Configuring Kubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) following the Upgrade from 7.04 (Fesity Fawn)

Following the upgrade of my desktop computer from Kubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) to Kubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) I did some work to clean up the system and configure it properly. My efforts focused on configuration files which were overwritten during the upgrade. I also wanted to reduce the large amount of disk space consumed in the upgrade by removing old and unnecessary packages and package archives. I concluded with improving the multimedia capabilities (playing dvd’s and video files) of the system.

Enabling Bash Completion

nano ~/.bashrc

Uncomment the following lines by deleting the pound signs:

#if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
# . /etc/bash_completion
#fi

Save and exit.

Increase network security via sysctl.conf

sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf

Uncomment the following lines by deleting the pound signs:

#net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter=1
#net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies=1

Save and exit.

sudo sysctl -p

Cleaning up the packages

First we’ll remove package archives for packages that have been upgraded (ie most of the packages from the previous feisty installation):

sudo apt-get autoclean

On my system that freed about 219MB.

Next we’ll remove files which should be no longer needed:

sudo apt-get --purge autoremove

This command should be repeated until it no longer reports packages to remove. In my case this took only the 1 time. This freed 106MB.

Next we’ll remove orphaned libraries:

• sudo apt-get install deborhpan - install deborphan if it’s not already installed
• deborphan - display orphaned libraries, take note of any you do not want removed
• deborphan -e w64codecs | xargs sudo apt-get remove --purge -y
• Repeat the previous 2 steps as needed until nothing but the packages you wish to keep remain. This took 4 times on my computer and freed about 61MB.

Remove all old linux kernels and modules:

sudo apt-get remove --purge .2.6.20.

That freed about 175MB.

Remove old beryl packages:

• sudo apt-get remove --purge .beryl. emerald.*
• sudo apt-get –purge autoremove

That freed about 20MB.

Enabling better multimedia

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

Paste in the following:

deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ gutsy free non-free
deb-src http://packages.medibuntu.org/ gutsy free non-free

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install non-free-codecs libdvdcss2