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, UUIDs or IP addresses. If your question does not appear immediately, it is just because there is such a lot, and I do them, first-come-first-served. NOTE: Guys, with the latest Google hack, my Gmail accounts are all in limbo, if you sent me any messages there, I will get to those only when it unfreezes again.
Bienvenue de retour dans un autre épisode de Q. ET R. ! Dans cette rubrique, nous essayerons de répondre à vos questions sur Ubuntu. Assurez-vous d’ajouter des détails de la version de votre système d’exploitation et votre matériel. J’essaierai d’enlever de vos questions toutes chaînes qui pourraient vous identifier personnellement, mais il vaut mieux ne pas inclure des choses comme des numéros de série, des UUID ou des adresses IP. Si votre question n’apparaît pas tout de suite, ce n’est que parce qu’il y en a beaucoup et je les fais sur la base de premier venu, premier servi.
NOTA : Les gars, à cause du dernier piratage de Google, mes comptes Gmail se trouvent tous dans les limbes ; si vous m’avez envoyé des messages sur un de ces comptes, je ne les recevrai que lors du dégel.
Today we accept media formats the way they are, but it was never really that way. Computers were just not as fast, and ripping your music to Fraunhoffer’s MP3 format was great on space (compared to wav-files). That was the other thing; space was at a premium. If your computer was underpowered in CPU cycles, memory or drive read/write speed, your MP3 files sounded terrible. Couple that with crappy sound cards, and bad encoders, and low default bit rates, and one can understand why a lot of people thought it was crappy. One very tech-savvy lady I knew, had got a machine with premium parts and Windows 2000 (I think), brand new. By this time I was familiar with Microsoft policy of doing sneaky stuff to force you to use their stuff, so when she told me that the music she had been converting just sounds so much better than her old MP3s. I tried to warn her, but she knew better, so it went until she had a huge collection of her own and her friends’ stuff. Her original music was given to goodwill – she was now digital and had a backup. I did not want to interfere as she was cocky, and, sure she and M$ had a one-up on the world. Until the motherboard died and needed replacing. Nothing wanted to play as it was all encrypted to a UUID from her old board and installation of XP? She lost everything. Did not learn a thing from it. A few years later, she asked me to tell her 18 year old son to stop fooling with Ubuntu 6.06 he got via shipit, as he needed the “real thing” or something like that. If I prefer to fill my car with Shell and you have only ever filled your car with anything but BP, and on top of that BP has ceased your car’s engine, tell me to stay away from Shell and use BP as it is the only real petrol? - The kicker… That son specialized in Linux security and got a job abroad, owns his own house and boat (as in paid off), while his peers still have 20 years to pay off their houses.
Aujourd’hui, nous acceptons les formats de média tels quels, mais ce n’était jamais vraiment ainsi. Les ordinateurs n’étaient tout simplement pas aussi rapide, et riper votre musique au format MP3 de Fraunhoffer était excellent pour l’espace (par rapport aux fichiers wav). C’était aussi une question d’espace : il n’y en avait beaucoup. Si votre ordinateur était sous-puissant du point de vu des cycles du processeur, de la mémoire ou de la vitesse de lecture/écriture sur disque, le son de vos fichiers MP3 était affreux. Accompagné de cartes son merdiques, de mauvais encodeurs et de débits binaires lents par défaut et vous pouvez comprendre pourquoi pas mal de gens le pensaient merdique. Une dame que je connaissait, qui était très au fait de la technologie, avait obtenu une machine flambant neuve avec d’excellents composants et Windows 2000 (je pense). À cette époque, je connaissais la politique de Microsoft de faire des trucs sournois pour vous obliger à utiliser ses produits. Et, quand elle m’a dit que le son de la musique qu’elle convertissait était tellement meilleur que ses vieux MP3, j’ai essayé de la prévenir, mais c’était elle qui pensait connaître la vérité. Les choses continuaient ainsi jusqu’à ce qu’elle ait une grande collection de sa musique et de celle de ses amis. Toute sa musique originale a été donnée à l'organisme caritatif Goodwill – elle était alors en numérique entièrement et avait une sauvegarde. Je ne voulais pas m’en mêler, car elle était arrogante et certaine que M$ et elle avaient de l’avance sur le monde. Jusqu’à la mort de la carte mère, qui devait être remplacée. Elle ne pouvait plus rien lire, puisque tout était crypté vers un UUID à partir de sa vieille carte ; de plus, il y avait eu l’installation de XP. Elle avait tout perdu et n’avait rien appris … Quelques années plus tard, elle m’a demandé de dire à son fils de 18 ans d’arrêter de bricoler avec Ubuntu 6.06, qu’il avait obtenu via shipit, car il avait besoin du « vrai de vrai » ou quelque chose comme cela. Si je fais le plein avec Shell et vous faites depuis toujours le plein avec BP et que, en plus BP a tué le moteur de votre voiture, allez-vous me dire d’abandonner Shell et d’utiliser BP parce que c’est le seul vrai carburant ? Le dernier mot : ce fils-là s’est spécialisé dans la sécurité sous Linux. Il a trouvé un boulot outre-mer, où il est propriétaire de sa maison et de son bateau (il ne doit plus rien pour l’un comme pour l’autre), alors que ses pairs doivent encore, et pendant 20 ans, rembourser le prêt de leur maison.
