Ubuntu: Up and Running

Chapter 3. Configuring

Before exploring Ubuntu in depth in Chapter 4, I think it’s best to first ensure that your Ubuntu setup is properly installed and configured to your requirements.

Luckily, this is very easy to do due to the huge amount of work Ubuntu’s developers have put in. In fact, as a result of the open source approach in which users write the features they want themselves, some drivers are faster and more feature-packed than their Windows equivalents. They also tend to be simpler to manage because of the user feedback built into the development process.

So whatever keyboard, mouse, graphics card, monitor, and network card you have, there is almost certainly already a Linux driver for it, and this chapter will show you how to install it, if it hasn’t been already. I also think that by reading this chapter you’ll learn about using the Ubuntu desktop by osmosis, and will pick up how things work while learning how to perform useful and essential configurations of your new installation.

By the way, Ubuntu supports multiple users, so by default the changes you make to preferences will apply only to you.

Keyboard

Once you’ve installed Ubuntu following the advice in Chapter 2—whether you are running it within Windows, as part of a dual-boot system, or standalone—you can now further tweak your setup to match your keyboard, mouse, and other peripherals.

Generally, the way to reconfigure your environment using Ubuntu’s GNOME desktop is to select the System menu at the top left of your ...