Installing Popular Applications On Your Ubuntu Desktop With Automatix2

Although Ubuntu comes with lots of applications that can be installed on your desktop, there are still some applications that are available only from third-party repositories. Finding all these repositories and installing these applications manually is very time-consuming, but fortunately some people have created a script called Automatix2 (which is the successor to Automatix) which automates the task for you. It comes with a graphical interface so that you can run it from your desktop, and this tutorial describes how you do it.

3 Install Automatix2

Automatix2 comes with a graphical interface, but in order to install Automatix2 there are a few steps we have to do on the command line. Go to Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal to open a command line window:

In the command line window, type in the following commands to install Automatix2:

If you are on Ubuntu 6.10 (i386 and AMD64):

echo "deb http://www.getautomatix.com/apt edgy main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list
wget http://www.getautomatix.com/apt/key.gpg.asc
gpg --import key.gpg.asc
gpg --export --armor 521A9C7C | sudo apt-key add -

4 Run Automatix2 And Install Popular Applications

Now start Automatix2. It comes up with a warning that you must not install the package AUD-DVD if you are from the USA because it is illegal there (so if you are from the USA, don't install that package).

After accepting the warning, Automatix2 starts:

and adds some repositories to /etc/apt/sources.list:

After Automatix2 has installed all applications, it is possible that a window pops up with some errors that occurred during the installation (I've tried Automatix2 on two different desktops, and both times I got such errors, although not the same ones):

If it happens to you, just go to the package selection again, select the packages again that gave errors (please note that the packages that have successfully been installed aren't listed anymore), and click on Start again to try a second time to install them.