Getting Started (Git, Drivers, and Atom)

For me, once I’ve installed Ubuntu there’s a pretty straight line of things I need to do before I can actually get down to work. Some of these are completely dependent on whatever technlology you’re working with so I’m going to outline those in another post that’s basically just for my sanity.

Here’s my important working order.

1. sudo apt-get install git
2. After that installs, you can start pulling repos which takes awhile. Which is good because you’re going to have a little down time in this next step.
3. Go to Software and Updates from your Unity search bar and get it to run the updates, this takes awhile. Unfortunately you can only be installing one thing at a time, which is the frustrating part about this initial setup. I also use this time to find a good background image and do any customizations that I like. I like a lot of the ones posted here on Wednesdays.
4. After that’s finished go ahead and search in Unity for Devices and Drivers and look for whatever 3rd party drivers you need. I’m on Dell so I need the Broadcom one (though I don’t always rely on it, it looks like the open source version is pretty good these days) and definitely the NVIDIA one (I use 304)

Once that’s done, it’s time to start setting up your environment. I’m a web developer so my main tool right now is a text editor. I’ve fallen in love with [Atom](www.atom.io) and lucky for us there’s a version for Linux. I found the instructions easy to follow.

1. sudo apt-get install build-essential git libgnome-keyring-dev

2. curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup | bash -

3. sudo apt-get install nodejs

4. cd /WHERE_YOU_WANT_ATOM_TO_LIVE

5. git clone https://github.com/atom/atom.git

6. cd atom/

7. script/build

8. sudo script/grunt install

9. Now you can run atom from the command line and it’ll open up, from there I like to lock it to my toolbar.

So, I’ve got git, I’ve got my repositories set up, I’ve got my text editor. I’m more than capable to get work done now. You’ve also got npm and nodejs installed, which I’ve been using as the foundation for my side projects anyways. There’s a few more fun things to install that I’ll outline later.