Here I'd like to share how I'd setup my freshly installed OS, namely Ubuntu, for development.

Ubuntu

You can go to https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop to get the latest version of Ubuntu.

Once the download button has been pressed you'll also see a link about how to create a bootable usb stick to install Ubuntu.

Nala is a nice tool for installing and updating like apt does, but with a better UI, which gives better insights on what is happening. And it offers a history, which can be undone. This can be helpful especially in cases when an update broke your system.

Fun fact, Nala can be installed using apt ;-)

sudo apt update && sudo apt install nala

Also see https://gitlab.com/volian/nala

Curl

Curl is a really helpful cli tool for sending network requests.

sudo apt install curl
# or using nala
sudo nala install curl

KeePassXC

One of the first things to do is installing KeePassXC where I usually store the majority of my passwords in a secure manner.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:phoerious/keepassxc
sudo apt update
sudo apt install keepassxc

Also see: https://keepassxc.org/download/#linux

Git

Nowadays almost every developer uses Git as distributed version control system (DVCS). More details on Git can be found here: https://simonscholz.dev/tutorials/git

Lazy Git

Easy to use git client within the terminal.

LAZYGIT_VERSION=$(curl -s "https://api.github.com/repos/jesseduffield/lazygit/releases/latest" | grep -Po '"tag_name": "v\K[^"]*')
curl -Lo lazygit.tar.gz "https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit/releases/latest/download/lazygit_${LAZYGIT_VERSION}_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz"
tar xf lazygit.tar.gz lazygit
sudo install lazygit /usr/local/bin

Also see https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit

SDKMan!

SDKMan! is a really easy to use tool to maintain an overview of SDKs being installed on your system.

To install SDKMan! simply run:

curl -s "https://get.sdkman.io" | bash

Also see https://sdkman.io/install

SDKs (https://sdkman.io/sdks) I usually install are:

sdk install java
sdk install gradle
sdk install maven
sdk install quarkus
sdk install asciidoctorj

And of course there are several different JDKs to choose from: https://sdkman.io/jdks

# show different JDK vendors and versions
sdk list java

# Install specific Java version from the list
sdk install java 20.0.1-tem

# Install latest Java version
sdk install java

Also see https://sdkman.io/usage for the usage of SDKMan!

Docker + Docker Compose

Here I will only refer to the excellent articles of Digital Ocean:

In these tutorials you can even choose your Operating System / Linux Distro, where you intend to install docker + docker compose.

Postman

A great tool to call different rest or graphql APIs with a nice user interface.

snap install postman

The following link also describes how to create a proper [Desktop Entry] for Postman. https://learning.postman.com/docs/getting-started/installation-and-updates/#installing-postman-on-linux

VS Code

Great Code editor from Microsoft, which I do use for coding this homepage using Gatsby and TypeScript + coding Flutter Apps.

Steps to install VS Code can be found here: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/setup/linux

VS Code itself offers a large variety of extensions and plug-ins. Let me list the ones I'd currently use:

AsciiDoc: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=asciidoctor.asciidoctor-vscode
Flutter
GitOps with Flux: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Weaveworks.vscode-gitops-tools
Docker: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-azuretools.vscode-docker
Kubernetes: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-kubernetes-tools.vscode-kubernetes-tools
Icons for file explorer: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=PKief.material-icon-theme
Prettier: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=esbenp.prettier-vscode
YAML: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=redhat.vscode-yaml
XML: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=redhat.vscode-xml
Spell Checker: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=streetsidesoftware.code-spell-checker
Base 64 Encoder: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=adamhartford.vscode-base64
Tailwind CSS IntelliSense: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=bradlc.vscode-tailwindcss
ESLint: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=dbaeumer.vscode-eslint
Iconify IntelliSense: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=antfu.iconify
Vue Language Features (Volar): https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Vue.volar
Excalidraw: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=pomdtr.excalidraw-editor

IntelliJ

IntelliJ is a powerful IDE for using Java and/or Kotlin.

# Use ultimate
sudo snap install intellij-idea-ultimate --classic
# or community
sudo snap install intellij-idea-community --classic

Node JS + NPM

To run Node and NPM you can follow the steps from my other tutorial:

https://simonscholz.dev/tutorials/node-npm-updates

Flameshot

Even though Ubuntu 22.04 ships with an improved good to use Screenshot tool out of the box, I'd still prefer using Flameshot.

# using apt
sudo apt install flameshot

# using nala
sudo nala install flameshot

Also see: https://flameshot.org/docs/installation/installation-linux/

Kubernetes

kubectl

In order to interact with Kubernetes kubectl is a must have.

Follow steps from https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/install-kubectl-linux/ to install kubectl.

For me on Ubuntu it works like this:

curl -LO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl"

sudo install -o root -g root -m 0755 kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl

kubectl version

The usage of kubectl is nicely depicted by the kubectl cheatsheet: https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/kubectl/cheatsheet/

k9s

K9s provides a terminal UI to interact with your Kubernetes clusters.

The easiest way to install k9s is via Webi

curl -sS https://webinstall.dev/k9s | bash

For other options also see https://github.com/derailed/k9s#installation

Dropbox

Dropbox offers a really convenient way to store data in the cloud by integrating a dropbox client into the system file explorer.

Also see: https://www.dropbox.com/install-linux

You might also need to install, which is required by the dropbox client.

sudo apt install libpango
# or using nala
sudo nala install libpango

# using apt
sudo apt install telegram-desktop

# using nala
sudo nala install telegram-desktop

Also see https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Telegram/

Teams for Linux

curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/teams-for-linux/packages/setup.deb.sh' | sudo -E bash

# using apt
sudo apt update
sudo apt install teams-for-linux

# using nala
sudo nala update
sudo nala install teams-for-linux

Also see https://github.com/IsmaelMartinez/teams-for-linux

upx

Upx is a tool to compress executables, which can be helpful in case you want to distribute your application as a single executable. You can download the latest version from GitHub: UPX Releases

For ubuntu you'll most likely want to use upx-{latest-upx-version}-amd64_linux.tar.xz.

You can simply move the upx executable to /usr/local/bin:

tar -xf upx-{latest-upx-version}-amd64_linux.tar.xz upx

sudo mv upx /usr/local/bin

Useful aliases and functions

Update your applications and packages with one command:

~/.bashrc


alias uAll='sudo snap refresh && sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y && sudo apt autoremove -y'

# alternatively use nala

alias uAll='sudo snap refresh && sudo nala update && sudo nala upgrade -y'

# including auto remove and clean

alias uAll='sudo snap refresh && sudo nala update && sudo nala upgrade -y && sudo nala autoremove -y'

This updates all apt packages, upgrades them and also refreshes the snap installations.

In case you're working with kubernetes and the gcloud cli then this tutorial is for you: Easily switch gcloud config and kubectl context