Setting Up A New Ubuntu PC
Users
This assumes that you are currently the root user.
Enter the adduser to command to create a new user.
adduser <username>
Immediately, you will be prompted for a password. Enter the password and continue the process.
Adding Root Privileges
This is only applicable when granting root priviliges to the newly created user.
Enter the usermod command to add the new user to the sudo (root) group
usermod -aG sudo <username>
The user should now have root priviliges.
To test that it worked log in as that user and try to run a command with sudo
su - <username>
sudo ls -la /root
Emacs
By default, Ubuntu usually comes preloaded or has the default 24.x version of Emacs. I often like to use Emacs along with org-mode and to take full advantage, especially as it pertains to working with source code I have found version 25.x is much better suited for the task. While there are many ways to go about it, installing it via package manager appears to be the easiest.
Add repository to PPA
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kelleyk/emacs
Update the packages
sudo apt update
Install Emacs.
Text-Only Interface
sudo apt-get install emacs25-nox
GUI Interface
sudo apt-get install emacs25
Backup files
Sometimes Emacs keeps a backup file by default. This can cause a lot of clutter in the current directory where work is being performed. There is a way to disable this.
Navigate to ~/.emacs.d/ and edit the init.el file and add the following line.
(setq make-backup-files nil)
Java
Make sure that your packages and repositories are up to date
sudo apt-get update
OpenJDK
sudo apt-get install default-jdk
Oracle JDK
Add PPA Repository
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt-get update
Install the installer
sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer