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.
I was doing an audit at a company with four regional branches, when I realised that the way they work, they don’t need Windows at all. They have a Windows server at the head office, where everyone works on shared documents. The computers are Windows pro, with everyone as their own administrator on the computers and a network login on the server. All this for: • a small VB program that tracks orders from one branch to another, that “has to have windows”, • when it sends an email, it needs outlook(?), • because it runs on terminal server, it needs office pro licenses for each user.
So now you are paying for Windows server, terminal server licenses, office pro licenses, etc. The money they can save by switching to Ubuntu! (I mean, why do people even throw money after Microsoft?).
I mentioned this to the FD, who said, well all the laptops we buy come with Windows, so we can’t change. What? He has a point – to some extent, finding Linux laptops is like looking for pennies in the street, you will find some, but it is not littered with them. I think what is needed is some open source business centre, where people like that can go look at people working on Ubuntu and Ubuntu server, doing all the daily tasks that they do on Windows at a fraction of the cost of Windows and licensing. Wouldn’t that be great? I don’t know about your country, but in mine they would probably put it in some city centre where the drug lords rule and nobody (business people) would go there. It’s a dream, but one that needs reality, as people just don’t fathom how much better open source is for the budget. (I am not taking city municipalities like you see in the news, as those are usually just a black hole for corrupt money laundering). I mean REAL conversion to open source software, and maybe donate some of the money saved to the developers. Oh what a dream.
Q: My question is regarding LibreOffice on Ubuntu 20.04: This is the message at the top. 'Missing hyphenation info - Please install the hyphenation package for locale “en”.' I have googled, I have duckduckgo’d to nonsense answers and it seems people just don’t get it. It is a banner message. It can’t be fixed by the options settings. I did a clean install of Ubuntu and LibreOffice. I didn’t have this issue on Ubuntu 18.04 with LibreOffice 6. Can you solve what the whole internet can’t?
A: I am not sure you searched the WHOLE internet ;) Go here: https://extensions.libreoffice.org/en/extensions/show/english-dictionaries download the latest one and install it.
Q: Which Ubuntu flavour to install on my i3-3rd gen and 4 GB ram? (Lenovo 80L0) I know Ubuntu is the easiest and most compatible and best supported by software makers of the Linuxes, it’s just a bit confusing to know which one.
A: Try them all, see which one you like. I can suggest Ubuntu Budgie. Boot from a thumb drive and try out the live mode. To be honest, I think my potato laptop is your laptop’s forerunner (first gen), and all the Ubuntu flavours seem to work fine on it. (Granted I have 8Gb memory.)
Q: Can you help me with firefox on Ubuntu 20.04? My screen is WXGA and the bars take up too much space and the tabs are too high. I am seriously considering Chrome at the moment as I get more viewing area.
A: You can start by clicking the hamburger menu → more tools → customize → title bar, bottom left. Then, you need to get into the ‘guts’ with about:config.
You can set: browser.uidensity to 1 in about:config to enable compact density.
Q: So I updated from Ubuntu 18,04 to Ubuntu 20,04, but I did a fresh install. As you can see, my period on my numpad is now a comma. WTH Ubuntu, this used to be a windows problem, now it is affecting my Ubuntu. This is precisely the reason I left windows 8, I could not get this solved in a proper manner. It is a frustrating error that should not be there on a standard 101/102 keyboard. What needs to change?
A: Since your file is an .odt, I am going to assume your issue is with LibreOffice. You can check this by opening your notepad application and typing the same key. So open: ‘Tools’ → ‘Options’ → ‘Language Settings’ → ‘Languages’ → ‘Decimal separator key:’ → untick ‘same as locale setting’. Don’t worry, this kind of thing drives me batty too, where the default is month-day-year, but literally nobody writes that way and no institution uses that format, but some idiot decided that is the default for my country.
Q: Man-files make me lose all interest in Linux. It is like eating dry crackers on a hot day in the desert. Just tell me how to use unzip properly from the terminal?
A: When you say “unzip” do you mean the unzip command or another form of “zipping” (compression)? See: https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/how-to-unzip-files-linux/ or https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-unzip-files-in-linux/
Q: I need some help from you boffs. Whenever I press shutdown, [Ubuntu 20.04] starts shutting down and when it goes blank, the Xubuntu shutting down screen appears and seems frozen.
A: Go to settings→power manager: • change : power button is pressed: to ask • the next 3 to “do nothing” • You can also change laptop lid to suspend.
Q: I am following a tutorial to get more accustomed to Ubuntu after leaving Windows as it takes up too much memory. It says I must export the path to my bash rc file. How do I do that?
A: Use the echo command: echo 'PATH=“$PATH:$HOME/<path to YOUR app>”' » ~/.bashrc
Q: My dell laptop is giving me issues, but it is out of the warranty period. So I have been cruising the forums and it seems I need to update the BIOS. From what I can see, it is 11 versions behind. However, the Dell website has only instructions for Windows .exe files? I thought they supported Ubuntu?
