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.
As I was unpacking, I came across my old ZX Spectrum 48k computer. Then another… then another… and another and a ZX81!!? Try as I may, I have no recollection of having more than one, ever. (And a ZX81, never) Clive Sinclair died 16 September 2021 (aged 81) and I can admit that I was sad. If he were born 40 years later, I am sure he would have been the UK’s answer to Jeff Bezos, as he also sold electronics via mail order at an age most of you were still at school. It wasn’t until 1982, however, things went ‘viral’ for him. In 1982, Sinclair Research released the ZX Spectrum. *fade to memory sequence:* I had a friend who got a 16K ZX Spectrum as it launched. This was the first computer I had seen that didn’t have blocky graphics and one of the few I knew of that came with a whole 16K. That was like 14,000 four letter words! My mind was blown. I had to have one! The ZX Spectrum sold over 5 million units. (and could probably have sold more, but it was always sold out where I lived) This little rascal ushered in a generation of bedroom developers who are still shaping the software we use and the games we play today. Even Linus Torvalds cut his teeth on a Sinclair QL. (the not-so-successful computer) Dumpster diving for 1 litre soda bottles to turn in for money, it only took me about six months to afford a shiny 48K ZX Spectrum! To put it into perspective, I would have to dumpster dive for about six years now, to afford a ZX Spectrum NEXT. So it was VERY affordable. Also my other choice was a Commodore VIC-20 at double the price running at only 1Mhz (Speccy ran at 3.5Mhz) and had fat graphics like an Atari 2600. (yes, 1977 called, wanting their graphics back) … Anyway, we had no books or magazines on computers, but I did stop by the library every week, to check. One friend (or I should say his mom) would print out some homebrew magazine in dot matrix every two months, or else we were dead in the water. Maybe that is why I have so much respect for FCM, bringing Ubuntu to the masses, for free – helping beginners get going, Yes, now we have Youtube etc, but even when FCM launched, the internet was so expensive where I lived, one guy would download FCM and share it with everyone.
Q: I have traded in my first gen i3 laptop for a 10th gen i7 after many years. What is the best way for me to get all my stuff on the new one? By this I mean it must include my emails and my passwords, firewall rules etc, as I have it the way I like it now. I use Ubuntu Budgie.
A: Copy your home folder including the hidden files, that is the important bit, onto a backup drive, and copy them in on the new one. You will obviously have to import a few things again, but it should be identical.
Q: Is there a quicker way? I have a master image of ubuntu for Virtual box. Once I have messed up the OS, I have to delete the image, then copy the master and set it up again for testing. I am currently working for home so I don’t have and abundance of resources.
A: You didn’t give me hardware and software details, but may I suggest Vagrant or Docker? As I don’t know what you are doing, and what you are trying to achieve other than create and destroy VM’s.
Q: My laptop came with a 256GB SSD and a 1TB hard drive. I installed steam and started downloading my games, but it got too full. I can move my steam folder to the 1TB, but I am a bit confused reading about hard and soft links. Can yo clarify please?
A: Actually, no. I need to keep QnA short and concise to give everyone a turn. Suffice to say you can not only move your Steam folder from within Steam settings, but set it so that all future games install there as well, freeing your SSD, requiring nothing more from your part.
Q: I bought one of the HP servers from the office sale, and it came with Ubuntu server. The catch is that the BIOS is locked and I can’t boot from USB. IT says the password they have does not work. Can I turn this into a usable machine or does it need to go to a specialist?
A: If you have a root user, you can simply install a desktop, I dont know how old that server is, but you can try XFCE as it is lightweight: sudo apt install xubuntu-desktop -and once installed test it with: startx (see: https://www.tecmint.com/install-xfce-desktop-in-ubuntu-fedora/ -for v4)
Q: I have Telegram desktop installed on my Xubuntu machine, but the other day it updated an now I have 2 entries in my menu. How do I know which one is the right one?
A: They are probably the same thing, edit your menu to be sure, and once confirmed just remove one.
Q: I inherit laptop my uncle: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-HP-ZBook-14-Workstation.114091.0.html Very powerful laptop. I wanted to make Ubuntu. Is no install.
A: The HP Zbooks are notoriously difficult to install Linux on as they use some proprietary caching to a mini SSD. You will need to play with the BIOS to get just the right settings. I suggest you trawl some forums for this as I don’t have one to test the settings for you.
Q: Somehow FireFox has gone out of bounds on my screen. The top part you use to move the window, has gone under my top panel and even out of the display. Any ideas on how to get it back? It started when I clicked the min/max button and if flickered and just went back to filling the screen, every time I clicked it, now I can’t reach it.
