With my user file partition (until today used with Belenos) mounted as /home
by default, a lot of stuff works out of the box (browser history, XMPP
accounts etc). Need to customize desktop a bit, install extra apps I like
(Mumble etc), and so on. Some of the things I change are fairly specific to
my use case (eg Māori language support), but I'm often surprised by some of
the default settings when I go through all the applets in the Control Panel
and tweak everything. What use is it to have text files previewed as little
icons with tiny words on them? Yet it must use more RAM to do that surely?
- downloaded and install all updates using apt-get
- checked language support, installed full support
- change regional format to English, system-wide (was set as Chinese
characters)
- installed Esperanto (Māori not there, why not?)
- set system time to Hong Kong
- changed touchpad to '2-finger scrolling', and 'natural scrolling'
- added Māori keyboard layout, moved it to top (default?)
- power management
- in general changed notification to 'only when battery is low'
- on battery power changed 'sleep when inactive' to 10 mins, and display
to sleep when inactive' to 5 mins
- on AC power changed 'sleep when inactive' to 30 mins, and display to
sleep when inactive' to 10 mins
- (if it's turning off the screen and sleeping too quickly, I can dial
these back a bit)
- personal file sharing, ticked share public files (maybe this is poor
security, but I use it to swap files with my wife's MacBook without having to
mess around with USBs)
- changed check for software updates to 'daily'
- MATE Tweak
- removed Trash and Network icons from the desktop
- changed panel layout to (something?), tried them all, then changed it to
'Redmond'
- turned off 'enable animations'
- changed (?) Window Manager to Marco (No Compositor)
- changed icon size to 'small'
- Appearance, changed all local fonts to 14pt
- File Management
- changed default folder view to 'list'
- ticket include a delete command that bypasses the trash
- turned preview off for text files
- changed preview on photos to a max size of 1MB
- ticked never prompt or start programs on media insertion
- startup applications
- unticked Screensaver (don't need it, screen turning off then system
sleep is fine)
- unticked Print Queue Applet (when do I ever print anything?)
- unticked Orca screen reader (don't need it)
- unticked Backup Monitor (don't use it)
- Window Preferences
- ticked select windows when the mouse hovers over them
- ticket unselect windows when the mouse leaves them
- set up XMPP accounts
- already loaded in Pidgin
- installed Mumble for voice conferences
- installed AbiWord to use as .txt editor and .odt editor
ToDo
- find out why automatic time sync not working, refuses to install NTP
- set up offline email accounts in IceDove (need to check if IceDove can do
XMPP like ThunderBird can)
