Full Circle Magazine FR

Cette page est en lecture seule. Vous pouvez afficher le texte source, mais ne pourrez pas le modifier. Contactez votre administrateur si vous pensez qu'il s'agit d'une erreur.
QnA 

Welcome back to another edition of Questions and Answers! In this section, we will endeavour to answer your Ubuntu questions. Be sure to add details of the version of your operating system and your hardware. I will try to remove any personally identifiable strings from questions, but it is best not to include things like serial numbers, UUIDs, or IP addresses. If your question does not appear immediately, it is just because there are many waiting, and I do them, first-come-first-served.

As a FSE, I used to go around doing installations of various IT equipment. Lots of companies wanted their projectors installed in the ceiling. One day I was at Mercedes Benz installing a projector. As they have their own IT, the jobs they don’t *want to do, like installing a projector in the ceiling, are outsourced. The issue with ceiling projectors is that the cabling can get too long, even if the projector has WiFi, some people need that cable. When the room is too big, like this case, the cabling cannot travel to the wall, then down the wall and along the floor back to the table. You start to get signal degradation. The alternative is to drop a pole for the cable to travel in. I asked my contact person why it had to go in the ceiling, as the pole was a bit contentious. They explained that the branch manager had called their on-site contracted IT to sort out an issue with him not being able to centre the image, with the projector on the table. It turned out that he had put his cup down, in front of the lens and the left hand side caught about 2cm of the cup... 
I’m sure I don’t have to explain that. Lots of people say they can’t use Linux because they “need” M$ office. However there are office suites that boast 100% compatibility. Isn’t it just a case of a cup in front of the lens?


Q: I installed Freetube from the snap store, it worked for a month, then there was an update, but the snap wasn’t being updated, so I installed the debian package from the website. It is still on my menu, but it won’t launch. I’m not sure if the thing is still pointing to the snap, as I removed it after installing the debian package. If I launch it from the ops folder, it launches, but I don’t know where to edit gnome menus.

A: I think we covered this with the Steam issue, I use the AppImage, but I installed it for you. If you run it in the terminal you will see: “FATAL:setuid_sandbox_host.cc(163)] The SUID sandbox helper binary was found, but is not configured correctly. Rather than run without sandboxing I'm aborting now.” You need to make sure that /opt/FreeTube/chrome-sandbox is owned by root and has mode 4755. (sudo chmod u+s chrome-sandbox)


Q: I sort of have this question; in the snap store, under manage, all is updated, but the snap store itself says “switch channel”. When I click that, it says I need to close it as it can’t be open. How the hell do I do that? It’s chicken and egg. 

A: The terminal is your friend, and the only way I know how, just issue: sudo snap switch snap-store --channel stable


Q: I am on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and I have 8GB memory. After opening 1 (ONE) page in Firefox, I am using 2.46GB of memory. That did seem correct, but I counted the processes in htop and I have 40 firefox processes at 6.1MB each and 40 firefox-bin processes at 5MB each and then more sub-processes. It is crazy! How can I reduce this?

A: You have Google and Chrome to thank for that; that is how they made Chrome so fast (their V8 engine) and obviously FireFox had to keep up or lose out. The other problem is the HIV of the internet, JavaScript. I don’t think you can turn it off any more, but you can try adding “noScript” extension and restart your browser? Or... get a lightweight browser that does not support JavaScript?


Q: Hi, I run Audacious on my PC in Ubuntu Mate to play all those glorious sid tunes, with my Winamp skin (because nostalgia). However, on my laptop in Ubuntu Gnome, I can launch it, but once launched, I cannot move the window at all. It spawns randomly, and just sits there. 

A: Right-click on it, go to settings, and change the “winamp classic” back to “GTK interface”. It needs to be in ugly mode :P for it to be dragged around in Gnome. 


Q: My three-year-old hit my keyboard and I saw something about ‘bounce’ flash on my screen. Though I have not had any issues after that, I’d like to know what it is and how he turned it on or off and how I can undo what he did.

A: My guess is bouncy keys? That is usually under accessibility settings and then under the typing option in Vanilla Ubuntu. As you did not tell me what version and flavour you are using, that’s as far as I can help you. 


Q: I got my Dell laptop with Ubuntu and I’m very happy with it. I signed up for Ubuntu pro, as it kept saying there were VLC updates that I needed pro for. I was following the steps from the official documentation, but I noticed that it said that my kernel is not supported. The when I type sudo pro status, I can see “realtime-kernel* yes       disabled      Ubuntu kernel with PREEMPT_RT patches integrated” Do I need to install the real-time kernel then?

A: Oof, that is Microsoft tactics right there! As I don’t use VLC, I have never seen that; on the other hand, the kernel is probably the OEM kernel, so you can get firmware updates from Dell. I would not worry about that too much, it does not mean that you won’t get updates to your kernel. It just means they will come in the regular channel instead of via pro.


Q: In the top right-hand menu of Ubuntu, it has “power mode balanced” in the dropdown, and when I click it and it goes orange, it changes to “power mode power saver”. So I changed it to power saver permanently, but now when I turn it on, and it goes to orange, it goes to “power mode balanced”, so I’m confused, what is it?

A: It is a toggle switch, so when you toggle it, it does the opposite of what you had. It is not an on-off switch in the way that you are thinking (I’m assuming), or what I understand from your message. It also allows for performance mode, then you can toggle between performance mode and balanced. If you go to settings-> power, you will see the three listed, it toggles between the top two or the bottom two.


Q: Kind sir, I draw on the company prescribed Dell Precision laptop, with a 2k screen and the colors are spot-on; however, it only has 32GB memory and an i7 (this is the standard for junior artists like me). Then there is the i9, 64GB XPS laptop with 4k screen that IT loaned me, because it is a beast, but its colors are off and also faded. As a digital artist, I’m torn between color correctness and work flow speed. I mostly work directly on my Wacom, but I still need the laptop.

A: OK, but you seem to have forgotten to add your question... Have you tried adding a color profile in settings? 


Q: I don’t use github for anything, so I don’t want it installed on my system, keeping it as lean as possible. There is this one software I want, but the list of commands to get it, starts with git clone... You see where I am headed? I CAN add git and delete it, but I’m stubborn and I’m sure it will not uninstall all the extra files it installs. That seems to be par for the course these days with installing software. There must be another way?

A: Several, actually; you can download the zip file on the github website with one click, or you can use curl? I mean if you don’t have a desktop or want to do things in the terminal, just: curl -L https://github.com/<username>/<path>/somesoftware.tgz |tar xz


Q: I want to install FreeOffice and get rid of Libreoffice as Freeoffice is touted as having touchscreen support. When I search in the software centre, there is something odd, “freeoffice” gets me zip, “free office” gets me junk, and just “office”, the same junk. How do I do this? Before you say I’m slow, I am 69 years old, going on 70, so be gentle. I’m still on LTS, not 24.10 or 25.04.

A: 69? Nice! Anyway, not all software is in the store, you can head on out to https://www.freeoffice.com/en/. I think it used to be https://www.softmaker.com/en/products/softmaker-office/download, but both seem to be up. Grab the softmaker-freeoffice-2024-01.deb package in the downloads section and once downloaded, just double click it (or sudo apt install ./ softmaker-freeoffice-2024-01.deb). As for removing LibreOffice, I suggest you hold out until you are satisfied with Softmaker FreeOffice, as I have a niggle in the back of my head it was nagware or something. It is also not always updated, there is a trial version of the full product that is the latest version.