Manumatix

Please Note: Even the latest versions of Automatix are DANGEROUS to your Ubuntu system! My best advice is: DON'T USE AUTOMATIX!!!

First, some background...

There's a program for Breezy called Automatix that's supposed to help newbies install some of the latest software and neat tweaks in a user-friendly manner; unfortunately, I'd seriously recommend not installing it: I've found that not only does it modify your system without doing a good job of explaining the changes that its going to make beforehand, it doesn't have an option to undo the changes once they have been made because the author "belong[s] to the school of thought which believes that removal of software shd [sic] not be automated"! What's worse is that the information he provides to uninstall these changes does not cover all of them.

As of mid-January, 2006, these (about a third of the total) did not have uninstall information:

 1) Installs multimedia codecs
 2) Installs all Firefox plugins (java, flash, etc) (except Adobe reader and mplayer)
18) Enables Numlock on (turns numlock on Gnome startup)
21) Installs MS true type fonts
22) Configures ctrl-alt-del to start gnome-system-monitor (aka windows)
25) Installs ndisgtk (WiFi configurator Graphical user interface)
26) Upgrades Open Office to 2.0 (final version), installs openoffice clipart and installs OO2 thumbnailer. (no support for AMD64 and ppc packages)
27) Adds 3 nautilus scripts (open any file with gedit as root; open a nautilus window as root in any folder; open gnome search tool in any folder (Right click in a nautilus window and look under "scripts")
28) Installs SUN'S JAVA JRE version 1.5
29) Installs SUN'S JAVA JDK version 1.5
31) Enables ejection of CD when CDROM drive button is pressed.
34) Gamepads (Makes USB gamepads work)
35) Turns DMA ON on Intel and AMD machines (needs a restart)
36) NVIDIA cards (Detects Nvidia cards and installs drivers) (Needs a restart)

The final straw for me was when I discovered that it completely changed my sources.list file without asking me first or even telling me after the fact. This sort of software behavior is very naughty!

The bad points aside, it actually does some neat things that you won't get from the instructions on my Ubuntu page, so if you want the functionality (and want to know what its doing to your system), you can either do what I did (download the deb from the thread (I'm using 4.4-1), double-click to open it with File Roller, double click the data.tar.gz; a new File Roller will open. Within the new window, navigate to /./usr/local/automatix/ and extract the "autoscript" file. Open that with gedit and have a look at the commands yourself), or read on... ;-)

The following is a summary of (basically) what the the Automatix 4.4-1 DEB file does, presented in a way in which you can control the installation (note that I assume you've at least glanced at my page, or otherwise have an idea of what Synaptic does...). As the name of the original is obviously a derivation of 'automatic' (from the Latin for 'self acting' as per the OED), I've named this guide "Manumatix" (manu from "manual"; that is to say, it works 'by hand' ;)

Edit: as of early Feb, its looking like EasyUbuntu is the most promising candidate to replace Automatix for Breezy and to cover the functionality for future versions of Ubuntu. I thus suggest trying it...

Manumatix
(covers the general functionality of all but the three most complex functions of Automatix)

Part I: Sections that primarily just install packages

"Multimedia codecs" installs the following packages:

totem-xine
gstreamer0.8-plugins (note: this is a 'metapackage' that installs yet more packages)
gstreamer0.8-lame
gstreamer0.8-ffmpeg
gstreamer0.8-faac
gstreamer0.8-faad
libxvidcore4
lame
sox
ffmpeg
mjpegtools
vorbis-tools
mpg321

This is not overly different from what you'll get using the Audio-Visual section of my page; Synaptic will describe any packages on this list that aren't installed by following the instructions on mine.

"Firefox Plugins" installs the following packages:

sun-j2re1.5
flashplayer-mozilla
msttcorefonts

Java is the same as my page. flashplayer-mozilla is an alternative to the one listed on my page (either way, so long as it works ;) The fonts are ones which I have installed on my system, but for some reason didn't list on my page; you'll want to grab them.

"MS TTF Fonts" installs the following package:

msttcorefonts

(a duplicate from the Firefox plugins section above)

"Archives" installs the following packages:

rar
unace
unrar-nonfree

unrar-nonfree replaces the unrar package I had installed in Hoary from Backports; definitely useful if you need to open a RAR archives (and allows File Roller to open them). unace is an ACE archive extractor... I have never run into an ACE archive, but its good to know that I can extract one if I ever do! ;) rar is a RAR file creator and is "Shareware"... personally I would avoid it then unless you actually need to make a RAR file.

