Installing a new desktop on Ubuntu

If you happen to like windows, then you will love Ubuntu. This distribution seems to adore making things overly complicated for no real reason, and obfuscating the way things should work.

Perhaps it is the way of the future for those that don’t care how their system works. I do. I’m not a big fan of Fedora as a distribution, but at least it allows me to do what I want, the way I want it. That’s the reason I moved to linux away from the glaring lights of Windblows (appart from, of course, games, but that’s another rant).

I thought that I would get round to actually using the Ubuntu install that I put on my laptop on the urging of a workmate, and after 20 minits messing around with it and not getting anywhere I gave up and went back to windows, swareing to bring a Fedora DVD home so I can re-install it. Anyway, being as my memory is terrible, I’ve found myself wondering how I go about installing a desktop on Ubuntu.

Here’s how to do it (don’t blame me. It makes no sense to me either).

To install a desktop of your choice (say, kde or xfce), Ubunty has handily renamed the groups to something memorable: xubuntu-desktop (xfce) or kubuntu-desktop(kde). So if you were wondering why they weren’t showing up in your searches, now you know.

So, open up a Terminal (aplications->accessories->terminal) and sudo /bin/bash to give yourself a real root terminal, like you get on all other grown-up operating systems. (I am told that you can do this by modifiying config files, but I have a life to live).

Then run:

aptitude install xbuntu-desktop

Then wait while it fetches the packages for you.

There do seem to be a lot of nice features in Ubuntu, but it’s irritating habit of hiding things in places that I wouldn’t think to check and it’s horrible orange colourscheme means that I would much rather go elsewhere. That and it’s package management that seems impossible to use from just messing about means that it has a few things left to be desired.

Black Xanthus