Q: Hi, I installed Ubuntu 18.04 and Windows 10 side-by-side on my old Lenovo laptop. It seems that the battery charges only when the computer is off or very, VERY, VERY slowly when it is on. How can I fix this?
A: I would start with checking your charger’s output as I suspect it may be a bad charger. Otherwise the circuitry within the battery may be faulty.
I just went back to Windows 8.1 as Windows 10 will start doing weird things that look like it is running out of memory, but I have 4GB.
Q: I have a Dell Latitude E6420 that is rather slow. Which version of Ubuntu do you recommend that I install on it? It has 4GB DDR3 and 320GB hard drive.
A: Those are only slow because the drive is lame in that model. Replace it with an SSD and it should fly. I would suggest Ubuntu 20.04, that way all your software will be current and you will get long term support.
Q: I have an Acer machine with an Atom processor. I know it is crap, but lately my Ubuntu is taking a lot longer to boot than usual, I am talking like 10 minutes here. The issue is analyze-blame tells me nothing, just that everything is slow. What can I do or check?
A: There are numerous articles on how to speed up Ubuntu, I won't repeat that here. I can tell you to fsck your drive and maybe check the smart status to see if you do not have any bad blocks. Slow response at boot is mostly a drive bottleneck, even if your CPU is underpowered.
Q: I have installed Kubuntu on my black box special PC, but when I try to install it on my Dell Optiplex, I just get a black screen. It is the same USB drive, so I tried with a new Lexar USB drive and the same is happening. Where am I going wrong?
A: If there is no splash, it probably means that either it is not booting from the USB, or that you have the BIOS in the wrong mode, EFI or legacy. Dell sometimes hides settings in other places, check under “security”, “secure boot”, “advanced boot options”. Grab an EFI and a legacy (sometimes called bios too) ISO and try both, if you are unsure of how to set the BIOS.
Q: Gawd, if I see – ‘getting windows ready, don’t turn off your computer’ once more, I will commit hara-kiri. I have switched to Ubuntu, but how do I get my Adobe to work? Also I need outlook.
A: If you mean Adobe reader, you can install that quite easily, but if you mean Adobe photoshop, I have bad news for you. You can try crossover or wine, but people have had limited success. If you meant Photoshop, why not give some open source software a try? https://opensource.com/life/12/6/design-without-debt-five-tools-for-designers
As for outlook, you can use the web interface, log on to portal.office.com or maybe try an open source alternative?
Q: Can I use Cisco webex in Ubuntu 18? I have not tried, but I have a webex next week and wanted to be prepared.
A: Webex is browser based, so the OS should not matter.
Q: The only thing I miss from my days on Windows is the free download manager. What is the Ubuntu equivalent?
A: You can try uget. See: https://itsfoss.com/install-latest-uget-ubuntu-linux-mint/
Q: I have Xubuntu installed on my dual-core PC. I am fed up with Parole; every time I skip forward or backwards more than once, it crashes. I don’t really like VLC; is there another option other than mplayer/smplayer? I'm tired of the same old, same old.