"Skype" installs the following packages:

libqt3-mt
skype

libqt3-mt is a dependency of the skype package; if you install Skype via Synaptic (as per my page), its done automatically.

"Acrobat Reader" installs the following packages:

acroread
mozilla-acroread

Same as my page :)

"Gnomebaker" installs the following package:

gnomebaker

IMHO, the k3b package is better (my stance on Gnome vs KDE is that I don't care about how well the the software looks compared to other software, so long as it works well ;)

"gftp" installs the following package:

gftp

gftp-gtk is the Ubuntu recommended version.

"Ripper and Tuner" installs the following packages:

streamripper
streamtuner

Install these if they look interesting to you in Synaptic.

"Multimedia Editing" installs the following packages:

vorbis-tools
sox
mjpegtools
ffmpeg
lame
imagemagick
toolame
mpeg2dec
gstreamer0.8-mpeg2dec
gstreamer0.8-a52dec
kino
kinoplus
audacity
easytag

A lot of this duplicates packages from "Multimedia codecs" (see above) plus some useful utilities.

"DVD Ripper" installs the following packages:

dvdrip
vcdimager
cdrdao
subtitleripper

Just the thing if you need to rip DVDs ;)

"Debian Menu" installs the following packages:

menu
menu-xdg
pdmenu

On my system, the only thing new was pdmenu, which I don't find very useful.

"Numlock ON" installs the following package:

numlockx

Same package as on my page.

"Programming Tools" installs the following packages:

anjuta
bluefish
screem

Note that the first is for C/C++ while the last two are HTML/website editors.

"GnomePPP" installs the following package:

gnome-ppp

"AUD-DVD codecs" installs the following packages:

w32codecs
libdvdcss2
libdvdread3
libdvdnav4
libxvidcore4

The first two are PLF and suggested on my site. The last three are from Breezy (the last is multiverse).

"Laptop WiFi" installs the following packages:

ndisgtk
ndiswrapper-utils

This allows you to use Windows drivers.

"Open Office" installs the following packages:

openclipart
openclipart-svg
openclipart-png
openclipart-openoffice.org

It also upgrades OpenOffice.org to version 2.0 via the doko repository (same as my site).

"SUN JAVA 1.5 JRE" installs the following package:

sun-j2re1.5

from the PLF, same as my site.

"SUN JAVA 1.5 SDK" installs the following package:

sun-j2sdk1.5

As noted in Automatix, most users do NOT need this (get the JRE version instead unless you're developing software with Java).

"Wine" installs the following package:

wine

Same as my site; I would recommend getting winetools also though.

"Firestarter" installs the following packages:

gawk
firestarter

Firestarter is the same as my page; gawk in this case is used to configure it for Ubuntu similar to my page.

"Gdesklets" installs the following packages:

gawk
gdesklets
gdesklets-data

(the latter two are mentioned on my page) and then runs a configuration using gawk.

"Mplayer with plugin" installs the following packages:

mplayer-386
mplayer-fonts
mozilla-mplayer

As per my site, you can also use mplayer-586 if you have an Intel processor; mplayer-fonts is something I should have mentioned on my page.

"Opera Browser" installs the following packages:

libqt3-mt
lesstif1
lesstif-bin
sun-j2re1.5

Basically the same as my site; Synaptic will take care of the dependencies.

"Gamepads" installs the following packages:

joystick
jscalibrator

It also modifies any joystick ("USB gamepad") files in /dev/input/ (js0 and js1; they appear when the joystick is plugged in) such that they have a permission of "666". You can manually change them to that by running sudo nautilus, right-clicking the file(s), selecting Properties, then the Permissions tab. Make sure all the "Read" and "Write" boxes have checks in them, but that none of the "Execute" ones do; at the bottom, "Number view" should then say "666". Press Close.

Part II: Sections that primarily download and install packages

"Bittorrent Clients" installs the following packages:

bittornado
bittornado-gui
sun-j2re1.5
libcommons-cli-java
liblog4j1.2-java
libseda-java
libswt-gtk-3.1-java
azureus (from http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/contrib/a/azureus/azureus_2.3.0.6-1_all.deb)

As per my page, if you install bittornado-gui in Synaptic, it installs Bittornado. All the other packages are dependencies of Azureus.

