When installing packages (particularly those with graphical UIs) how do you determine which is fitting for your distribution?

Here's a quick overview of the Desktop Environments available:

DE
├── Enlightenment
├── GNOME2 -> MATE
├── GNOME3
│   ├── Cinnamon
│   │   └── Muffin
│   ├── Gnome-Shell
│   │   └── Mutter
│   └── Unity
│       └── compiz
├── KDE
├── LXDE
├── MATE
└── XFCE

Gnome (both the erstwhile GNOME2 [now MATE] and GNOME3) and KDE are comprehensive suites, with components tightly integrated with each other. They can include a lot of things, even office suites. Enlightenment, XFCE and LXDE considerably lighter and have fewer apps under their respective umbrellas. Some rules of thumb:

If you install something from the heavyweight DEs, be prepared to have half the DE dragged in. This is very much component dependent - some lower-level components do not depend on a lot of things. For example:

Gnome3 has three major shells that I know of - Unity, Gnome Shell and Cinnamon (developed by the friendly devs at Linux Mint) and two file explorers (Nautilus and Nemo). In the old days, Nemo used to depend on the Cinnamon shell itself, so you had to install it along with Nemo even if you didn't use it.
Installing yakuake (a drop-down terminal) one my Gnome3-based setup drags in about 60 packages (and 301 on a headless server). For comparison, Terminator (an independent terminal) needed 2 (and 144 on the same headless server).

The lighter DEs have a much sparser feature set. LXDE doesn't even have its own Window Manager that I am aware of (it uses OpenBox).
In general, GNOME apps are developed in GTK, and KDE apps in Qt. Enlightenment apps use the EFL (Enlightenment Foundation Libraries).
In general, things should work even if you mix and match. Especially with XFCE and LXDE, you should have no problem using their components in the other DEs.
There might be themeing issues. These are the biggest headaches - every now and then you can see a question here asking how to get back the old look after installing kde-desktop on a standard Ubuntu. You can look around the answers to find out what goes where.


Google Drive takes a very long time to open with GNOME Online Accounts

Like others here, I've had the same experience with Gnome Online Accounts (super slow, and buggy), but have not had the same problem with dedicated Google Drive clients. Some clients to check out:

Open Drive - https://snapcraft.io/odrive-unofficial
InSync - https://www.insynchq.com/
OverGrive - https://www.thefanclub.co.za/overgrive

I've tried all of them, and they all work, though with various plusses and minuses.

If you're good on the command line, you could also check out:

Rsync
Drive - https://github.com/odeke-em/drive

One other thing to consider: I've found that the speed and reliability of Gnome Online Accounts varies by distro. With Pop!_OS (which uses Nautilus) on a fast machine, it's fast enough I don't bother with a dedicated client. (I also have it running well on a slower machine running KDE Neon, though that uses KDE online accounts, of course.)


It can be in any number of places. If KOHA uses Apache, try this:

grep DocumentRoot /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ -R

Replace apache2 with nginx if KOHA uses nginx.


How to change user's language (locale) back to English?

Specify the language at the login prompt after selecting the user. When asked whether to make the selection the new default, select yes.


How to Add dnsmasq and keep systemd-resolved (18.04 to 20.04)

I wanted to get fast dns resolution with dnsmasq and keep the default systemd-resolved/NetworkManager setup untouched for future use.
Yes the huge dns caching of dnsmasq can improve browsing speed.
Yes the goal was to keep the default featured dns setup of 18.04

Install dnmasq
Configure it (listen address and dns servers)
Configure NetWorkManager for manual dns server address
Check verify

1 - With sudo

apt-get -y install dnsmasq

2 - With sudo

tee -a /etc/dnsmasq.conf << ENDdm
interface=lo
bind-interfaces
listen-address=127.0.0.1
# DNS server from OpenDns. Use yours...
server=208.67.222.222
server=208.67.220.220
ENDdm

systemctl restart dnsmasq
systemctl enable dnsmasq

3 - With USER, configure NetworkManager

# Get NM first active profile name
NetManProfile=$(nmcli -t  connection show --active | cut -f 01 -d ':')
# remove, if exists, current dns servers
nmcli con mod "$NetManProfile" ipv4.dns ""
# set 'manual' dns server
nmcli con mod "$NetManProfile" ipv4.ignore-auto-dns yes
# set dnsmasq as manually set dns server
nmcli con mod "$NetManProfile" ipv4.dns 127.0.0.1
# i also disabled ip6, do what u want
nmcli con mod "$NetManProfile" ipv6.method ignore
# reconnect to take effect
nmcli connection down "$NetManProfile"
nmcli connection up "$NetManProfile"