A: You are out of luck there, you need to grab another hard drive, boot / install Windows, install BIOS update and plug your Ubuntu drive back in. There is another way, but it requires removable media, which sometimes causes problems, such as bricked laptop.
Q: After installing my VPN, I can no longer browse the internet with firefox. I can still ping an IP address like 1.1.1.1, but it won't resolve www.google.co.za. This tells me that it is some DNS issue, but I don’t know how to solve it on Ubuntu.
A: Left-click on your network icon → edit connections. Then change your settings under IPv4 Settings to manual and give yourself an IP (same one you have in DHCP, but with your router or provider DNS settings.) You can also try quad 1, quad 8, or quad 9 as primary / secondary DNS.
Q: If I don’t want to install a flatpak of an app on my Lubuntu, how do I do it? Btw, I have 20.04 with 8GB ram and 60GB SSD Dell Laptop with model number faded to a grey black mess.
A: I am going to assume you need the space with the small HDD. You can search for the app in Google with .deb file after it. You can also search for the app on Github and see if they don’t have a .deb-file in their releases page. If push comes to shove, build it from source.
Q: What means this? “Ign:9 http://linux.dropbox.com/ubuntu eoan InRelease” Duckduckgo takes me here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1356717/ran-sudo-apt-update-and-shows-errors but it doesn’t say what it means?
A: I am going to assume you mean the ign, since the post explains everything else. It is short for ignore.
Q: Be patient with me, I am slow by nature. I grabbed a .deb file off the internet and copied it to my Raspberry pi. I have a minimal install of Ubuntu on there. How do I install this file now?
A: Assuming you have all the dependencies installed, it should be as easy as:
dpkg -i <package name>
Q: I have taken all our old DVD RW’s from work and re-purposed them. First order of business was to load Ubuntu Budgie on the old work laptop. (They re-formatted Windows for us when they sold it to us, but I don’t want Windows.) This is where my trouble began. My live DVD just freezes. I can’t get to install Ubuntu Budgie. What could be wrong?
A: Lots, actually – Have you verified the ISO image? Have you verified the written DVD? Have you verified that you have the right image – legacy or EFI? Is your BIOS set correctly? (Are those “safe boot”-type settings disabled?) I will need more info to assist you better.
Q: I have installed Ubuntu alongside Windows, not IN windows, and I am mirroring all my software across. I installed Skype 2 days ago in Ubuntu, but now my Windows version won’t sign in. Always “something went wrong”. What I have done is uninstall Skype on Ubuntu side, installed Skype on Windows side, tried Skype from the store, tried Skype from the Website, purge it from my system - every last file named skype - and try again all the methods. Do you think I got blocked for using Ubuntu?
A: No, I think windows wants to spy on you, turn on all the spying crap on the Windows side and sign in. You can turn it off again afterwards. (I have seen this a few times before.)
Q: What is the quickest way to troubleshoot an App that fails to launch on Lubuntu?
A: Just run it from a terminal and peruse the output.
Q: I haven't updated in a while and I tried upgrading from the command-line to get to Ubuntu 21.04, but it keeps failing? I want to get the latest everything in one go.
A: You cannot skip over versions, you need to go from one to the other in order. Won't it just be easier to install the latest LTS instead?
Q: How can I fix this? dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting: unable to open directory '/var/lib/dpkg/updates/': Operation not permitted E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2).
A: Updates? Do you have sudo? Try fsck on your disk on the next boot. (In the root “/” not “/root”: touch /forcefsck and reboot.)
Q: Don’t laugh, I somehow lost the menubar on my terminal in Xubuntu. How can I get it back? I can temporarily see it with F10.
A: Right-click inside the window and select “show menubar”
Q: I want to clear my desktop of all distractions and buttons and bars. Just one question, how would I toggle my hot corners?
A: You can try: https://9to5linux.com/just-perfection-gnome-shell-extension-now-lets-you-customize-your-gnome-40-desktop
Q: My laptop is in for repairs and I got an older Model Thinkpad X220, with a much smaller touchpad than I am used to. The sensitivity on this is not to my liking and I am not a trackpoint fan. Is there a way to play with the sensitivity settings for the pad, I can’t seem to find any.
A: You can try the gnome tweak tool to play with it. Have a look here: https://itsubuntu.com/install-gnome-tweak-tool-on-ubuntu-20-04/
Q:p I ran out of disk space and I now can’t log in. I am on POP! 20.04. My system only has a modest 120GB SSD. What can I remove?? How can I remove them?
A: I would start with your own files, then move on to the /var/cache/apt/archives and delete all the .deb-files in there. You would need to boot to a live thumb drive or DVD. Once you are back in, I suggest installing Stacer and using that to clean your temp files.