Dell Mini 9: optimize Ubuntu Hardy 8.04

I recently restored the 'installation of my Dell Mini 9 with Ubuntu version provided by Dell.

To have a work environment more comfortable, more disk space SSD (8GB total are not many) and updated software here are the steps I followed.

Delete unnecessary packages

The first step consists in 'delete the software that we need. If we do before any update operation to avoid having to download and install packages, however we will then remove. I usually remove Acrobat Reader (I better Evince), packages containing guides and documentation except man pages (up space and you can still see web), the locations in languages not using the toys (and then install the ones I like in part), I do not like KDE software and fonts for languages that do not use (Tamil, Arabic, Japanese, etc ...).

  $ Sudo apt-get remove - purge brltty AdobeReader enu-of-launcher dellvideochat diveintopython edict ekiga gnome-cards-data gnome-games gnome-games-data gnome-user-guide kalgebra kalzium kalzium Kanagram Kanjidic-data kdeedu-data-KLettres date kolf ktuberling kworldclock language-pack-en language-pack-en-base language-pack-gnome-en language-pack-gnome-en-base language-pack-kde-en language-pack-kde-base language-pack- kde-en language-support-en language-support-translations-en language-support-writing-en lmarbles myspell-en-gb myspell-en-us myspell-en-za openoffice.org-help-en-us openoffice.org -help-en-gb openoffice.org-hyphenation openoffice.org-l10n-en-za openoffice.org-l10n-en-gb openoffice.org-thesaurus-en-au openoffice.org-thesaurus-en-us planetpenguin-racer planetpenguin-racer-data stellarium stellarium-data thunderbird-locale-en-gb ttf-ttf-arabeyes Arphic uming-ttf-index-fonts-core ttf-Goch-gothic ttf-kochi-mincho ttf-lao ttf-malayalam-fonts ttf tlwg-thai-ttf-unfonts-core TuxMath tuxpaint tuxpaint-data ubuntu-sounds wamerican wbritish yahoo-toolbar-extension 

In this way we have freedoms other than 700mb of space on our SSD, almost 10% of the total space!

Improving the display of characters: enabled 's anti-aliasing

The monitor of the Dell Mini is a small masterpiece of color rendering, but strangely, Dell has chosen not to enable anti-aliasing font rendering them very unsightly and difficult to read. To enable it just go to Preferences / Appearance and set as screenshots

Enabling anti-aliasing

We use the 'interface Netbook Remix

To use the netbook remix interface instead of the clutter based on a proposal from Dell (or even the default Gnome) we must first add the repository to our sources.list:

  $ Sudo gedit / etc / apt / sources.list 

and as we write this last line:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/netbook-remix-team/ubuntu hardy main

Now we import the authentication key of the repository: ì

  $ Sudo apt-key adv - recv-keys - keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 3F2A5EE4B796B6FE 

We update the system:

  $ Sudo apt-get dist-upgrade 

Now we are ready to install 'interface

  $ Sudo apt-get install go-home-applet human-netbook-theme maximus netbook-launcher window-picker-applet 

From the Preferences / Sessions select the "Netbook Launcher" for the 'bootstrapping

Restarting a session we can begin to use the convenient (especially for those who intensively use the touchpad) interface Netbook.

Coming soon:

• install OpenOffice 3
• Vodafone Broadband USB stick install
• Evolution sync with our Nokia (contacts, calendar, todo)