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 are many waiting, and I do them first-come-first-served.
I was listening to a podcast and the presenter was saying that the whole thing they described was just an urban legend. However, urban legends are sometimes grounded in fact (and I happened to know this was solved via reddit and was a case of bush telephone). And while *that particular version may be untrue, that does not mean everything is untrue. I mean, I am living proof that some of those “urban legends” actually happened. Let me start simple, in the early 90s, I was sub-contracting for IBM. A ticket was logged for faulty CD Rom drive (and keyboard); long story short, the user thought it was a coffee cup holder and broke the tray by putting a really large cup of coffee on it and spilling all of said coffee into the keyboard. Case two, though nobody died (versions of this one I have heard), there was a case at a hospital where a ticket was logged for incomplete data and outages, where a cleaner would unplug medical equipment and computers to plug in a floor polisher. This happened again about 2017/2018 in a semi-government office where a worker unplugged the power to a nine-u cabinet, containing switches, to plug in a heater (during summer, I kid you not!). Now if you know government, they then log a ticket to their local IT who are too lazy, then log a ticket to a third party, and when they arrive a few days later, all is working again. Case three, not a ticket, but a warranty claim, someone who’s intranet kept going off-line, but when they went to inspect it, it was always running, because the person going to look, always moved the mouse to wake it up. So whenever I hear the phrase, “oh, it’s an urban legend”, where the person discards it outright, I usually discard that person outright.
Q: I’m learning Ubuntu and following along with a video tutorial that tells me to use the greater than sign twice, to add a line to /etc/apt/sources.list. Then I do sudo apt-get update and nothing changes; what I mean by that is it won’t allow me to install the software. Is this no longer possible because of Snap packages? <removed>
A: Hey, nice to see you learning Ubuntu. Signing is important, as well as repository matching the distribution and the architecture matching yours. If those conditions are satisfied, it should work, but things change, the official Ubuntu sources have moved to:
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu.sources
Try adding it here, just make sure of that “»”, and do not use “>” as it is the difference between append and overwrite.
Q: I have transferred an AppImage named balena from my Linux Mint Vera laptop to my Ubuntu 24.04 PC. I made sure the file is executable and put it directly in my home folder. When I click it, nothing happens. It worked on Mint out of the box. I can’t download it directly as my network stopped working, that’s why I’m transferring it. My understanding is that Mint and Ubuntu are compatible and AppImages are universal, so I’m confused as to why this is happening. I have been using Mint for 2 yrs now, but I’m still learning.
A: Your best bet is to open a terminal and navigate to where you saved Balena (Etcher?) and type:
./balen <tab> <tab>
to autocomplete and run it to see the output. In my case I have ./balenaEtcher-1.14.3-x64.AppImage, but your version may differ. Common errors include you needing libFuse.so.2 (look for 2.99).
Q: I have downloaded an audiobook onto Ubuntu 24.04.1 and copied it to the music folder. The never die.cue file looks like this <removed> so I open it with VLC player, but nothing plays. My VLC is 3.20 Vetrinari. It can open with a text editor: FILE “Never Die.m4b” MP4 TRACK 1 AUDIO TITLE “001” INDEX 01 0:0:00. I did not install restricted codecs, but I don’t usually need them with VLC. Can I still play it without restricted codecs on Ubuntu 24.04.1?
A: There are a few ways to approach this one, my first suggestion is to just play the .m4b file directly with VLC. The second option is to open the .cue-file with a different player. I tried MPV and it plays fine with my download (the Colour Out of Space.m4b/.cue). You could also check the file name, it is case sensitive in Linux, so ‘Never die’ and ‘Never Die’ are not the same file. I don’t have any experience with actually using .cue files as I have never needed them, so it would be great if you could tell us all what the benefit is of loading them, instead of playing the .m4b file directly?