A: Not sure what you want here, but it seems like you want something “new”. Here is one I have not heard of before: https://github.com/g-fb/haruna. Let us know how it went.
Q: I have two Wifi cards in my Ubuntu Budgie PC. I broke the antenna off the internal one, so I am using a USB one. Ubuntu seems to switch to the one without the antenna quite often, resulting in a bad quality connection. Why would it switch to a worse one?
A: I am not sure; it could be that the broken one has a higher transfer rate than the other one. I suggest just removing the broken one and be done with it.
Q: Ever since I installed Ubuntu 14.04 with WUBI in Windows 10, it seems that everything is just janky in Windows. I have tried uninstalling it, but it is still weird, giving me blue screens when I try to print.
A: That is definitely a Windows update bug. KB5000808. I think there was another, KB5000802. Ubuntu just had bad timing. Correlation does not equal causality.
Q: Explain to me what is the difference between & and && when running commands?
A: When you append the ampersand to the end of a command, you send it to the background and when you use two, you are chaining commands – the second command will run only if the first exits with a return code of 0.
Q: I’m currently watching bash scripting videos on youtube. I do not have a server to ssh to. My machine is Ubuntu 18.04. Memory is only 2 GB. How can I simulate working on a server without the desktop distracting?
A: You can try to create a minimal VM with a virtual box, but if distractions are your biggest worry, simply press CTRL+ALT+f6 and feel like you are on a server.
Q: Here is my current papercut. I have my terminal open. When I launch a program via the terminal like visual studio code, it always pops over the terminal. I still need to do things in the terminal. Launching a GUI program with & at the end does not work. All of the advice I have gotten so far doesn’t seem to work.
A: Open the menu of your terminal, by clicking on its icon in the bar, and choose: “Always on top”. Now go ahead and launch your program.
Q: My issue is this: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/642880/is-disk-encryption-without-requiring-a-password-at-boot-possible but instead of typing it all out again. I have no preference for the encryption, Zulucrypt, LUKS or whatever.
A: Meh, the simple answer is don’t. Instead of FDE (Full disk encryption), encrypt only the part where the data is stored, that way, the computer can start, and you can put the password in remotely. Your data is safe if the physical unit gets feet.
Q: What does it mean “UNMET DEPENDENCIES”
A: A simple example: Imagine you need node 14 to run an application, but you have only node 9, you would need to upgrade to node 14; but, let's say your version of Ubuntu is too old to run Node 14, that would be an unmet dependency. A program DEPENDS on another that is not available.
Q: My Ubuntu is 18.04. I get errors: E: The repository 'https://download.docker.com/linux/debian focal Release' does not have a Release file.
A: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
Q: I am on Vanilla Ubuntu with a generic kernel, I have Opera 76.0. When I highlight inside Opera, I get a copy option on the webpage. I mostly work in Web v 3.22.7. I want to copy it like that, without having to press keyboard shortcuts, so I can paste to mousepad. Lots of my work is in the browser and I need to get comfortable with this Linux thing. How can I tweak the Web to work faster like opera?
A: A quick tip, if you highlight text anywhere and press the middle mouse button, or mouse wheel, it will copy and when you press it on an open space like inside your text editor it will paste. No tweaking or keyboard required. Ubuntu has you covered.
Q: Help, I am so confused as to when I should use pip to install modules and when I need to use apt to install modules for Python.
A: I am not sure either, I would say, if the package exists in your standard Ubuntu repository, then maybe get that, if it does not, use pip. Maybe one of our readers can give more insight here. misc@fullirclemagazine.org
Q: I'm connected through SSH with Putty to a machine running Ubuntu, as a normal user. I would like to somehow restart the machine there, because I'm having trouble with that machine, hopefully that is all it needs. Is it possible?
A: You need elevated privileges to reboot a machine. No sudo, no restart.
Q: Is there some ncurses based desktop I can use remotely?
A: Not that I know of, but just use the shell with lots of ncurses based applications.
Q: How come when I run software updater & do a complete update, then open software centre and there are three more?? BTW I still use 18.04.
A: You probably have something like flathub updates that is not covered by the updater.