Things to do After Installing Linux Mint 15

 
Edit the Mint Menu

• Change menu icon
• Resize icons
• Set to always start in "Favourites" pane (under "Options")

Run  Updates

Configure Firefox

• Change start page
• Remove bookmarks and Menu toolbars
• Install  "Add to Search Bar" Firefox add-on
• After restarting Firefox add your favourite Search Engine to Search Bar

Set Bottom Panel Fully Transparent

1. Click Menu and select Terminal.
2. Enter sudo cp -R /usr/share/themes/Mint-X ~/.themes/
3. Enter sudo pluma ~/.themes/Mint-X/gtk-2.0/Apps/panel.rc to open the file with the default text editor.
4. Search for two instances of "Panel/panelbg.png"
5. Comment out the two lines by placing a # at the beginning of the lines, for example: #   bg_pixma [NORMAL] = ...
6. Save the file.
7. Log out and log back in to the system.

Configure Terminal

• Set colours to black background with yellow text
• Set background to 80% transparent

Enable Compositing Manager

• Open "Control Center" | "Desktop Settings"
• Ensure "Use Compositing" is ticked under "Windows".

Set XScreensaver as Default Screen Saver

• Uninstall default Mate screensaver: sudo apt-get remove mate-screensaver
• Install XScreensaver: sudo apt-get install xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod electricsheep 
• Change the properties of the Screensaver item under "Startup Aplications" in "Control Centre" so that it reads: xscreensaver -no-splash

Optional:
Install Teamviewer

Evolution of Unix and Unix-like systems

Click on picture above to expand.

How Mint became one of the most popular Linux distros

TechRadar have published a very positive article about Linux Mint:

How Mighty Mint became one of the most popular Linux distros | TechRadar

ClipGrab - Video Downloader

ClipGrab is an efficient and free video downloader for YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, MyVideo, MySpass, Sevenload, Tudou, Clipfish and many other online video sites. You can enter keywords in the box to search videos on YouTube or paste the URL to a video, then select the format and quality of the video you need, click "Grab this clip!" and the app does the rest for you.

You can also configure how the app behaves when a downloadable video is discovered in your clipboard, and whether you want to keep metadata (ID3 tags) when you download and convert videos to mp3 files.

How to install:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:clipgrab-team/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install clipgrab