Additional Software

GalliumOS comes with a good selection of desktop and utility software, but there is a huge variety of additional options and alternatives.

GalliumOS can install any software packages built for Ubuntu, directly from the Canonical package servers.

There are also some frequently-requested applications that are not available from Canonical, or are more complicated to install. A few are listed here. Please add more!

Desktop

Google Chrome

curl -O https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
sudo apt install ./google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash apps (and Twitch streams, etc) require Adobe Flash Player, which is not included by default in GalliumOS.

• Install adobe-flashplugin from Canonical's partner repository.

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) partner"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install adobe-flashplugin

• Confirm installation by entering chrome://plugins (Chromium) or about:plugins (Firefox) into the URL bar

The proprietary version of Google Chrome includes PepperFlash, and does not require an additional plugin.

Firefox Aurora

Aurora is the developer preview of Firefox.

The stable version of Firefox can be installed from the standard Canonical repositories with sudo apt install firefox.

More info: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mozilla-daily/+archive/ubuntu/firefox-aurora

Pale Moon

Pale Moon is a web browser, originally derived from Firefox, and optimized for performance.

• Official site: http://linux.palemoon.org/
• Installation: https://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=home%3Astevenpusser&package=palemoon
  • (Follow instructions for Ubuntu)

TeamViewer

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
curl -OL http://download.teamviewer.com/download/teamviewer_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i teamviewer_i386.deb

Google Drive integration

• Install the software

 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alessandro-strada/ppa
 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get install google-drive-ocamlfuse

• Run google-drive-ocamlfuse for first time setup.

 google-drive-ocamlfuse

You'll get a browser window asking you to sign in to your Google account and if you want to give gdfuse OAuth2 Endpoint permission to access your Drive files. Hit Accept / Allow for any following dialog. Close the browser window.

• Next, create a directory where your Google Drive files will be mounted, preferably in your home directory, and mount Google Drive to that directory.

 mkdir ~/googledrive
 google-drive-ocamlfuse ~/googledrive

You can check if Google Drive is mounted by performing:

 mount

You can also check how much space you have left:

 df

If you want to unmount, simply run

 fusermount -u ~/googledrive

• To mount Google Drive at startup, set the following command to run at boot with Session and Startup.

 google-drive-ocamlfuse -label default /home/<user>/googledrive

Alternatively, you may wish to set Google Drive to mount at startup using the /etc/fstab file. If so, create the file /usr/bin/gdfuse with the following contents, replacing <user> with your GalliumOS username, then run sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/gdfuse.

 #!/bin/bash
 su <user> -l -c "google-drive-ocamlfuse $*"
 exit 0

Next, add the following line to your /etc/fstab, again replacing <user> with your user, and replacing the uid/<code> and <code>gid values with the values retrieved from the echo $UID and echo $GID commands respectively.

 gdfuse /home/<user>/googledrive      fuse    uid=1000,gid=1000,user 0         0

If you decide to change the mount location for Google Drive, make sure the location is owned by your user. You can do so by running chown $UID:$GID /mount/location.

A word of warning, large files such as movies or large videos don't work too well with google-drive-ocamlfuse using default settings. Files are cached to ~/.gdfuse/default/cache. A config file can be found in the directory above that, with parameters to allow for streaming larger files, cache size, etc.. The streaming larger files parameter is perfect for large videos and movies. For more information, check out gdfuse on GitHub.

Adapted from: http://xmodulo.com/mount-google-drive-linux.html

Most up-to-date instructions can be found on project home page: https://github.com/astrada/google-drive-ocamlfuse/wiki

Skype

Download the .deb below, and install using:

sudo dpkg -i skypeforlinux-64.deb

Deb download: https://www.skype.com/en/download-skype/skype-for-linux/downloading-web/?type=weblinux-deb

If you have the older Skype client installed, you will need to update to the newest client. For information on the older client, see: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Skype

Source: https://blogs.skype.com/news/2017/03/01/the-skype-for-linux-beta-version-5-0-is-now-available-for-download

Note that while this is the only officially supported Skype client, it is an beta, so not everything may work.

