Reinstalling Ubuntu, the core set

Hey there, this site has moved, so comments are disabled. Thankfully, you can go to the page, carefully linked for your satisfaction. Click here to go there.

Well, I reinstalled Ubuntu Gnome twice, and then being unhappy with it (which I really have been from the start) I reinstalled the Ubuntu core and then installed IceWM: Ice Window Manager is a very light weight manager, with very limited graphical eye candy. So far I am really enjoying it: The menu, panel, and most everything else are flat text files, so they are easy to manipulate.

After I installed the base core of Ubuntu, I did this:
sudo aptitude install xorg icewm menu firefox

If you aren't familiar with the Debian install method, it's real easy:
sudo To install a program, you need root access.
aptitude This is the program which installs things. You can just run sudo aptitude and it will give you a command line interface.
install This tells the program, aptitude, to install the following list of programs.
xorg icewm menu firefox These are the programs I installed, although I am not sure if I needed the menu, I was following someone else's instructions.

Now I had a window manager and Firefox, so I could browse around online to figure out how to do other stuff. When you boot up you will end up at a command line, no graphics, and you will need to put in your login name and password. To get the window manager to start, type in: startx

The core Ubuntu, plus IceWM, didn't install a file manager (in Windows, that is just the normal file browser) so i had to browse around online to find one. I found this news post which helped, but the comments below really helped me decide. I didn't mind the Ubuntu default of Nautilus, but it was a pretty heavyweight, and I was looking for something really light.

What I decided on were two things: Thunar and Midnight Commander. Thunar is a graphically appealing, yet lightweight graphical file manager, and comes pre-installed on Xfce and on Xubuntu, which is Ubuntu using Xfce4. In this link you can find some screenshots of it, although in my installation I have not configured a MIME applied icon set.

Midnight Commander is one that I can especially appreciate: It is a console file manager, much like the good ol' DOS based Norton Commander. Two panes of beautiful text goodness, oh yeah! I managed to find a screenshot of it:

Sorry it's not a very good picture, but I think you can get the idea of it. The comments at this previously linked post give some good ideas as to the power of this program. Also, if you open this within a windows manager, you can interact with it using the mouse as well, although it is designed to use the keyboard of course. I had some real trouble figuring out how to install Midnight Commander, so I will present the way I used:

First, you need to enable the Universe repositories. You can do this using some graphical thing, or you can edit the text file. The following lines need to be added to the file "sources.list", which is found at /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty main restricted universe
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty main restricted universe

You will need to change the word "jaunty" to whatever version of ubuntu you are using. One way to quickly append to a text file, from the command line, is this:
echo new text >> file.txt

This takes the "new text" and puts it at the end of "file.txt", that's what the >> means. To add the two lines above to the sources list, type these two commands:
sudo su -c 'echo deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty main restricted universe >> /etc/apt/sources.list'"
sudo su -c 'echo deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty main restricted universe >> /etc/apt/sources.list'"

Now you have added the Universe repository, you need to update the list of programs:
sudo aptitude update

And finally, install Midnight Commander:
sudo aptitude install mc

To start Midnight Commander, just type in:
mc