Hands on: Ubuntu 7.04

Post-installation
With previous releases it was necessary to add a couple of extra software repositories after installation to get all sorts of useful software.

These repositories, Universe and Multiverse, hold thousands of packages that are not directly supported by Ubuntu, but are completely stable, and many are required to get multimedia functions working properly.

With Feisty, this step is no longer necessary: these repositories are enabled by default, and therefore all of the software is available instantly.

Configuring multimedia support beyond the open formats, such as Ogg Vorbis, always took a little work. This is because of software patents, which means Ubuntu can’t distribute much of the software itself.

These patents are not enforceable in many countries (including the UK), but since Ubuntu can be distributed freely without restriction, the software was simply left out. Feisty has made things considerably easier: just click on an unsupported audio or video file and a window will pop up to download the necessary codecs. This immediately adds support for almost all formats.

Many of the additional pieces of software I have recommended are now conveniently tied together in one meta-package. This allows you to choose a single option that will download and install several packages automatically, including Java 6 runtime and browser plug-in, Flash 9 player, and Microsoft’s freely available core fonts (Arial, Verdana, etc). These also include the multimedia codecs mentioned above and only need to be installed once.

The best way to install the packages is to launch ‘Add/Remove...’ from the Applications menu. This is a very useful utility that offers a wide selection of additional packages with a brief description of each. The packages are also ranked in popularity with stars. Enter ‘restricted’ into the search bar, tick the box and click Apply. That is all there is to it.

Adding support for hardware requiring third-party drivers is now easier too. The ‘Restricted Drivers Manager’ under the Administration menu presents a list of hardware that has available drivers to download.

Additional steps
With the restricted extras installed there is little more to do. You may want to add support to play back encrypted video DVDs. Head to http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/1.2.9/deb and download the latest version of libdvdcss2. Save the file to the desktop and double-click the icon to install the package.

Totem, Gnome’s video player, can use a different backend from the one included by default. This provides support for more video formats, including Microsoft’s WMV, and for many people works a little better. To install the replacement backend, enter ‘xine’ into the Add/Remove application search bar and select ‘Xine extra plugins’ and ‘Movie Player Totem (xine backend).’ Alternatively, open a terminal and run:

$ sudo apt-get install totem- xine libxine-extracodecs

For development software the meta-package ‘build-essential’ is provided. You will need this if you want to compile any software, although I would also recommend xorg-dev, which provides development files to compile graphical programs:

$ sudo apt-get install build- essential xorg-dev

For other suggestions, have a browse through the Add/Remove application for anything that sounds interesting. It’s just as easy to remove things as it is to install; simply untick the application’s name.