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.
The company that I work for uses Salesforce. Since I knew zero about it, I decided to do a quick course on it this weekend. The frustration is real – the course is presented by a lady (supposedly the CEO) who has 50% of the course designated to personal crap. The handout has the cover page, a page “about me” complete with instagram poses, the next page about “mums”, then a whole page for four bullet points, then a project plan, and another whole page for one download link, then a page for pimping more courses that should have been part of this one, then another whole page for “let's get started” followed by a “thank you” page. Good grief! Talk about *not respecting your student’s time. I don’t care if you are Zapp Brannigan, or you have two arseholes, *you don’t matter, what matters is if *you can get the points across. The videos are just her reading off the screen. I feel sorry for kids today who have to learn from a teacher who is more interested in ‘selfies’ than teaching. If you guys ever feel any of my quickies in the magazine are not teaching you anything, or the content covers more of the pimple on my bum than actual content, you know where to write to, and I will put more effort into the meat and potatoes. Praise the pope (It’s a saying, calm down) for the returns policy. If I had to spend money on this nonsense I would be very upset.
Q: If I go and type lsb_release in my terminal, it says that there are no lsb modules available. What does this mean? It used to say things like the codenames – such as hardy heron. Then I found this https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58395566/lsb-release-command-not-found-in-latest-ubuntu-docker-container, but when I tried it, it said it was already installed?
A: lsb is short for Linux Standard Base – it is one of the commands you can use man for (one of the better man pages). In said man page, you will see the -c option, give it a whirl!
Q: I have a bodhi Linux PC on my network. I can see it and communicate with it just fine from Ubuntu, but I was having issues with my old laptop running Kubuntu 16.04, used for watching movies and series. I decided that it was no issue, I’d use my external WD Green drive in a powered USB enclosure to transfer some data. The transfer speeds are all over the place. I have no idea why. My laptop is new, it should motor.
A: Have you tried another enclosure? Some of the cheap Chinese ones have an IC that gets very hot. Feel for it (heat) after a transfer and maybe put a heatsink on? Otherwise if you sure the enclosure is fine, check out: https://smitchell.github.io/how-to-bind-to-the-right-usb-storage-driver
Q: So here goes; I've got an Xubuntu 18.04 laptop, and recently it's had some networking problems. It's on the home wireless router, supplied by the ISP. It uses DHCP, so everything can connect. I can surf to 1.1.1.1, and nowhere else. If I use a name like www.google.com, Firefox says the site is not reachable. I have like one or two static addresses on my network, but that should not matter. I’m scratching my head here.
A: You could go to the network icon, click on ‘edit network connections’ → double-click on your WiFi name and go to IPv6 settings (this is controversial, but hear me out). Set it to disabled. Then go to IPv4 settings and fill in 1.1.1.1 , 8.8.8.8 , 9.9.9.9 (or choose just one – up to you), and click on save. Now reboot and you should surf. If not, ping me on TG again and we can look deeper.
Q: This is going to sound weird but I need to find out what the screensaver was that I had on Ubuntu on XFCE in 2010. I still have the drive backed up, but I don’t know where to look for the configuration file. It had to be saved somewhere, right?
A: It *should be in /home/<YOUR USER NAME>/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-screensaver.xml
Q: Why is Ubuntu not considered free as in Triquel, but Triquel is Ubuntu? And why is it not free as in freedom? Why would I choose Trisquel?
A: One, Freedom does not exist, the cake is a lie. (So I have never understood that one). Two, I think what you are after is “binary blobs”, meaning blobs of code that is either proprietary or just not open, that is in the Ubuntu distribution or ecosystem. As someone who has tried Triquel, and struggled with WiFi not working because the drivers were not available as open source, I understand why Ubuntu uses the mixed model, but it is not for any nefarious purposes. With Trisquel, you can look at any of the code and change anything you like; if that appeals to you, great!
Q: After installing Xubuntu 24.04 and setting my password during set-up, I rebooted to log in for the first time. It rejects my password and yet it is the same one I always use. I am completely lost at this point so I repeat the exercise to find the same outcome. Help me please?
A: I was going to suggest checking caps lock (preventing login since 1991), but then I saw this query almost word-for-word. So it may be a bug in one of the ISO’s. So I’ll steal that answer:
In the recovery menu select root then press ENTER
In the shell below, enter mount -o remount, rw /
Enter passwd your_login
Enter your password twice.
Enter exit to leave the shell
Select resume to boot.
Q: I’m running owntone [https://github.com/owntone/owntone-container] as a docker image on an Ubuntu 20.04 virtual machine on my Ubuntu 24.04 laptop. I’m using Rythmbox as it is supposedly supported. Yet I find that sometimes Rythmbox just skips a file completely and moves on to the next one. Is there a better media player that is supported?
A: My guy, I didn't even know that software existed, you would be better off asking on their forums. The only thing I could point to is check that you have the ubuntu-restricted-extras package installed. It may be that it skips due to a missing codec.
Q: I recently bought a 1TB USB drive off gumtree and try as I might, I can’t get Ubuntu to see more than 128GB. I know the drive works as the guy tested it on his windows machine when I bought it. This is fdisk -l output <removed>
A: There are a lot of greedy idiots in this world. Run a lsblk to confirm, but it may be a scammer that has compressed a 128GB drive to appear 1TB, to trick you. If lsblk says it is 128GB, you may have been conned, otherwise try removing all partitions, reboot and partition again. You can also try the partitioning and format on a windows machine to see if it is an Ubuntu issue.
Q: I have an old intel Mac mini that has now seen its end – I have installed Ubuntu as recommended by Action Retro - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipJceL253Fo.
The issue I have is that I liked using Cyberduck and the Ubuntu Alternative is Filezilla, which is ugly. Is there something I can use that has a clean interface?
A: We try and help where we can, but we are not really in the recommendation business. Lots of software has FTP functionality built in, like dual-pane file managers. I would suggest gftp if you want a standalone application. You did not say which flavor of Ubuntu you are using, but most file managers should ‘ftp’ without issue.
Q: I have installed Ubuntu on my NTFS drive for compatibility, but I can’t figure out how to defrag it.
A: OK, you know more than me; afaik, that does not happen. Do you mean you overwrote your NTFS drive, in which case it will be a Linux compatible filesystem. Generally, Linux does not need defragging, even on mechanical drives. https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/22/install_linux_on_ntfs
The article above says more than I can type here.
Q: Hey, I was looking for something that I had installed, but it was not in my menu (it’s an AppImage), so I was thinking that, like in Windows, you can see if something installed by looking inside Program Files, but where do I look in Ubuntu?
A: With generic packages, usually your bin/ folder, but with AppImages it is different, it may actually need to run from that installer file. Maybe look at this? https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImageLauncher (I have not used it myself, so not too sure)
Editor's note: I use AppImageLauncher all the time. On first running an AppImage it'll ask if you want to just run it and that's it, or if you want to run it and integrate it into your system (ie: add a menu item). It's a great little bit of software.
Q: Hello. I have Xubuntu 20.04.4 on my laptop. I change permissions with chmod +x balenaEtcher-1.7.9-ia32.AppImage, and execute. It does not execute. What else do I need?
A: Hi, your AppImage says: “ia32”. You need to get the x64 version. Alternatively, when you download Balena Etcher, there is a section that says need deb files? (Don’t worry it will take you to github). Click on that. Then, once github has loaded, click on “releases” to the right, and get the correct package there.