1.Ubuntu comes by default with only some of the repositories enabled because of licensing issue since downloading certain codecs and apps may be illegal in some countries so you have to enable these repositories/add new repositories to enable installation of these packages.To enable new repositories go to () , type in the root password .Then Go to (), there enable all the check-boxes to enable all the repositories you need . Also for installing some apps extra repositories are needed since they are not in the default repositories so go to third Party and add the following there

wget http://flomertens.keo.in/ubuntu/givre_key.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -



wget http://mirror.ubuntulinux.nl/1135D466.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -



After doing this your system should be ready for installing extra application.ntfs-3g this is necessary if you have a ntfs drive in your computer ( Usually Windows XP installs on NTFS drive) and you want to read and write data to the drive you have to install this .This can be installed as following type the following at the command promptThen type the following commandThis is automatic configuration of ntfs-3g , enable read , write support and it should be configured.these commands would back up fstab file if configuration goes wrong.

sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak

gksu gedit /etc/fstab





Now one more thing you want your windows (NTFS) drive to be mounted automatically add the following entries to /etc/fstab



/dev/ /media/ ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_US.utf8 0 0







/media/ this is just the directory you want to use as a mount point where windows drive would be mounted , you can very well use any drive you like.



now Restart ubuntu your windows partition should be working well.









Windows XP lacks support for reading and writing files to Linux file system however external utilities like free Ext2 File system for windows allows Windows XP to read and write files to a Ext2 , Ext3 file system however ReiserFS file system is not supported .



You can get Ext2 file system for windows at the following link : -

(www.fs-driver.org/download.htm)



3. Making Windows see your Linux partition Where /dev/partition is the partition which is NTFS drive , in my case /dev/hda1/media/

4. Installing flash-plugin



sudo apt-get install -y flashplugin-nonfree



5. Installing Microsoft True Type Fonts







sudo apt-get install -y msttcorefonts

6. Installing unrar



sudo apt-get -y install unrar

7. Installing mpg123







sudo apt-get install -y mpg123



8. Installing Adobe Reader





9. Installing DVD playback support







sudo aptitude install libdvdcss2



sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/./install-css.sh

Installing the extra multimedia codecs,players



sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-pitfdll gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-gl gstreamer0.10-plugins-base gstreamer0.10-plugins-good gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse libxine-extracodecs w32codecs

vlc mplayer





11. Updating the system

(System > Administration > Update Manager)





12 . Installing beagle







sudo apt-get install -y beagle

13. Installing gdesklets





sudo apt-get install -y gdesklets

System -> Preferences -> Sessions

This is how my desktop looked like with all the desklets (Widgets )

Macromedia Flash player is not installed by default but since we would be surely needing it while browing the net , installing it is necessaryit can be installed by following commandIf you are making a jump from windows to ubuntu you would surely miss the true type fonts that Windows uses , since Microsoft has released them free so they can be installed without a hitch in ubuntu (Though not distributed with Ubuntu) .RAR is one of the very widely used archives on Windows , however unrar tool to decompress RAR is not shipped with distribution and has ti be installed manually.mpg123 is a very nice command line based mp3 player that can play mp3 files even on a slow processor based computer , further installing this provides a way of playing mp3 files from within the nautilus file manager . Hence i recommend installing mpg123Though ubuntu comes with default evince reader for viewing pdf files , but i am sure you would like to use more complete version of pdf reader Adobe Reader 7.0 which is quiet professional andmore robust , the Linux version of Adobe Reader 8.0 has not been released but the version 7.0 is available and could be downloaded from the following website : -http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=10&platform=unixNow this is a contentious issue , in some countries playing DVD files through DEcss is illegal so use it at your own will , anyways to enable dvd playback issue the following command at the command line : -Note : the above commands would only work if you have added the repositories i had mentioned before the Seveas repositories.However if you do not have these Repositories installed issue the following command to install the DVD playback support : -10 .Now you would surely want to install all the codecs for playing various media files and the players primarily xine,vlc,mplayer issue the following commands to install the multimedia codecs.This command would install most of the codecs for gstreamer multimedia architecture and vlc media player and Mplayer , as well as the dll files codec (w32codecs) for decoding various files whoose open source decoder are not available.After installing Ubuntu you would surely like to update the system so that all the packages on the system are up to date to new version of the software .It can be done by following steps , go to Now press the Check button and then Install updates to start the installation of updates to the ubuntu system.Now Ubuntu does not come with beagle pre-installed maybe because it is still not a final 1.0 release still it is very nice and efficient for searching files and directories on Linux providing features similar to Google Desktop Search and Mac OS Spotlight anyways to install beagle issue the following command at command line :gdesklets gives user a collection of impressive widgets that can be placed on desktop this is similar to feature available on Windows Vista and Mac OS X , it does provide quite a good look to the desktop.To install gdesklets issue the following command at the command line after installation go to () There go to Start up program and add gdesklets shell , now every time gnome loads up you should see your gdesklets on the desktop.