My coding environment setup from scratch on Ubuntu 18.04

6 min readDec 23, 2018

When you’ve been working on the same OS for close to 3 years, you definitely want things to function and be set up in a certain way. Recently, my 3-year-old laptop suffered the full wrath of the motherboard deity and I had to switch over to a new laptop. This meant that I had to set up my system from scratch and find the same resources again which I went through over the course of 3 years.

This blog is a collation of the resources I went through again to get my coding environment back up. I definitely don’t want to find the same resources again in case I need them in the future. So, here’s my setup for Ubuntu 18.04 to get back to coding in the fastest way possible.

Basic setup on 1st boot

Run Software Updater.
Uninstall Amazon and other unnecessary apps, like gaming, from the Ubuntu Software Center.
Remove Thunderbird Mail, Rhythmbox, Help, LibreOffice Writer, Ubuntu Software Center, and Firefox from Favorites in the sidebar Dock.
Run sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Settings Configuration — Open Settings app first

Dock — Switch on “Auto-hide the Dock”. (Reason: I like having more pixels available on my screen to code. Dock takes up unnecessary space.)
Power — Switch off “Automatic Suspend”. (Reason: I don’t want any scripts I might be running to stop because my laptop decided to suspend itself automatically.)
Devices > Mouse & Touchpad — Switch off “Tap to Click”. (Reason: The last thing I want is to keep clicking on the screen by mistake because my hand touches the touchpad while typing.)

Gnome Tweaks Tool — because Settings Configuration is not enough

Install Gnome Tweak Tool:

$ sudo add-apt-repository universe$ sudo apt install gnome-tweak-tool

2. Run Gnome Tweak Tool:

$ gnome-tweaks

3. Desktop — Switch off “Show Icons”. (Reason: I like my Desktop to be clean so that I have minimal distractions as soon as I switch on my laptop.)

4. Keyboard & Mouse — Switch off “Middle Click Paste”. (Reason: I absolutely hate it when I mistakenly click the middle click on the touchpad and it pastes a copied text when, in reality, I want to click left/right click.)

5. Keyboard & Mouse — Set “Mouse Click Emulation” to “Area”. (Reason: Right click should work only when the bottom right of the touchpad is clicked.)

6. Power — Switch off “Suspend when laptop lid is closed”. (Reason: I don’t want any scripts I might be running to stop because my laptop decided to suspend itself automatically.)

7. Top Bar — Switch on “Battery Percentage”. (Reason: I don’t want to go through one more click just to see how much battery my laptop has, especially when I might be running out of it.)

8. Top Bar — Switch of “Date” under “Clock”. (Reason: Same as point 7 above.)

Install useful apps and programs

Install Google Chrome and sync my settings and bookmarks.
Install VLC using sudo snap install vlc
Install ngrok . Follow the installation instructions given on their website.
Install curl using sudo apt install curl
Install make using sudo apt install make
Install vim using sudo apt install vim

Terminal Configuration — Case-insensitive tab completion

Enable case-insensitive tab completion — Ubuntu by default has case-sensitive tab completion which is extremely annoying. Restart your terminal after running the following commands:

$ if [ ! -a ~/.inputrc ]; then echo '$include /etc/inputrc' > ~/.inputrc; fi

$ echo 'set completion-ignore-case On' >> ~/.inputrc

2. 1st command above means If ~./inputrc doesn't exist yet, first include the original /etc/inputrc so we don't override it

3. 2nd command above means Add option to ~/.inputrc to enable case-insensitive tab completion

Terminator — No, not this one!

I’m not a fan of Ubuntu’s default terminal. I usually use Terminator as it gives me more power over the terminal and makes me more productive.

The commands given on https://gnometerminator.blogspot.com/p/introduction.html don’t work on Ubuntu 18.04.
Run sudo apt install terminator to install terminator.
Let’s configure terminator now.
Right-click > Preferences > Profiles tab > default > Command — Set “Hold the terminal open” for “When command exits” drop-down. (Reason: I don’t want the terminal to exit when a command finishes execution.)
Profiles tab > default > Colors — Set “Built-in schemes” to “Black on white”. (Reason: I like white-background UI more than darker-background.)
default > Scrolling — Set Scrollback to 1000 lines. (Reason: I want to have more command outputs to scroll back to.)

