Problem Description:
I did a new install of Ubuntu LTS 24.04 on a 9 year old Acer laptop but due to installation problems I didn’t install any third party software during the install. Everything is working fine now but my question is, is there any simple way to install all the third party software that would have normally been installed if I did so during the installation? I know I can install things individually but I was wondering if there is any shortcut or even a list of what third party software would have normally been installed if I chose that option.
Click on the Activities icon in the extreme upper left of the Desktop and type software and you should see an icon named Software and Updates. Click on that and there will be several options available.
I tried that but other than a bunch of items that most are already checked, I don’t see any option to actually install third party software like there was in the original installation.
No, there is not. The option to install third-party applications is merely a convenience. It offers nothing special. All of it (and much more) is available using the package managers. Most Ubuntu systems don’t need any third-party software at all to function properly, and many folks routinely skip the option.
If know the name of the third-party software that you wish to install, then installing later is usually very easy.
If you don’t know the name, then it’s very difficult.
It is not clear that installing third-party software will solve whatever problem you might be encountering, since you have not yet described any problem.
There is one third party item that would have been installed had you ticked the box to install third party software. And that is a proprietary video driver. Do you think you need to activate a proprietary video driver.
Open Software & Updates>Additional Drivers tab. Allow the utility to search the internet for you. Then you can switch from an open source video driver to the proprietary video driver.
I have Intel UHD graphics. The driver is compiled into the kernel. So, the Additional Drivers tab does not find any proprietary video drivers for me. It would be different if I had Nvidea or AMD graphics.
Something else used to be installed when we ticked to install third party software and that was some video and audio codecs and MS true type fonts.
We should be able to install them by installing the Ubuntu-restricted-extras package. I am on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and when I try to install that package I get package not found as the error message. I do have the Universe and Multiverse repositories enabled. So, I do not know what has happened.
I am not asking for help. I have no problem playing video and audio. I am just explaining what used to be installed when we ticked to install third party software during installation and what we used to do (had to do) to get those codecs after installation.
Do you have problems playing audio and video? I have read that the VLC application comes with various video and audio codecs. I do have VLC installed.
I was hoping there was something like an apt install … command that might install all the third party software that I missed during installation but I’m not having any problems at all.
The installation problems i had was just a setting in the BIOS that I had never run into before. Ubuntu was already installed but it just booted straight into Windows bypassing the Grub menu. I needed to set the BIOS for what files could be trusted to boot from before the Grub menu would come up. I think its an Acer BIOS thing but everything is OK now.
As Ian has stated, there is no such post-install “recovery path” which will offer all of those.
What you likely require are the following packages:
ubuntu-restricted-extras
libdvdcss2
ttf-mscorefonts-installer
But, if you pull in the VideoLAN’s VLC player, then you will likely get anything else that is missing which was not covered by the above.
If you are still having issues with a particular piece of media, you may also need to install some, or all, of the following:
gstreamer1-plugins-bad
gstreamer1-plugins-ugly
gstreamer1-plugins-good
libavcodec-extra
gstreamer1-libav
chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra
I am not sure if this next one is a default included package for Ubuntu Desktop, but if not, it is required to give appropriate facilities to access optical disc media:
libdvd-pkg
Purely as an educational resource, you may also wish to have a look at what is outlined on the Arch Wiki