Step-by-Step Guides

This is where Ubuntu Portal keeps the longer, task-oriented walkthroughs — the kind of content you need when a man page gives you the syntax but not the strategy, and a forum thread gives you twelve conflicting answers with no indication of which one applies to your version. Every guide in this section walks through a specific task from start to finish, with exact commands, expected output, and the gotchas we’ve discovered along the way. If you need reference material on the underlying concepts — package management, filesystem configuration, kernel basics — our Documentation section has you covered. These guides assume you know how to open a terminal; everything else, we explain.

What Makes a Good Guide

We have opinions about this. A good Linux guide:

States which Ubuntu version it targets. A guide that says “run this command” without telling you whether it works on 22.04 or 24.04 is not a guide — it’s a gamble.
Includes verification steps. It’s not enough to install something; you need to confirm it’s actually working. Every guide here tells you how to check.
Warns about destructive operations. If a command can brick your boot, overwrite data, or leave your system in an unbootable state, we say so — before the command, not after.
Covers rollback. Things go wrong. Good guides tell you how to undo what you just did.

Those principles shape every page in this section. We’d rather write fewer guides that are genuinely reliable than churn out dozens of “step 1: run this, step 2: hope for the best” articles.

Desktop Environment Guides

One of Ubuntu’s strengths is choice — but choice means installation, configuration, and occasionally fighting with display managers. These guides cover the desktop environments people actually install alongside (or instead of) the default GNOME session:

Xfce on Ubuntu

Xfce has been the go-to lightweight desktop for years, and for good reason. It’s fast, stable, and customizable without being overwhelming. If you’re running an older machine or just prefer something less resource-intensive than GNOME 46, Xfce is the answer. Our guide covers:

Installing Xfce 4.18 on Ubuntu 24.04 via sudo apt install xfce4 xfce4-goodies
Choosing between LightDM and GDM3 when the installer asks (hint: LightDM for Xfce, every time)
Dealing with the inevitable “which session do I pick at the login screen?” confusion
Removing Xfce cleanly if you decide it’s not for you — which is trickier than installing it, because apt remove xfce4 doesn’t undo everything

We’ve also covered Xfce upgrades — going from 4.16 to 4.18 on older Ubuntu releases, and managing the PPA versions when the repo version is outdated.

Cinnamon, MATE, and LXQt

Each of these desktops has its niche:

Cinnamon — If you miss the traditional desktop metaphor and want something that feels like a modern Windows-style layout with a proper start menu, Cinnamon is polished and well-maintained by the Linux Mint team.
MATE — The continuation of GNOME 2. Lightweight, familiar, and rock-solid. Popular on systems where memory matters.
LXQt — The lightest of the Qt-based desktops. Faster than Xfce in some benchmarks, but with fewer built-in tools. Good for embedded systems or VMs.

Each guide covers installation, session selection, common configuration tweaks, and how to handle the display manager conflicts that inevitably arise when you install multiple desktops on one system.

System Administration Guides

Kernel Upgrade and Management

Kernel management on Ubuntu is one of those topics that’s simple until it isn’t. apt handles kernel updates automatically, but what happens when:

A new kernel breaks your Nvidia driver? (It happens. It happens a lot.)
You need a newer kernel than your LTS ships for hardware support?
You want to remove old kernels that are filling up /boot?

Our kernel guide covers apt based kernel management, the HWE (Hardware Enablement) stacks for LTS releases, manual kernel installation from Ubuntu’s mainline PPA builds, and — critically — how to boot into an older kernel from GRUB when the new one doesn’t work. Because knowing how to press Escape during boot and select a previous kernel from the Advanced Options menu has saved more Ubuntu installations than any other single piece of knowledge.

Ubuntu disables the root account by default, and for good reason. But there are situations where you need direct root access — recovery operations, chroot environments, or systems where sudo isn’t configured correctly. We cover:

How sudo works on Ubuntu and why it’s preferred over su
Enabling the root account when you genuinely need it (and why you should disable it again after)
Password recovery from the GRUB recovery menu
Securing SSH access: key-based authentication, PermitRootLogin options, fail2ban basics

Recovery and Rescue

When Ubuntu won’t boot, you need a plan. Our recovery guides cover:

The GRUB recovery menu and what each option does
Dropping to a root shell from the recovery menu
Booting from a live USB and chrooting into your installed system
Fixing broken /etc/fstab entries from recovery mode
Rebuilding GRUB after a dual-boot Windows update wipes your bootloader
fsck — what it does, when to run it, and why you should never run it on a mounted filesystem

Application Installation Guides

Web Browsers

Ubuntu ships Firefox as a Snap, which works for most people but has quirks (slower startup, different profile paths, occasional issues with system file pickers). Our guides cover installing Chromium-based browsers — and dealing with the Snap vs .deb vs Flatpak debate that surrounds every browser install decision on modern Ubuntu.

Development Tools

Setting up a development environment on Ubuntu is one of the most common tasks for new users. We cover:

Installing XAMPP for local web development — with notes on the security implications and why you might want docker compose instead in 2026
Setting up Node.js via nvm (not the repo version, which is perpetually outdated)
Python version management with pyenv and virtual environments
VS Code installation: the official .deb vs the Snap vs the open-source code-oss

Tools and Utilities Guides

Some tools deserve their own guide, not just a mention:

Shutter — Screenshot capture and annotation. The install process changed significantly when Shutter moved to new dependencies and eventually Flatpak.
ddrescue-gui — A graphical frontend for GNU ddrescue, useful for data recovery from failing drives. We cover installation and basic usage, because data recovery is stressful enough without fighting the tool.
Cool Retro Term — A terminal emulator that mimics old CRT monitors. Completely impractical, utterly delightful. Our guide covers installation and configuration.

How to Use These Guides

Each guide targets a specific Ubuntu version (or range of versions) and states this upfront. If you’re on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, look for guides tagged with Noble Numbat or 24.04 compatibility. If you’re on an older release, the guide will tell you where the steps diverge.

We recommend reading through a guide completely before running any commands. It takes five minutes and prevents the “oh, I should have done that before step 3” problem that plagues every how-to on the internet.

Browse the full guides section below, or jump to popular topics:

CLI Basics — Package management fundamentals
Nvidia Optimus — Hybrid GPU configuration
Filesystems and Mounts — Storage configuration
Hardware Guides — Device-specific guides
Tools & Utilities — Software recommendations

Every guide is updated when Ubuntu ships a new LTS or when the upstream tool changes its packaging. Check the last-updated date at the top of each page, and if something doesn’t match your experience, let us know.