Q: I am considering trading in my laptop for another laptop via Cash Crusaders to upgrade my 1st generation i3 to something with a discrete graphics card. I’m so over the intel graphics tearing, trying to watch something. Thing is, I know the newer Intel chips have flaws like Meltdown and Spectre, that slow the machines down a lot. The machines in the shop all have windows, but I take my Ubuntu with me to check compatibility. I know you can turn the mitigations off, but can I see from a live image if they are on?
A: I’m not 100% on what it is that you want, but you could try opening a terminal and running lscpu ? It should tell you if the CPU is affected, but these days those mitigations are baked into the BIOS/UEFI, so maybe read the notes on firmware updates?
Q: I backed up my installation, before upgrading, including my snaps folder. When I look at the folders inside the snaps folder, I see this <removed>. What are all these symbols and how do I run my apps again?
A: As far as I can glean from your image, it seems that the snap you are looking at was uninstalled. There should be folders in there. Those are usually what is left when a snap package is uninstalled, but not completely removed. Your best bet is to install the package again.
Q: I took a course from skillshare, Learn to code with Ruby. There is no Ubuntu path, only 04 Install Ruby on a Mac and 05 Install Ruby on Windows. What is the best way to install Ruby for me?
A: Open Google or Duckduckgo or your favourite search engine and type: Install Ruby on Ubuntu and add your version (eg Ubuntu 20.04). You did not give me enough information to help you the right way.
Q: I am discovered old podcast series Impulse Project on my brother USB drive, it is ripped from website with xm files, how to open?
A: Their website is down, so I cannot check, but I think it is tracker music. Luckily for you there is Milky Tracker that you can find in your App Center; that should work on most versions of Ubuntu.
Q: Why is there ‘non-whql’ driver on driver website?
A: If you are new to Ubuntu, welcome! First lesson, WHQL = Windows Hardware Qualifier Labs – Windows drivers do not run on Linux. If you need drivers – open your Ubuntu menu and start typing ‘drivers’ it will come up there as “Additional Drivers”. Open that and it will populate with the available drivers for your machine.
Q: I am trying to install Pygame Zero on Ubuntu, but I keep getting this: <removed> <removed> <removed>. It should just be pip install pgzero and it won’t work.
A: It looks like your version of Python is too new for your version of Pygame. Either get a newer version of pygame or an older version of Python 3. (I see it says version 3.7 of Python, so maybe try that.) Secondly, if ‘pip install’ does not work, try ‘pip3 install’.
Q: I have some books I downloaded, like ‘The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83 1_4 Years Old.mobi’ and when I double-click, it brings up Abiword. Then after a minute, Abiword crashes (Abiword is not responding). Then I have to force quit, as wait has no effect. This is Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS please.
A: I’m just putting it out there, .mobi is a horrible format… Now to solutions. Try getting it in any other format, other than .mobi, (epub, pdf?), or install a reader for .mobi files, like Foliate? (I think, I’d need to check). Abiword is not the right application to try and open .mobi files. Right click on the .mobi-file and choose “open with” and be sure to check Foliate as the default application to open .mobi files.
Q: My Ubuntu 24.04 Gnome is installed on a computer in the study. The little plastic screw part on the antenna broke off. I am getting a red icon in the top right. I’m assuming it wants updates. When I click on that, there is a pause and nothing happens, locking my PC up for a minute. Any idea how I can fix that?
A: Erm… buy another antenna? You can hit the super key and type updates and in that updates panel, defer your updates to like once a month, until your antenna is replaced.
Q: When I type lsb_release on Ubuntu 24.04, I get nothing back, eg. werner@amdpc:~$ lsb_release -v No LSB modules are available. Is this because I opted for the minimal install or do I need to use another command now?
A: Interesting, I checked for you and I also get the error, but I get information back: edd@gift:~$ lsb_release -cri No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Release: 24.04 Codename: noble
The man page says it all. Read the description paragraph. I am not sure *when it changed (but it feels like someone else also asked this recently).