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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.
So when I was eight, I figured out that anything times five is half that number and you move the decimal point or add a zero. This was great, it was my lightbulb moment. From there on, I tried to find patterns in maths to make my life easier. Looking back now, hindsight being 20/20 and all, I realise some of them were really convoluted, but it helped me do maths in my head. This all went well until I changed schools. Suddenly I had a maths teacher, who instead of encouraging us, would beat you. There would be a problem and I would do it in my head and have the solution before he started to explain. Again, hindsight being 20/20 – I may have come off as a know-it-all, but I honestly just loved maths. I would have my way of getting to the answer, which was not the curriculum way and he would constantly cane you for not using the curriculum way. This all came to an abrupt end one day, when he threw me with a dictionary and broke my nose for blurting out an answer to something I had figured out previously. I cut maths and school out of my life from that day forward. I realise I cut my nose to spite my face, but I want to say to you, that if you ask for help on a forum and your post gets closed for no reason, or you get shot down, don’t take it personally. Try again or try another forum. Just do not ask in a non-related forum!! Don’t do what I did, I still love maths, I just wish I had said, bugger you chap and continued. There will always be someone who also struggled and will be willing to help you. You just need to persevere. Ask on your favourite blog site, or Linux site, if they block you from asking questions at a site. Don’t give up on Linux because some idiot on forum x said you must go learn to ask questions, and locked the thread.
Q: I’m not sure how to say this, but my Ubuntu does not shut down all the way. It seems to have stopped, but I see the terminal prompt. I can’t do anything but push the power button for it to shut down. It goes off if I hold down the power button, but I don’t want to corrupt my machine. I had no issues with previous versions of Ubuntu?
A: What is the output of:
journalctl -r -b -1
It should give you some insights as to what is happening. Also be sure to keep Ubuntu up to date.
Q: I’ve now switched to Ubuntu permanently, but I keep running into problems. I want to play Skyrim and followed the tutorial here- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOsF29ybsTo, it is not working and I don’t know how to troubleshoot it or fix it. Can you help me? Skyrim is Special Edition on steam and my Ubuntu is 22.04 and everything is updated. My PC is i5 3.4GHz and my GFX is Nvidia 1050Ti and my RAM is 16GB.
A: Don’t use outdated tutorials. I just tested it for you and I set Proton version 8.0.4 as my version on Steam and it works out of the box without needing to faff with other stuff. The first time you launch it, it will take a while as it needs to cache all the textures, but it should be fast from there on.
Q: I got myself a USB-C memory stick as my new laptop has no USB-A/B ports any more. I was trying to transfer some files from my old Windows laptop to my new Ubuntu laptop. I can copy them on Windows, but I can’t even see the drive in Ubuntu. I tried installing fuse, but it says it is already there. I’m at a loss on how to proceed.
A: Ubuntu does not “see” dirty partitions. You will need to fix it in Windows and do a proper eject and you should see it in Ubuntu.
Q: I’m following a tutorial and it states that I should type: python myfirstprog.py. I’m getting the following error. Command python not found, did you mean, command python3 from deb python3 command python from deb python is python3. I have no idea what it all means, I’m just following along.
A: OK, the long and the short of it is whenever you see python <program name.py> type python3 instead. You can install the package python as python3, but it may break other stuff if you are learning to program. Safest is just add the 3 to the keyword at the start.
Q: I have added a second NVME drive to my laptop. I want to format it, but I’m not sure which one it is as they are both 1TB Western digital blue. Someone tried to explain lsblk to me, but I don’t speak geek. I don’t want to delete my current install by mistake. How do I check to see what is what?
A: Open the disks utility and click on a drive in the left side list. On the right, you will see filesystem /partition. Click on one (the block). Below that you will see how full the drive is and the contents. This is important. The boot drive will have /boot/efi on it, and your data will say mounted at Filesystem root. This is the drive you DO NOT want to format, unless you want to lose it all. You can use the disks utility to do the formatting.
Q: I have followed the instructions on the gnome extensions website, but I can't get it to work. Actually I have no idea, I’m just trying to make my desktop more functional. This is my specs <Screenshot from 2023-09-24 07-03-36.png> <removed> This is what I have done - <Screenshot from 2023-09-24 07-06-38.png>
A: OK Gnome extensions are for Gnome only. Even if your desktop is “built on Gnome technologies” it is not Gnome. You are trying to fit 2020 Toyota headlamps into your 1989 Ford. It is not going to fit. You need to look at *your desktop environment’s wiki pages to see if they have extensions for you.
Q: Every time I boot or reboot my PC, all goes well up until a point. It runs through the usual and after the splash screen the display goes black. I have the latest Nvidia driver and OS and kernel and updates. I have tried everything. I have googled for days. No idea what is going wrong.
A: Use an older Nvidia driver, 525 served me well. It may do so for you too (look towards the bottom of the driver list provided by Ubuntu drivers util).
Q: Hi there, can you help me install a theme in Firefox on my Ubuntu? I Found it here https://github.com/EliverLara/firefox-sweet-theme. I copy and paste their installation script, yet it fails. My Ubuntu version is still 20.04 and Firefox is 117. I have tried to find the XPS file in the zip I downloaded, but this one is different.
A: I had a look at that page and it specifically says it will install on Firefox v70 last, and has not been updated in a few years. I suggest grabbing it from the Firefox theme page here. If it fails for you there, you need to find another theme that you like.
Q: I have only recently switched to Ubuntu 23.04, as I was on Ubuntu Budgie 18.04 for a long time. Coming from budgie, I miss the ‘open in terminal’, eg, when I am in a folder and I want to do something in that folder (in terminal mode). It is one of those deal breakers for me with Gnome, if it does not have it, I will have to go back to Budgie. <removed>
A: I am sorry, I only saw this now, so your answer will only be a bit late. If you have not reverted to Budgie yet, your image shows that you have Files (aka Nautilus) in list format; that means, to get what you want, you need to either right-click in the address bar, or change your view to icon view and right-click in some empty space.