Git and GitHub configuration

Install git:

$ sudo apt install git

2. Set up global git user email and name:

$ git config --global user.email "you@example.com"$ git config --global user.name "Your Name"

3. Set up SSH keys and add to your GitHub account for easy push/pull from remote repo:

3.a. Run ssh-keygen

3.b. Just keep pressing [Enter] until the process is complete.

3.c. You will have 2 files in ~/.ssh folder: id_rsa (your private SSH key file) and id_rsa.pub (your public SSH key file).

3.d. Copy the contents of id_rsa.pub and put it in your GitHub account.

3.e. You will be able to push/pull from your remote GitHub repo using the SSH URL.

4. Set up git aliases

Visual Studio Code Setup

Install Visual Studio Code from https://code.visualstudio.com/
Remove code slider using App Menu > View — Uncheck “Toggle Minimap”. (Reason: I don’t like a code slider taking up pixels unnecessarily.)
Set Features > Explorer > Open Editors: Visible to 0 (Reason: I could easily switch between open files via other means. I don’t need an “Open Editors” section for it.)
Install Settings Sync extension and sync your settings.

Node Setup

Install nvm
Install the relevant node versions — I use 8.11.3 and 10.13.0
Install nodemon using npm i -g nodemon

MongoDB Setup

Install mongodb by following the instructions at: https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/installation/
I used the following set of commands to install MongoDB 4.0.5 on Dec 22, 2018:

$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv 9DA31620334BD75D9DCB49F368818C72E52529D4$ echo "deb [ arch=amd64 ] https://repo.mongodb.org/apt/ubuntu bionic/mongodb-org/4.0 multiverse" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-4.0.list$ sudo apt-get update$ sudo apt-get install -y mongodb-org=4.0.5 mongodb-org-server=4.0.5 mongodb-org-shell=4.0.5 mongodb-org-mongos=4.0.5 mongodb-org-tools=4.0.5$ echo "mongodb-org hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections
$ echo "mongodb-org-server hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections
$ echo "mongodb-org-shell hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections
$ echo "mongodb-org-mongos hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections
$ echo "mongodb-org-tools hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections

3. Start mongodb using sudo service mongod start

4. Configure mongodb to start up automatically when the system boots up using sudo systemctl enable mongod.service

Bashmarks setup

bashmarks is a program which helps you create bookmarks(symlinks) to the folders you specify.
I use it to bookmark my commonly used folders from command line. Eg: I usually type g api to enter into my API folder instead of cd ~/my-user-name/folder-1/folder-2/folder-3/api/
Install bashmarks using the following commands:

$ git clone git://github.com/huyng/bashmarks.git$ cd bashmarks$ make install

4. Add source ~/.local/bin/bashmarks.sh to the end of ~/.bashrc

5. Create your bashmarks using the commands specified in https://github.com/huyng/bashmarks#shell-commands

Redis Setup

Download Redis from https://redis.io/download
Extract tarball and cd into the directory. Install Redis using the following commands:

$ sudo apt install gcc tcl8.5$ make$ make test$ sudo make install$ cd utils$ sudo ./install_server.sh

Other relevant programs setup

Download Studio 3T from https://studio3t.com/download/ and install Studio 3T following the instructions at https://studio3t.com/knowledge-base/articles/installation/#studio-3t-for-linux-e-g-ubuntu-debian
Install Postman — the right way
Install Meteor using curl https://install.meteor.com/ | sh
Install Java 8 using sudo apt install openjdk-8-jdk
Download ElasticSearch .deb file from https://www.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch and Kibana .deb file from https://www.elastic.co/downloads/kibana. Install them using dpkg utility.

Hurray! Let’s start coding!

This blog is mainly meant for my future self and also for any other developer who can take relevant bits of help from this. Follow me on Twitter and Medium to get notified whenever I blog.