"Avidemux" installs the following packages:

aalib1
slang1
libfaac0
libfaad2-0
libfaac0
liba52-0.7.4
libsmjs1
avidemux (from http://etotheipiplusone.com/avidemux-2.1.0-1_i386.deb)

"Frostwire" installs the following package:

sun-j2re1.5

and then downloads http://home.fuse.net/t3dcinc-887b/mirror/downloads/bin/FrostWire-4.9.37-0-Any-OS.zip and installs it into the /opt/ directory as well as running a setup that installs an icon.

"File Sharing" installs the following packages:

amule
amule-utils
libatk1.0-0
libbz2-1.0
libc6
libgcc1
libglade2-0
libglib2.0-0
libgtk2.0-0
libpango1.0-0
libstdc++6
libxml2
zlib1g
dcpp (from http://newstuff.orcon.net.nz/ubuntu/dcpp/dcpp_0.0.20050809cvs-1~mird_i386.deb)

and then downloads http://frankandjacq.com/ubuntuguide/LimeWireOther.zip and installs it into the /opt/ directory as well as running a setup that installs an icon. Most of the packages are dependencies of amule (mentioned on my site).

"Media Players" installs the following packages:

totem-xine
vlc
vlc-plugin-arts
wxvlc
beep-media-player
beep-media-player-dev
bmp-docklet (from http://beerorkid.com/automatix/bmp-docklet_1.2-1_i386.deb)

There are other vlc plugins you might want, BTW (see Synaptic).

"Firefox 1.5" installs the following packages:

sun-j2re1.5
flashplayer-mozilla
msttcorefonts
acroread
mozilla-acroread
mplayer-386
mplayer-fonts
mozilla-mplayer
libstdc++5

and then downloads http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/1.5/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-1.5.tar.gz and installs it into the /opt/ directory. The packages are repeats of ones from earlier sections. Notice the warning: All extensions and themes need to be reinstalled in the new Firefox 1.5. It will not retain any bookmarks, but they will be backed up in the .mozilla_backup directory in your home folder. [...] Also note that every time you try to install a new extension in Firefox 1.5, it will throw up a chrome registration error (but it wont stop the extension from being installed) . I *strongly* urge anyone reading this to use the very nice script on my site to install FF 1.5 as it avoids all this nonsense and creates an uninstaller ;)

Part III: Sections that modify settings in a useful way

"Ctrl-Alt-Del"

Here's something that's a spiffy treat; it opens the System Monitor when you press control-alt-delete. Besides the command line way to do this in Automatix, you can also do this via Gnome's GUI (or reverse the process to undo it). Run the Configuration Editor (see my page) and navigate apps -> metacity -> global_keybindings and right-click "run_command_9" then select "Edit Key..." and change the value from disabled to <Control><Alt>Delete navigate then to apps -> metacity -> keybinding_commands and change "command_9" there from a blank value to gnome-system-monitor and you should be all set!

"Eject CD from Drive"

Here's another neat thing; it ejects the CD drive when the eject button on the drive is pushed (no need to manually unmount the drive). It does this by first enabling it for the current session by running sudo sysctl dev.cdrom.lock=0 and then enabling it for future sessions by appending the line dev.cdrom.lock=0 at the end of /etc/sysctl.conf (you can manually do/undo that by using sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf)

"Nautilus Scripts"

When you use Nautilus you can use certain scripts (you access them by right-clicking in a directory and choosing the one you want from the "Scripts" submenu) that have useful functionality (e.g. the one baobab installs). Automatix installs three into the ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/ directory:

"gedit-root" (lets you open a file with gedit with root permissions)

#!/bin/bash
#created by arnieboy 
foo=`gksudo -u root -k -m "enter your password for gedit root access" /bin/echo "Do you have root access?"`
sudo gedit $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_URIS

"root-nautilus-here" (opens Nautilus with root permissions in the current directory)

#!/bin/bash
# Opens a nautilus window as root.
foo=`gksudo -u root -k -m "enter your password for nautilus root access" /bin/echo "got r00t?"`
sudo nautilus --no-desktop $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_CURRENT_URI

"search-here" (starts the Search for Files app in the current directory)

#!/bin/bash
cd $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_CURRENT_URI
exec gnome-search-tool

To manually install these, you'll need to create three files in your Nautilus scripts directory (~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/). The name of the file is the name that will appear in the Scripts submenu (so don't use an extension at the end ;). Gedit would be fine for creating these. When you're done, right-click the files, select Properties, select the Permissions tab and put a check next to "Execute" in the "Owner" line. To disable the scripts, uncheck the Execute box. To remove, just delete the files.

If you've run Automatix, automatix.log in your home directory will indicate which of the above modules have been installed.