After installing Ubuntu 8.04 (hardy) desktop, there are some things you might want to change. This article focus on user configuration (mostly editing dot files in your home directory) and do not require superuser access. Some of this changes requires that you log out to take effect. Customize the bash shell By default, bash save all commands in a history file. This can be quite annoying when you run several instances of the shell in parallel, and may also be a security concern.

Create a file /etc/ppp/peers/name: pty "pptp host --nolaunchpppd" name username remotename PPTP require-mppe-128 file /etc/ppp/options.pptp ipparam name Add this line to the file /etc/ppp/chap-secrets: username PPTP password * Create a file /etc/ppp/ip-up.d/tunnel #!/bin/sh if [ "${PPP_IPPARAM}" = "name" ]; then route add -net RemoteNetworkWithNetmask dev ${PPP_IFACE} fi RemoteNetworkWithNetmask is the network on the remote side you want to access via the VPN tunnel, e.g. 172.16.0.0/12. Connect by running sudo pon name

After installing Ubuntu 8.04 (hardy) desktop, there are some things you might want to change. This article focus on system configuration (mostly editing in /etc) and requires superuser access (using sudo). Some of this changes requires reboot to take effect. Fix terminal font rendering bug There is a bug which gives bad font rendering in the terminal window. Fix it by doing this in a terminal: cd /etc/fonts/cond.d sudo unlink 10-hinting-medium.

GNU Screen has support for scrollback, but by default you have to use awkward keys to use it. I would like to be able to use Shift-PageUp, Shift-PageDown and the mousewheel to scroll, just like you can do in xterm. It was not easy to configure Screen for this, and it involves cooperation with the terminal emulator. But I finally managed to achieve a solution which works pretty well. Add this to your ~/.

GNU Screen allows you to open several sub-windows within one terminal window. By default, you switch between them using Ctrl-A followed by n or p. I think this is a bit clumsy, I would like to switch with Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab just like you switch tabs in Firefox and many other applications. The sub-windows in Screen is conceptually just like tabs in Firefox, so it’s logical to use the same keys to switch between them.