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 really do not understand how all these cellphone repair shops in all the malls make ends meet. Who buys from them? I stopped in at one to get a charging cable for a raspberry pi 3, and the guy behind the counter said to me, “150 bucks”. I was like “what? Are you crazy?” And he never batted an eyelid and said, “it’s a good quality cable”. I have never been back to one of those shops since. You see, I used to work for an OEM and 150 bucks would probably get me 150 cables at cost, and if I took the cheapest ones, I’d probably get double that for 150 bucks. If it was a lightning cable I’d probably pay ten times that, 
, but that is not the point. This is the issue I have with proprietary crap. It is designed to get the most money from you, not innovate to be the best, protected by some law. While I understand copyright, I think it stifles creativity, as you need to look over your shoulder constantly, worrying if someone will sue you for something they vaguely described in a patent they never made. Open source allows you to innovate, but we are also reaching a point where open source is not open source any more, as it has this or that type of “license” and actually has some corporate behind it with an army of lawyers, who make money off that alone. Or… they say they are open source but leave some part proprietary, just so they can sue. I think those open source “licenses” need to go, either you give something to someone or you don’t; don’t attach strings. Have a license for corporations, who make money off open source, but never give back, if you have to have one… #amiright?
Q: Hi! I’m Running Ubuntu 22.04 Cinnamon respin and I’m very happy with it so far. There is just one small thing that I cannot seem to wrap my head around, and that is when I close my lid on my HP laptop, and I open it again later, all I have is a flashing underscore in the top right-hand-side of my screen. It used to work and I have not changed anything but do regular updates. So now I shut it down rather, but I’d like to have it suspend again. A: As far as I know, all you need to do when you see that, is press ALT+TAB, like you would when switching applications and your lock screen should appear. There was a write-up about it somewhere, but I cannot find it for you right now. Q: This may not be in your area of expertise, but I have to ask, anyway. The kids want me to get a wifi6 router. Those things that look like spiders. While I’m not sure if Ubuntu supports it, I know the Mac does. There is also the current router, that functions well and I don’t want it to lie in a drawer somewhere, wasting away or end up in landfill. Is there a particular model I need to look at that will support Ubuntu and Mint? What can I use the old router for? I have heard one can load open source firmware on them. A: WiFi 6 is a standard, so as long as your WiFi card supports it, Ubuntu should support it. That said, make sure your WiFi card supports Linux, should you get a new one. Can I put a spanner in the works? Why not turn off the WiFi in your current router and buy a cheap WiFi 6 Access point and plug that into the router via cable, to replace the internal WiFi? That should save you a couple of hundred bucks and preserve your current router. Not all routers support other firmware or openWRT, you’d need to check with the make and model first.
Q: This is what happens when I follow the instructions here: https://developer.hashicorp.com/vagrant/install. I tried before and it worked, I first pasted it all, then line by line. <removed> <removed> A: Just because I have a soft spot for Vagrant, that *clearly says xia, which is Linux Mint, not Ubuntu. You need to change the second line to: echo “deb [arch=$(dpkg –print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg] https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com noble main” | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hashicorp.list You need to remove everything in the brackets as well as the $, but you need to ask this on the LM forums. Q: I’m using Xubuntu Noble, and I got everything set up dark with Gruvbox, just the way I like it. Only Virtualbox does not conform. I’m too much of a noob to edit css files. Can you help me make it dark mode? They say it is coming to Linux, but only Windows for now, A: You don’t need to go that far. Open your text editor and type: #!/bin/bash export GTK_THEME=Adwaita:dark && virtualbox %U Then save it as vb.sh and chmod +x vb.sh then right-click on the menu item in your menu and edit it to point at wherever you saved the vb.sh file. (You may need Alacarte or MenuLibre).
Q: Is it possible to edit a symlink? I have been looking online on stack exchange and the answer is yes, but it looks like you need to delete it first? That’s not editing, that’s replacing! My default cursor is broken, the symlink points to etc/alternatives/x cursor-theme, that is also a symlink, that in turn points back to a folder that does not exist. I want to fix that path/chain. A: That’s a special case as that gets updated via the alternatives as that is where it is stored. The man page for update-alternatives does not have an example, so let me see if we can cover you at FCM. (1) Make sure you have *some folder that has a cursor.themes file in /usr/share/icons (it won’t work if you don’t) (2) Open a terminal there and type: sudo update-alternatives –set x-cursor-theme /<path to your theme>/cursor.theme sudo update-alternatives –install /<path to your theme>/cursor.theme update-alternatives –display x-cursor-theme now reboot Q: Whenever I open steam lately, I get a half-assed window with no borders and no menu. I’m still on Ubuntu 24.04.2 and it started about October 2024. I have no idea how to fix it, I have installed it a few times, but with the same result. My friend suggested steam gnome integration, but I have no idea. Please help us out, I am getting ready to install windows again. <removed> A: In Ubuntu, pin it to the dash / dock, right-click on the Steam icon and select “launch with integrated graphics”. That should sort you out.
Q: I tried to download from https://8bitmayhem.untergrund.net/. I am using Ubuntu 24.04 with the Firefox that it comes with. When I click the link, it says ‘allow this site to open ftp link’ but the options are ‘choose application’ and ‘cancel’. If I pick choose application, it says ‘system handler’? I am so confused. All I want to do is download a few podcasts to stream in the car. What application should I choose? If I choose another browser, that browser then wants to open another browser, it keeps going in circles. A: Go to the software centre and grab “gftp” (if you are comfortable on the command line you can curl the link). You need to copy the URL to a text editor and break it up as follows ftp://ftp.untergrund.net /users/scout/podcast - the first part goes into “host” and you then click connect. It will ask you for a username, type Anonymous (case sensitive) and press enter. Once connected, paste the second part into the blank space on the right. This opens the folder, now you can select the files you want to transfer, simply click the arrow in the middle to transfer. Add it as a bookmark and you wont need to do it again. Wow, you had me there for a second. Thanks for the music. EDIT Filezilla did not come up as I searched for FTP like a user would, but it is a viable alternative. Q: Sometimes I want to have a quick look at software that I don’t know, in the Snap store on my Ubuntu 24.04 install. But if there is no internet, I can’t do that. I used to be able to in my previous installation, how do I fix that? A: The new software centre is online only as far as I know, no off-line operation, sorry.
Q: I am new to Ubuntu and new to virtual machines. One of the things in my notes states that I must check the priority of my swap file. <removed> https://www.systutorials.com/how-to-set-swap-priority-in-linux/ I sort-of know what they want, but not quite. Can you explain? A: I currently do not have active internet, so I cannot check, I hope I remember to do it before this goes out, but you can check out your swop file with a simple command: swapon –show The priority should be in the last column. I would not faff with it if I were you, it basically just controls how easily your computer will swap to swapfile or clean up some unused memory. Rather check the vmswappiness setting.