Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
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, UUID’s or IP addresses.
A long time ago, in a Galaxy far, far away – my mother used to work for a company who had a room with a Burroughs accounting / bookkeeping machine. It was no longer used, as far as I know; and it was just too big to get out through the door to go to the scrap heap. It was fastened to a steel cradle - if you will, that probably weighed over 100kg. It was 100 percent mechanical, no electricity needed (I think). You punched in a number and pulled a lever and repeated the action until the column of numbers you were adding was complete. The amount of buttons was dizzying, like having four typewriter keyboards on one platform. If you were quick at maths, you could outperform this monstrosity. Today, basic accounting software can do everything that machine did in a day - in a split second. Yet, accounting still takes the whole month to do. (Ask any accountant). Are we working faster, smarter or harder? Each update of the accounting programs require faster machines, with more memory. There is a trend to get software out the door faster, and on Linux we see more Electron applications every day. There are more Java frameworks than people working in your office. In our quest for development speed, have we become penny-wise and pound-foolish? ##(Google SymbOS – and realise it is running on an 8-bit CPU at 4MHz (NOT GHz) with 128K of memory. To get an idea of how little that is, times that by a hundred and see how Linux runs on a 400MHz CPU with 12MB of memory…)
Q: I’ve thrown caution to the wind and done a fresh install of Ubuntu Disco Dingo. Quite a few things suddenly don’t work any more. Chief among these is my Sunflower twin-pane file manager. I can get along without it, but it makes life so much simpler. Any idea as to how I can get it working again?
A: Answer to the first part is: Python. Answer to the second part: You can not. Python 2.7 is no longer supported in 19.04. (And soon, 2020, basically obsolete). There are other alternatives you can look at in dual-pane file managers. You can ask the developers when they will port it to Python 3 if you do not want to change.
Q: Guys: I have installed a new SSHD and Ubuntu 18.04.2 on my Laptop. If I leave it for a long time and get back to it, the screen blanks and all I can do is turn it off. What is at fault here?
A: You have given so little info here I can not even begin to say what is wrong. I can however point you to fault finding. Start with, say, caffeine; leave the laptop, if it stays on, but hangs, you may have another problem, if it just stays working, you may have an issue with a screensaver or such. Start at one end and work toward the other. (Have you replaced say, lightDM?).
Q: I am running Xubuntu 18.04.2 and I have screen tearing on my Haswell i5 which I did not have on 14.04. I suspect it may be due to my screen size, 1600 x 900 – not 1920 x 1080. I have Googled and found the Intel settings for screen tearing, but it does not work on i915. None of those janky configs work. Can YOU help me?
A: Yes. Get rid of all those changes you have made and disable composting in your: settings>window manager tweaks. Now install Compton: sudo apt install compton
Go to settings>session and start up and create a launcher with the following: /usr/bin/compton –backend glx –paint-on-overlay –vsync opengl-swc
Reboot and you should be good. Another option is Compiz.
Q: OK. So I have started learning Japanese. The course videos are on a MAC, where the instructor switches between the different writing styles In his notepad. I have tried leafpad, featherpad, mousepad, etc. I have even messed around with ibus preferences, as google says. I just want to be able to type it out like the instructor on Linux. Reading and writing is a necessary part in my language journey, but I can’t figure it out on my Ubuntu 18.04 install.
A: You will be needing mozc and fcitx. The discussion is too long for a Q&A session. There are youtube videos on it now that you know what to search for. Alternatively, look here: https://theguyjin.com/kana-input-linux-guide/
Q: I am new to Ubuntu and I really like conky. I have gotten me some rc files from conkyporn and have been trying them out. My problem is that I get transparent blocks around mine, which the screenshots of the users don’t have. I don’t have a graphics card , I am just using the built in one, which I suspect is not powerful enough to do the job. Do I need an Nvidia card to make the magic happen?
A: The short answer is no. You will have to change your conkyrc script slightly. The own_window_type should read desktop, not normal. “Desktop windows are special windows that have no window decorations; are always visible on your desktop; do not appear in your page or taskbar; and are sticky across all workspaces.” - conky man page.
Q: I run Ubuntu 16.04 on my Apple MBP. How does the right to repair affect me if I don’t use apple OS?
A: There seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding this and a lot of misinformation. From what I have gathered, the Canadian Parliament has put the motion forward, but it was rejected. This is just another reason to stick to open source and open products, where other people don’t have a say in the things you own. I assume you are Canadian. Like everyone else, in other countries, Apple are saying they don’t allow you to repair your own stuff. (Regardless of OS) See: https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/right-to-repair-and-the-dmca/
Q: I need to upgrade my Ubuntu 15.10 to 19.04. Long story short, it doesn’t want to. So do I need to upgrade to each version in between, because again, it won’t. 15.10 has now become a pain in the *** and I am at wit’s end.
A: First of all, 15.10 is a release meant for people to test features, not to keep. The same with 19.04. I know I sound like a broken record, but Ubuntu is not Windows, the release of 19.04 does not make 18.04 obsolete or hackable. If you want to keep your stuff, stick to the long term releases! The reason 15.04 will not upgrade is because packages needed to upgrade have since been upgraded and so have the upgrade methods. (Can I fit the word upgrade in here one more time?) Quickest and dirtiest is to copy your home folder to another drive and install 18.04.2, then copy it back and install your software. Otherwise you need to update apt, apt-transport, apt-utils, libapt-pkg and libapt-inst manually.
Q: Man, I need your help, can’t boot. Kernel panic, not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown…. This after updating my 16.04 to 18.04.
A: My first reaction is usually fsck. There is usually more before and after that error, but here are a few suggestions that solved that: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qubes-users/e56-LZbKrZU or https://askubuntu.com/questions/1081850/error-at-startup-on-linux-after-computer-shutdown-during-ubuntu-18-update
Q: I am trying to install Leafpad in Disco Dingo but it says no candidate? What’s up with that?
A: Now I sound like my providers… It’s an upstream issue. You have alternatives, mousepad, featherpad, etc. Otherwise, you can build it yourself.
Q: My question is about a USB thumb drive. I have made a bootable image to my thumb drive with dd. It is a 16GB thumb drive, but now only shows up as 1.6GB.?
A: That is the way dd works, if you have 1GB, to dd the output will be 1GB. In the old days, we said dd stood for disk duplicate as it makes a 100% clone. Your drive still has the full 16GB. it’s just ‘pretending’ to be the same as the image you used. See: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/dd
Q: How can I see what a package installs?
A: There are several ways, one, use Gdebi, it will list the packages and dependencies in your GUI. If you are using the terminal, just simulate it with apt -s install <package name> command. There are more, but this should get you started.
Q: Wait, something is screwy with Ubuntu 18.04 desktop and 18.04 server. They are not the same. Server does not give me any network info in the GUI.
A: It’s usually not a good idea to install a GUI on server. That said, it’s probably the way netplan is configured. See here: https://www.raytechnote.com/wired-unmanaged-after-install-ubuntu-desktop-gui-on-ubuntu-server/
Q: Snaps are making my life miserable. Whenever I list my drives, etc, I now have like 100 loop devices. Can I not hide them permanently?
A: There is probably some way, but for now grep and egrep is your friend. You can also alias your commands, for example:
df -h grep -v '^loop' or df -h egrep -v /dev/loop
or
alias df=df –exclude=squashfs.
(Just using the df command as an example).