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Mint initial setup

Small fixes

Fix issue in Nemo

Nemo-Share-Message: Called "net usershare info" but it failed: 'net usershare' returned error 255: mkdir failed on directory /var/run/samba/msg.lock: Permission denied
net usershare: cannot open usershare directory /var/lib/samba/usershares. Error No such file or directory
Please ask your system administrator to enable user sharing.

A minimal fix is to create missing folder using:

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/samba/usershares/

Applications

Article to read 10 things to do first in Linux Mint Cinnamon

Mandatory applications

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Then

packages=(
colordiff htop jq tree
filezilla
git meld shellcheck
gparted gpart
hexedit
iotop
lsyncd
numlockx
open-iscsi
openssh-server
p7zip-full p7zip-rar
passwordsafe
terminator
testdisk
ttf-mscorefonts-installer
ffmpeg
webp
xclip
)
sudo apt install -y "${packages[@]}"

Quick explanation:

  • colordiff - Compare FILES line by line (use diff and display result with colors).
  • ffmpeg - Video manipulation through CLI
  • filezilla - ftp client.
  • git - The more populate revision control system.
  • gparted and gpart - could be use to recover data. Its better to have this kind of tools already installed on your system.
  • hexedit - View and edit file or device in hexadecimal or ASCII.
  • htop - audit and managed process.
  • iotop - Similar to htopbut for IO.
  • jq - JSON processor.
  • lsyncd - A daemon to continuously synchronize directory trees.
  • meld - Graphical diff and merge tool.
  • numlockx - Control the state of NumLock.
  • open-iscsi - Allow to support ISCSI protocol (recommended if you have modern NAS).
  • p7zip-full - Allow you to manage sevenZip file from CLI.
  • passwordsafe - Allows you to safely and easily create a secured and encrypted user name/password list.
  • shellcheck- Lint tools for shell script (Bash).
  • terminator- Allow to have many terminal on screen.
  • testdisk- Scan and recover files from disk partitions
  • tree- List contents of directories in a tree-like format.
  • ttf-mscorefonts-installer - Microsoft fonts, useful for your shared documents and for some multi-platform application as well (like eclipse).
  • webp - Allow to manage webp images. See cwebp and dwebp commands.
  • xclip - Reads from standard IN, or from one or more files, and makes the data available as an X selection for pasting into X applications: hostname | xclip -selection clipboard or date | xclip -se c.

No more available on linux mint

  • zenmap - GUI frontend for ǹmap a tool for network exploration and security auditing.

Nice to have

Cool tools to install.

Useless but fun

Some useless but fun tools.

Optional: Customization and productivity tools

Numlock configuration

From GUI

  • Open Login Window - administrator privileges are required
  • Goto Settings tab
  • Enable Activate numlock

From CLI

✍ TODOC ✍

Optional: Dock for mint

A dock to launch your programs easily but could be tricky to configure.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cairo-dock-team/ppa &&
sudo apt update &&
sudo apt install -y cairo-dock cairo-dock-plug-ins

Optional: Disable touchpad

This is only for laptop computers.

Touchpad-Indicator allow to disable touchpad.

Touchpad-Indicator source code

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/atareao &&
sudo apt-get update &&
sudo apt-get install -y touchpad-indicator

Optional: Integrated clipboard manager for the Unity desktop

First try to install from standard repositories:

sudo apt update &&
sudo apt install diodon -y

If not present then try to install to specific repository.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:diodon-team/stable

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install diodon

# and for all Unity users there is also a scope
sudo apt-get insta unity-scope-diodon

Developments tools (not only for developers)

Optional but useful

Tools to be able to build some packages or some applications

Edit/Manages documentation or configuration file

sudo apt install -y libxml2-utils # xmllint

Others tools

Optional: Sound editor

sudo apt install -y audacity

Optional: Video media player (GUI)

 sudo apt install -y kodi

Optional: Tools to create liveUSB

Optional: Custom drivers

Configuration

To be able to use ssh, scp or git:

Use more than one Firefox/Mozilla profile at once.