Hello to you reading my article “Things to do after installing Linux Mint 18.3”. In this article, I will show you suggested things to do after installing Linux Mint. These are the things that I would personally do and have done after installing Linux Mint. All the “things” in this article are optional, you don’t need to do any of these if you don’t want to, these are just recommendations.
Linux Mint is a community-driven Linux distribution based on Debian and Ubuntu that strives to be a “modern, elegant and comfortable operating system which is both powerful and easy to use.” Linux Mint provides full out-of-the-box multimedia support by including some proprietary software and comes bundled with a variety of free and open-source applications.
Unlike in my another same kind article of Debian 9, you probably don’t have to install any non-free firmware manually, because all common firmwares for wifi devices and other things are already installed in.
We also don’t need to install sudo because it is already installed and configured automatically.
Try this book if you already feel lost.
Let’s get started.
Remove everything you do not need.
Now you’ve got a few options, use command line or some package manager. I will be showing you command line style.
Personally I’m going to remove the transmission torrent application, because I will replace it with deluge.
You can remove any application with sudo apt-get remove
Transmission will be removed with
sudo apt-get remove transmission-gtk
If you do not know the exact package name of the application, you can use Synaptic Package Manager to search for the exact name. You can also use it to remove them if you find graphical user interface more friendly than command line.
Synaptic Package Manager
Install all software you know you will need
Install every software you already know that you will need. For me these were basically Google Chrome, GIMP and Bluefish editor.
Google Chrome is installed by just downloading it from this link and installing it with one click install with GDebi package installer, it will automatically install depencies for any .deb package.
GIMP is already installed in the MATE version of Linux Mint 18.3 so I did not need to install that. However if you can’t find it, you can install it with terminal sudo apt-get install gimp or firing up “Software Manager” and search it there.
Bluefish was installed with sudo apt-get install bluefish. You can also search it from the software manager.
Linux Mint Software Manager
Those were the two important steps of Things to do after installing Linux Mint 18.3.
Are you already getting bored because your desktop looks so lame? Don’t worry, wait till we get to the next step.
Things to do after installing Linux Mint 18.3 – Customization options
There are a lot of ways to customize your Linux Mint desktop. You can make it look like your very own. Linux Mint comes with a load of customization options built-in so, probably you won’t need to install anything for this unless you want to change the boot logo or something like that. Let’s open up “Control Center” and scroll to the Look and Feel part.
It should look like this.
First thing you probably want to change is the theme, so click on “Appearance” and change it. I am using Mint-Y-Dark. There you can change your background image and fonts from the other tabs.
Then check the other options under look and feel and customize anything you like, I’m not going to explain all of them because it is already very easy. These options might varie a little bit depending on the desktop environment you are using. Most popular desktop environment for Mint is “Cinnamon”, but I am using MATE.
If you want the Docky thing that I have, search the software manager for “Docky” or sudo apt-get install docky
You can customize your panel by right clicking it and removing shortcuts from it also that way. You can also add some cool applets to it by right clicking “Add to panel”, for example see your CPU heat or other resource usages.
Turn on the night light if you’re in dark room, this is very handy if you want to keep your vision longer. You can find it from the menu, it’s called “Redshift”, you can even make it turn on automatically. It may seem strange at first but try using it for like a half an hour and then turn it off: Warning your eyes will feel like they are burning. You will notice the difference.
Then let’s go to some more important things to do after installing Linux Mint.
Select your update policy
Click on the little shield picture on your panel and you should see this.
The GUI in that pretty much explains itself and you should believe everything it says. Pick the best one for yourself.
Set up Linux Mint firewall
On Linux Mint, this is easier than eating carrot. Open up menu and find “Firewall Configuration”.
If you’re just a personal home user and not having any incoming connections, like hosting a web server, just check Incoming: Deny and Outgoing: Allow and then turn it on. Your firewall is now working like a charm. If you do need to let something in, you can always add exception in the Firewall Configuration app.
Final words: Things to do after installing Linux Mint 18.3
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If you have chosen GNOME 3 as your desktop environment, you might want to check out this article: Customize your GNOME 3 desktop looks
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