A: Try the F11 key or use your system manager to kill it. (They differ from desktop to desktop) You can also try resizing your screen resolution smaller then bigger again. Or, even use the windows key (Sometimes called super) plus the arrow keys, that should tile the current window.
Q: I am feeling dumb at the moment. I was working through orientation, when it said to open a new tab in the terminal to continue. WTH?
A: Not all terminal emulators support tabbed terminals, a quick way to see is right click inside the terminal emulator. If you are working on TTY, it is not going to happen, you need to open another TTY.
Q: I am using a static address on my Ubuntu, when I go and change it, it still shows the previous address. Instead of me opening the command line every time, is there no other way to make it refresh to the new address.
A: That you know to open the terminal and stop /start the network card shows you know what to do. Simply click your Wifi icon and tick off the box enable WiFi and then repeat enabling the Wifi from your desktop. (Or see if you don’t have a short-cut key combination) It has the same effect.
Q: My once powerhouse XP PC has been relegated to the minors. I went with XFCE, and an old square screen for the kids, 1024×768 I think. The menu bar is a bit fat. Right click properties, only gives transparency. It needs to shrink. Settings-Panel profiles has me scratching my head. Did I mention I was new to XFCE?
A: Right place, wrong spot. Right click, panel → panel preferences. Panel profiles is usually a theme thing.
Q: You can rag on the new guy, but updates give me a GPG error. I Googled it and it says goes on about pretty good privacy an email. I fail to see what that has to do with my update. I went here, https://knowledgebase.progress.com/articles/Article/ws-ftp-professional-pgp-errors as it is supposed to be a knowledge base, but is is useless. I surfed around for at least 2 hours to find mostly junk.
A: GPG is Gnu Privacy Guard and PGP is Pretty Good Privacy. It’s a finger error Mr butterfingers. Do you need help with the error, or are you good? You seem to be a go-getter.
Q: I have taken an online course and I am stuck before even starting. I am still on Ubuntu 20.04, but I can install 21.04 if I need to. The first error is: Error: No such command '/usr/local/bin/celery' then it snowballs. I don’t really see anything in dmesg as that is filled with [83558.304803] audit: type=1400 audit(1641483245.375:1330): apparmor=“ALLOWED” operation=“open” profile=“libreoffice-soffice” name=“/home/Michael/Documents/lu5492592raxuh.tmp” pid=569209 comm=“soffice.bin” requested_mask=“wrc” denied_mask=“wrc” fsuid=1000 ouid=1000 and I don’t know what that is.
A: Come on dude, we removed the Celery disclaimer last year. (like a month or two ago) Type $PATH (Capitals) and see if it is in there. Does that file actually exist when you go to /usr/local/bin ? Did you follow the official installation method?
Q: I have installed Xubuntu on my dead Mac. I didn’t like where it went after Snow leopard, so now it cannot get updates, hence Xubuntu. Though there are similarities, – I even themed it to look like the latest OSX – There are a lot of differences. Where things were connected to my profile, on OSX, in Xubuntu it is not. I clicked on open my windows when I log in again and it worked well, until it didn’t. Where do I clear it?
A: In the menu go to Settings → Session and Startup and in there is a tab labelled “Saved Sessions”. At the bottom you can clear it.
Q: Let’s be blunt, I am computer illiterate. With that out of the way, I can safely say I did not edit /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades in any way. Yes, I was on a few forums and people tell me I need to edit this file. Fine. What is foremost on my mind is- why did it change? I only want LTS upgrades. I have never needed to and I have been using Ubuntu sine 12.04. What changed?
A: There is another… As master Yoda says. If you open your “Software and Updates”, you will notice that the third tab says “Updates”right at the bottom of that tab, you will notice “Notify me of new Ubuntu version”, that is most probably where it changed with the slip of a mouse, or something. Change that to LTS.
Q: When I start my computer in recovery mode, I see this, failed to start Load apparmor profiles. Ubuntu 21.04, i7, 32GB RAM and then it doesn’t load the recovery. Failed to start default target: Transaction for graphical.target is destructive.
A: I would suggest booting from an Ubuntu CD or USB and running fsck on that drive. If all else fails, copy your home folder and reinstall.
Q: My laptop is Ubuntu 18.04.6 LTS Kernel 4.15.0.166 Mesa 3.0 v20.0.8 and then when I use Steam proton, I get an error saying Dx11 Feature Level 10.0 Is Required to Run the Engine.
A: I am afraid your graphics card driver does not seem to be loaded, Mesa is a generic driver. You need to go to “drivers” and install the proprietary driver for your graphics card. That said, the card needs to support DX11. If it does not, you will not be able to play DX11 games.