Wine

Wine has been a source of frustration. These instructions are verified on a fresh install of 2.0.

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wine1.8

Simple Screen Recorder

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:maarten-baert/simplescreenrecorder
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install simplescreenrecorder

Spotify

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys BBEBDCB318AD50EC6865090613B00F1FD2C19886
echo deb http://repository.spotify.com stable non-free | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/spotify.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install spotify-client

Source: https://www.spotify.com/us/download/linux/

Kodi Media Center

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties pkg-config software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:team-xbmc/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install kodi

Games

Steam

curl -O http://repo.steampowered.com/steam/archive/precise/steam_latest.deb
sudo apt install python-apt
sudo dpkg -i steam_latest.deb

Then launch Steam from the application launcher. Your user must be in the "sudo" group (if it is not, the dpkg command above will also fail), so that the installer can do all the things it needs to do.

Minecraft

sudo bash
apt-get install default-jre
curl -o /usr/local/bin/Minecraft.jar https://s3.amazonaws.com/Minecraft.Download/launcher/Minecraft.jar
curl -o /usr/share/pixmaps/minecraft.png https://chrx.org/minecraft.png
mkdir -p /usr/local/share/applications
cat > /usr/local/share/applications/minecraft.desktop <<EOF
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Minecraft
Comment=Minecraft
Exec=java -jar /usr/local/bin/Minecraft.jar
Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/minecraft.png
Categories=Game;
EOF

Utilities

grsync

Graphical lightweight version of rsync to back up data between drives

 sudo apt-get install grsync

aptik

Backup APT sources/repository data

sudo apt-add-repository -y ppa:teejee2008/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install aptik

OpenVPN

Install the following two packages to get OpenVPN connectivity with your favorite VPN service.

sudo apt-get install openvpn network-manager-openvpn

caffeine-plus

Used to keep the screen awake with full screen applications such as full screen video.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install caffeine-plus

Source: Webupd8

Hardware Optimization

Battery Tuning

Powertop

Monitor process and device power consumption. Includes a handy auto-tune option which can be run at startup that helps to minimize power consumption. Powertop also provides a calibration option, which some people have reported issues with (locks up device?).

sudo apt-get install powertop
sudo powertop

Powertop needs to be run every time the system boots. Expand for instructions:

Create /etc/systemd/system/powertop.service with the following content:

[Unit]
Description=Powertop tunings

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/powertop --auto-tune

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then reboot.

Source: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Powertop

TLP

Advanced power management tool that also provides a default configuration optimized for battery life for "install and forget it" benefits. TLP has reportedly provided some improvement to battery life. Your mileage may vary.

NOTE: There are also reports of system instability while running TLP. If you experience any issues, try disabling it first.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linrunner/tlp 
sudo apt-get install tlp
sudo tlp start

Miscellaneous

These have been discussed, but are not presently candidates for inclusion in the default installation. They might be of special interest, might have important caveats, or might be the unchosen of other options. Presented here for convenience.

Changing the Window Manager

• The i3 window manager is a minimal tiling window manager that can be successfully installed alongside the default galliumos WM (xfce4). Instructions are available here[1]. If you want to try something totally new in terms of user-experience, try this out. If you want to improve your development workflow, try this out (then go look up emacs).

Hardware temperature monitor

• xfce4-sensors-plugin from Ubuntu repositories. WARNING: Do not select tachos. It will crash your desktop.

Clipboard Manager

• clipit from Ubuntu repositories. Developer homepage is missing. Be conscious of the security implications of all clipboard managers.

Video Player

• https://mpv.io/ Lightweight, but very minimal UI
• smplayer from Ubuntu repositories. Lightweight.

Screen Recorder

• OBS from PPA. One of the most popular screen recording tools. See https://obsproject.com/ for more info.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:obsproject/obs-studio
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install obs-studio

• kazam from Ubuntu repositories. Alternative to simplescreenrecorder, above. See https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/kazam/ for more info.

Disk Usage/Performance Indicators

• xfce4-goodies from Ubuntu repositories includes a free space checker applet
• xfce4-diskperf-plugin from Ubuntu repositories is a disk performance monitor applet, and shows usage as well