Setting Up A New Ubuntu PC

Users

This assumes that you are currently the root user.

Enter the adduser to command to create a new user.

adduser <username>

Immediately, you will be prompted for a password. Enter the password and continue the process.

Adding Root Privileges

This is only applicable when granting root priviliges to the newly created user.

Enter the usermod command to add the new user to the sudo (root) group

usermod -aG sudo <username>

The user should now have root priviliges.

To test that it worked log in as that user and try to run a command with sudo

su - <username>
sudo ls -la /root

Emacs

By default, Ubuntu usually comes preloaded or has the default 24.x version of Emacs. I often like to use Emacs along with org-mode and to take full advantage, especially as it pertains to working with source code I have found version 25.x is much better suited for the task. While there are many ways to go about it, installing it via package manager appears to be the easiest.

Add repository to PPA

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kelleyk/emacs

Update the packages

sudo apt update

Install Emacs.

Text-Only Interface

sudo apt-get install emacs25-nox

GUI Interface

sudo apt-get install emacs25

Backup files

Sometimes Emacs keeps a backup file by default. This can cause a lot of clutter in the current directory where work is being performed. There is a way to disable this.

Navigate to ~/.emacs.d/ and edit the init.el file and add the following line.

(setq make-backup-files nil)

Java

Make sure that your packages and repositories are up to date

sudo apt-get update

OpenJDK

sudo apt-get install default-jdk

Oracle JDK

Add PPA Repository

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt-get update

Install the installer

sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer

Sources

Users
Emacs
Java


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