With Ubuntu’s latest Long Term Support version (LTS) – Hardy Heron 8.04 now deployed on many of my systems, I’ve come up with some handy how-to’s and scripts that you might find useful, here are resources I use most often:

10 Tips for After You Install or Upgrade Ubuntu –
http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2008/04/25/10-tips-for-after-you-install-or-upgrade-ubuntu/

Get VMWare Server Going: Nice step by step to getting VM Server on Hardy – http://digitalbs.org/Site/Blog/Entries/2008/4/20_Installing_Vmware_server_1.0.5_on_ubuntu_8.04_lts.html

Create a consistent apt-get Script: Again and again I find myself loading the same apps on a new build. To simplify this I have come up with a uniform install script that you can run from a terminal window. Fast, uniform and beautiful. Click here for an example.

Mod out your fstab – I “Need” my servers and shared files often and accessible by both the GUI and CLI, so I like to mount them at boot and into virtual file system locations. You can do this with the a line similar to below:

//SERVERNAME/SHARE /YOURLOACALMOUNTPOINT smbfs dir_mode=0777,username=YOURUSERNAME,passwd=YOURPASSWORD,lfs 0 0

What are your Must have / Must perform steps on freshly built systems?