs and libdvdcss2 (on machines with a DVD drive) this allows me such wonders as DVD and MP3 playback.

Audio and Video

I remove

• Rhythmbox,
• Serpentine and
• Totem

and install

• Amarok,
• Grip,
• mplayer and
• acidrip (on systems with a DVD drive)

sudo apt-get remove rhythmbox serpentine totem totem-gstreamer totem-xine totem-mozilla
sudo apt-get install grip lame amarok mplayer

Firefox

I install

• Media Connectivity Plugin and point it to mplayer for playback and
• Adblock Plus and subscribe it to EasyList in order to avoid having to waste my time and bandwidth on adverts.

Then I swap the Google search engine for the Google UK search engine by clicking on the search engine drop down and clicking “Manage Search Engines”. I do the same for the Ebay and Amazon search engines.

Vim

For some bizarre reason Ubuntu comes with a crippled version of Vim that it calls “vim-tiny”. I replace this with vim-full

sudo apt-get remove vim-tiny
sudo apt-get install vim-full

and put the following in my .vimrc

syntax on
set expandtab
set autoindent
set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set textwidth=78

That way vim works in a way suitable for pretty much everything I use it for as soon as I open it.

Remote Access

If I want to be able access the machine remotely I install sshd then if it’s open to the internet I use iptables to block bruteforce attacks.

If I think of anything else to add here I’ll update this post.