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For the newbies out there, I want to say, reach out and touch the keyboard. In modern Linux Distributions like Ubuntu, the focus is a lot on the DE. That being said, it is nice to have the mouse-driven menus at your fingertips, but no matter how comfortable you are with your mouse, there will always be something that is not covered. We will start slow and keep the pace easy, so anyone, grandma included, can follow along and not be afraid of the computer. Windows has taught us that you can break the system. While it is possible in Linux, it is a lot more resilient. Now this month’s ‘command n conquer’ is not going to assume anything about the desktop you are using. I will try to write in broad terms, using words like “file manager”. This does not – in any way – mean “files” aka Nautilus only; this also goes for Thunar, Rox, whatever.
To start, let us do just that, open your file manager. With the file manager having focus (what I mean by this is it is on top of other windows and the title bar is in the foreground color, if you have a title bar), I want you to press F1 and see what happens. Now that you know, I want you to press F2 and see what happens, all the while keeping the file manager in focus. The reason I say this is that, with some desktops, when you close a window that popped up, like the help that popped up when you pressed F1, will not automatically go back to the previous window that had focus, but some will focus on the start button, for instance. I want you to repeat the exercise with each F-key until you reach F12, and make a mental note of what just happened. For instance, some file managers may split in two by pressing F3, some may not. Feel free to do it multiple times to see what changes. I had a discussion with someone on Telegram who wanted eye-candy only. That is fine too, and I understand that “fake it till you make it” has become a very big part of life, but it can be fun too, to dazzle your peers with your fancy finger work. A lot of the time, the keyboard is going to be faster than the mouse, but, other times, the mouse will be faster at a task. I don’t want to push you in a direction, but I want you to know your system and have fun. As I mentioned before, some file managers will split your view in two, so you can get away without installing an extra two-pane file manager like ‘midnight commander’ or something similar. Though midnight commander is a godsend when you are working in the terminal.
So you are happy you know your file manager a bit better now… or you learned something new (kudos to you!). Now, at the same pace as before, I want you to open your favourite browser and repeat the exercise above. If you have multiple browsers, I want you to take one from another family and do it again. What I mean by this is some browsers, like Chromium, Brave, Vivaldi, are loosely based on Chrome, while Waterfox, Pale Moon and the TOR browser are based on Firefox. Very broadly speaking, they will not all conform to Chrome standard keys, for instance F3 on one will open a search whilst in others it will have no effect. We have not touched on any of the other keys (modifiers) but you can already see how simple F-keys (which some people use so rarely that they have keyboards without F-keys!), can be handy as all heck. Now that we are in your browser, you may notice that most of them support F12 as “inspect”. This is where YOU can make changes to the website you are using. This is more of an advanced topic we can cover another time, but I want you to see the power in this. I want you to feel like the genie in Disney’s Aladdin. “unlimited power at your fingertips!!” :)
Let’s all navigate to remix64 - https://remix64.com/, and you should immediately see a dark grey “film” being pulled over your browser window and a message that you HAVE to accept cookies. Annoying as all heck, right? Now, before we go further, some advanced users may point out there are add-ons for the browser that will do this for you, and there are, but the object here is to learn. Pop that F12 (shown next page, top left). In the following images, I will be using Firefox, but the method is the same for most other browsers.
Let’s zoom in on the “inspector” (shown below).
Can you spot the line that says, ‘cookie overlay’? I want you to click on it once, to highlight it, then, right-click on it. You should see the following menu:
Now click on ‘Delete Node’.
Don’t worry, you won't break anything if you slip up and delete the wrong line, you can simply reload the page with the F-key you found when you tried it earlier.
Once the line is deleted, simply press F12 again and the page will be rid of the dirty film that was overlaid on it. Do you feel powerful yet? I’m glad if this was an eye opener for you. Your computer is your own, and should be more than a spotify station.
The takeaway here is that YOU can do things. You don’t have to rely on others to do things for you. I mean, the cookie add-on I was using was causing rekt.network not to play (who needs Spotify?), so instead I disabled it. This in turn caused cookie popups on sites I was browsing, so I took out my spanner and ‘fixed’ the problem in one simple stroke.
I could make a clickbait title, like “cookie companies hate him, see how he fixes overlays with one simple trick” and slap it on the web, but the more you know….
Any corrections? Contact us at: misc@fullcirclemagazine.org