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.
There was this employee once, working for the same company I did, who was terminated. A month, maybe two, before termination, I went to his station to check on him and noticed his machine was exceptionally grimey. I offered to clean it for him and had to wash the cloth afterwards as it just made streaks after a while of cleaning, and went from blue to grey. (Yes it was that dirty.) After his termination, I had to farm the laptop out to the next guy to take his place. I flipped the laptop open and found it was in the same state it was a few months earlier. There was fat caked around the keys. When I say this I mean the amount of hard lard seemed to just fit inside the holes when you depress a key. As disgusting as it was, I needed to clean it out as I could not give it like that to the next guy. Once I was done scraping off the lard, I realised that the keyboard seemed crunchy. I flipped it over and gently patted it on the back. Something I regretted as my desk became a beach. I had to repeat this action over and over and over until the amount of sand coming out was minimal. I have no idea what happened or if the guy just worked from the beach, but please never, ever use lard or schmaltz to lube your keyboard as there is too much sand in it. Especially when the laptop belongs to someone else.
Q: I have a Dell 9520 and my wife has my old Dell 9510 – She has an i7 and I have an i9. Otherwise the machines are basically identical. We were running Ubuntu 20.04, but decided to take the plunge and install 22.04.3. That’s when the problems started. We cannot shut down or restart without holding down the power button. Sleep does not function. We have followed all the advice on the internet we could find, but it made no difference. We do not run any proprietary software or anything *not* from the app store. One thing I did notice is that the drivers section is empty, even though we both have Nvidia 3050 for sure, it should at least offer us the option?
A: From what I gather, it is a kernel 6.2 issue – the way to fix it is to actually install an older Nvidia proprietary driver -525 instead of 535, then reboot and go to the store app, to update, you will now see a Dell firmware update that wasn’t there before. Install that. It will now be able to shut down. (P.S. If you use the Caffeine indicator, make sure it is disabled when shutting down.)
Q: Is there a way in Ubuntu to turn off the ‘auto power on’ when I open the laptop lid? I don’t see anything in the power settings. I have TLP installed, but that does not help. The reason is that sometimes I just want to clean my keyboard with a brush or wipe my screen, without Ubuntu booting.
A: That is a manufacturer setting in your laptop’s BIOS / UEFI – there are magnets in the screen and base that flip the internal switch, it is not Ubuntu related.
Q: I have app images that are supposed to be all self contained. They work 100% on Xubuntu 20.04, but do not work on Gnome Ubuntu 22.04. How can this be – if the so-called self contained application contains everything it needs to work? These are applications I cannot get any more as I need a specific version, so the snap is not going to work for me.
A: As to how self contained App Images are, I cannot comment, but the issue may be that you are in a Wayland session now by default? You can always load up a virtual machine with Xubuntu 20.04 for just that application, if it is so important. VirtualBox has the option to share a folder between the host and the guest OS, if you need to save your work to the host.
Q: I was looking on Distrowatch.com at the Ubuntu release for 22.04 and I noticed that there was no Ubuntu Cinnamon listed in the releases. As a Mint user, I am very interested in this as Mint is always slightly behind Ubuntu. I checked the Ubuntu Cinnamon page and it definitely had 22.04, so is it just for testing purposes? Ideally I want to try 23.04.
A: As far as I know, it is not yet, but according to their website, it is: “Ubuntu Cinnamon is a community-driven flavor of Ubuntu“
Q: Hey man, new user here; I have installed Ubuntu, but I cannot work with the Gnome way, so I installed a global menu extension. I decided to try out Ubuntu 23.04, just to find it (menu) does not work there. Is there another menu I can use?
A: I found this video for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFa8ZKKgI_g - It seems that the extension is not updated any more and this contains a workaround. BTW, you can use something else like Ubuntu MATE if you prefer the classic way of computing.
Q: This may sound silly, but I don't know what to search for on google as I get mixed results. I am downloading a distro from distrowatch via torrent. On the page, next to the torrent, there is a sha256→ (2,528MB, SHA256, torrent). I can download it, but I don’t know how to check it. It says I must do → sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS ? Maybe my head is too flat for Ubuntu?
A: Simplest I can make it, type: sha256sum ubuntu-22.04.3-live-server-amd64.iso (Insert your .iso name, don’t use mine) and press enter. It will take a few seconds to compute. I copy-paste both the computed number and the sha256 from the web into a text editor underneath each other and my eye is fast enough to compare.
Q: I am new, been running Ubuntu for a year now. I understand that ctrl-c is copy, but in the terminal it is break, but why does ctrl-v for paste not work as intended?
A: Consistency. (That is the simple answer. Use the shift key). CTRL+SHIFT+C and CTRL+SHIFT+V when you work with the terminal. It will become second nature soon.
Q: Should I upgrade to 23.04 or wait for 24.04 ?
A: I’d say wait, there are a few things *not working in 23.04 (like virtualbox) that will be ironed out when the LTS arrives.
Q: I have an Acer Aspire R13 that I want to rescue. However, after installing Ubuntu, there is no boot device. I have checked the downloaded ISO and verified it. I have tried both Ubuntu 22.04 and 23.04, and for kicks Manjaro. What does this mean?
A: There is just the fix for you: https://itsfoss.com/no-bootable-device-found-ubuntu/
Q: I installed the Nvidia drivers on my XPS laptop, and ever since doing that, my fans have been running full taps. I have tried some of the solutions like TLP and power saving mode. Nothing seems to work. I mean it keeps my machine nice and cool, but it is not great when I need it to be silent.
A: If you really have tried everything, the XPS range has a setting in the BIOS / UEFI (Happy now Pence?) that allows you to set the fan to full blast, silent, optimised, etc. Please set your fan as each of these and reboot before finally setting it to silent. It should now go back to being silent. I think it is a bug in the firmware. By the time you read this it may already be fixed.