(Almost done with this, folks.)
09 — Internet Software
As with Windows, there are several ways to set up your email. You can use the built in Kmail client. However, this is a prime example of software designed by a genius who hated people. That was some years ago but the KDE developers haven’t changed the basic concept that much. I recommend you don’t use it, but if you must: The first thing that happens when you launch Kmail is that another backgroud service has to launch first, the indexer. It will flash on the screen, then get started. Meanwhile, Kmail will crash. At the same time, you’ll get a prompt from something call the Wallet — KDE’s password saver. That is, it will want a password to create this wallet, as a master password to guard all the ones you save for various applications. This is pretty chaotic and there’s nothing anyone can do to help you.
So pull up that second password I told you to create and feed that to the Wallet prompt. Kill Kmail and start it again. At this point, it will offer to set up your first email account. Unless you are using something like Gmail, don’t do it this way. Kmail is cranky and unforgiving, and the defaults are mostly wrong. It has internal scripts for guessing and these scripts usually ask the wrong questions, so they don’t get the right answers from the mail services. Close the dialog and go back through the configuration in the menu. You must have the exact details for your mail service’s POP or IMAP server, SMTP server, exactly how they want your account name sent, the correct port numbers and security protocols, server names, etc. It works fine if you get everything right; it really is brilliant software otherwise. It connects to a bundled address book which is very advanced and complete, and that links to a calendar that will remind you of birthdays and anniversaries if you add them to the addressbook, popping up with desktop reminders. It’s really nice, but very cranky to set up. Also, for each email account in Kmail, you must create a separate identity, each linked to the proper email address and servers. The details are all there, so take your time.
It makes a lot more sense install Thunderbird. You can get a calendar extension built into it called Lightening. Thunderbird is like every other Mozilla product — if you check the menus and find Add-ons, it will open a browser to search for whatever kind of extension you need. Lightening will allow you to display a calendar prompt on the right side of your email client, based on the same integrated birthday and anniversary trick if you fill out the address book properly. The only thing it won’t do is pop-up desktop notifications when the application isn’t open. Also, Mozilla projects all save their passwords internally and encrypts them for you. You could set a master-password for them inside the application itself, if you want.
If you prefer Seamonkey, Mozilla’s fully integrated browser/email/etc. client, you’ll have to install that from outside sources, the Seamonkey Project page. None of the Ubuntu clones offer it. The same goes if you really like Google’s Chrome browser. It’s provided by Google. Each one is handled differently, but the tricks generally work for all Linux distributions.
Seamonkey is tightly integrated, a volunteer project keeping alive some aspects of the old Netscape Communicator idea, which was followed by the old Mozilla Project. Seamonkey continues the original concept by keeping everything in one package. It’s lighter than Firefox, generally works about the same, but offers more and better options for privacy and security, if you know how to find and set them. If you go to the Seamonkey page it should offer the correct version for your download. This drops a large package in your Downloads folder. I’ll give you the CLI version of how to handle this thing.
Open Konsole. Your prompt will place you in the Home folder. Move down into the Download folder using the cd command, same as with Windows: cd Downloads. Let’s check out what’s here: ls. Whatever else you may have there, you’ll see a long filename in red: seamonkey-2.29.1.tar.bz2 (current version as I write this). That’s the name, version number, in a “tarball” (bundle) and “bzipped” (compressed). We will do this one step at a time. First, we decompress. Learn a trick here: You don’t have to type out that long file name, just part of it, just enough to distinguish from everything else in that Downloads folder, and the system will finish it for you when you hit the TAB key. Try it without cut-n-paste:
bunzip2 sea[TAB]
The Bzip2 compression tool changes its name depending what you want to do: bzip2 to compress and bunzip2 to decompress. That should take a moment or two to process. When the prompt comes back ready, we will unbundle it:
tar -xvf sea[TAB]
That command tells tar we want to extract (x) with some visual feedback (v) the file (f) named seamonkey. In some cases you can run the switches together like that. You’ll see the files listed quickly on the screen, then the prompt comes back.
If you type ls again, you now have a new folder in blue letters named seamonkey. What to do with it? Move it to a place where you can use it. Cut and paste this one.
mv ./seamonkey/ ../
The mv is the “move” command. The rest requires a little explaining. The dot in front of the slash means “this directory” where the folder sits. We are making sure there is no mistake by being very precise. The folder is called seamonkey and the slash at the end specifically tells mv that this is a directory with stuff inside it, not simply a file by that name. The next part is two dots and a slash. That symbol is shorthand for “up one directory” — one dot means this one; two dots mean one level up, in this case the Home directory.
So that should move the whole folder up one level. There’s a reason for this. Seamonkey will run just fine from your Home folder, as it would if you installed it in the regular applications directories elsewhere. However, by using it here, your user account keeps control and ownership over it, and updates don’t require extra finagling with your password. Seamonkey will periodically check while online for updates, and will do so automatically. Once it updates, it will notify you, and all you have to do is restart it. And Seamonkey offers the same collection of Add-ons in the menu as with all Mozilla products. You can close Konsole for now.
Google Chrome is quite different. Not only does it come in a nice Ubuntu package already, but it updates by adding itself to the list of places your system checks for updates. Go to the Google Chrome download page. Click that big blue “Download Chrome” button. You’ll be run through a selection process and some licensing noise. Choose the “32-bit .deb format” and proceed. Once you have it, we handle it differently, because it’s already in the package format used for Kubuntu. This time, open Dolphin and click to move into your Download folder. There you’ll see an icon with a long label: “google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb”. Just click on this thing and be ready to type in your account password. This allows the installer to check for dependencies and all that good stuff happens quick and easy. You’ll find Chrome in your menu where you would expect. It will use the Wallet to save passwords because Chrome itself doesn’t encrypt them — encryption is a good idea. The system itself handles update checking.
You may know that Chrome has its own set of extensions. You open that oddball menu button in the upper right corner and select Tools > Extensions. Both Chrome and Firefox have a few items I recommend: Ghostery, Adblock (Chrome) or Adblock Edge (Mozilla), and Click&Clean. When properly configured, these will block the most offensive ads and tracking markers. That last one will allow you to clear your cache between various sites you might visit so advertisers can track you from site to site. However, in Chrome it really shines, offering all sorts of handy tools in the other tabs when you click it open. That includes a really nice random password generator. This makes it easy to set up new accounts on web sites that require passwords to register. You’ll have to cut-n-paste from the little window where Click&Clean displays them, but once you put them in some place on a webpage, Chrome saves them in the wallet.
These days, you wind up needing a lot of passwords like that. Kubuntu and Chrome itself come with various tools to let you save them in the cloud if you like (Keepass for example). However, I recommend you create a plain text file with a deceptive name, and simply save them there in a list that includes the username, password and site URL. Keep that file in your Documents folder. Kubuntu comes with a text editor called Kate and it’s overkill. You need to install Kwrite; it’s much simpler. Use this as your default text editor (like Windows’ Notepad). Or, you can learn to use Nano on the Konsole; two good tutorials on it here and here. But the point is you can backup this file somewhere else, so long as you remember the deceptive name you gave it.
One final security tip: For sites like Facebook with all the dirty tricks, I highly recommend you use the additional profiles feature in Chrome. In the Settings page, one of the options is to add “users” which creates entirely new profiles. Yes, it means you have to treat it like a new browser and install any addons or extensions separately. But the idea is that something you really want to use but plays so dirty as Facebook demands you give yourself extra protection. Use that extra profile for Facebook only. If you see a link in Facebook you want to chase, right-click and select to open it in an “incognito” window. This window opens and then dumps all the stuff as soon as you close it. There’s no cross contamination between Facebook and the places you visit from FB.
This same trick allows you to create as many profiles as you like, especially for certain sites that demand you not use adblockers or demand that you accept a jillion cookies from every server on the Net. Just use that profile only for those crazy sites. All of these tricks work on Windows, too. Finally, consider installing Bleachbit from the Kubuntu collection. Configure it to eat everything except passwords, search engines, and special site settings. When you open Bleachbit (in the menu under System), the left side pane shows the options for your various installed browsers. Once you’ve selected what to erase, just hit that button near the top-left corner that represents shredding or deleting the junk.
I highly recommend you learn to use Startpage (Google search without the tracking) and DuckDuckGo as your search engines. Test them both to see which you prefer. You can install Startpage into your browser using the offering on their landing page; look for the link to add it. The Duck actually has an extension available for most browsers that you can install that opens its own search dialog in the browser face. Your browser extensions site should offer it. Both of these will do the same job a different way and preserve your privacy.