4 - Check verify

systemd-resolved listen on 127.0.0.53 as should by default
dnsmasq listen on 127.0.0.1 as set in /etc/dnsmasq
systemd-resolved took 127.0.0.1 from NetworkManager

netstat -antup
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Adresse locale          Adresse distante        Etat       PID/Program name
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:53            0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      1036/dnsmasq
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.53:53           0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      766/systemd-resolve
cat /run/systemd/resolve/resolv.conf
nameserver 127.0.0.1


Ubuntu terminal not exporting environment variable from .bashrc

you have to add "export OSTYPE=linux in your .bashrc

sudo gedit ~/.bashrc

add the line

close terminal then reopen

echo $OSTYPE
linux


Lame - How to re-encode all 320kbps mp3 to 192kbps mp3

lame is perfectly suited to this task, but I'm going to use ffmpeg and ffprobe for this answer, because I know them like the back of my hand and because they can be generalised to more than just MP3s. First of all:

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

There is no tool that I am aware of that can read media files and then over-write the input straight away: you need to use an intermediate file. For a single file, you could do:

ffmpeg -i file.mp3 -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 192k temp.mp3
mv temp.mp3 file.mp3

You could combine these into a single line:

ffmpeg -i file.mp3 -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 192k temp.mp3 && mv temp.mp3 file.mp3

the && there means that the mv command won't be executed unless ffmpeg exits with a status of 0 (which means success).

To check that what bit rate a file has, you can use ffprobe:

ffprobe -show_streams -select_streams a:0 -v quiet file.mp3 | grep -F 'bit_rate=320000'

-show_streams tells ffprobe to show information about individual streams; -select_streams tells it which ones to select, and a:0 means 'the first audio stream (this is important for MP3 files in the case of cover art, which is stored as a video stream). The pipe (|) takes the standard output of ffprobe and feeds it to grep. grep will only print those lines that match a given pattern -- in this case, lines that contain the string bit_rate=320000. If you run this on a 320k kbps MP3, you'll get a line like this:

bit_rate=32000

If you run it on anything with a different bit rate, you won't get any output at all; grep will fail to make a match, and will exit with a status of 1. This means that you can chain that command with the ffmpeg command:

ffprobe -show_streams -select_streams a:0 -v quiet file.mp3 | grep -F 'bit_rate=320000' && ffmpeg -i file.mp3 -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 192k temp.mp3 && mv temp.mp3 file.mp3

Or, a bit more readably:

ffprobe -show_streams -select_streams a:0 -v quiet file.mp3 | grep -F 'bit_rate=320000' &&
ffmpeg -i file.mp3 -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 192k temp.mp3 &&
mv temp.mp3 file.mp3

That will only act on 320 kbps MP3s. Try it with a couple of test files.

The next step is to get this working with multiple files. There are two standard ways of doing this: a for loop, and the find command. The following will act on every MP3 in a directory:

for f in *.mp3; do
ffprobe -show_streams -select_streams a:0 "$f" | grep -F 'bit_rate=320000' &&
ffmpeg -y -i "$f" -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 192k /tmp/temp.mp3 && mv /tmp/temp.mp3 "$f"
done

This will not go into subdirectories; in order to do so, you have to set the globstar shell option:

shopt -s globstar
for f in **/*.mp3; do
ffprobe -show_streams -select_streams a:0 "$f" | grep -F 'bit_rate=320000' &&
ffmpeg -y -i "$f" -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 192k /tmp/temp.mp3 && mv /tmp/temp.mp3 "$f"
done

With find:

find . -name '*.mp3' -exec sh -c 'ffprobe -show_streams -select_streams a:0 "$0" | grep -F "bit_rate=320000" &&
ffmpeg -y -i "$0" -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 192k /tmp/temp.mp3 && mv /tmp/temp.mp3 "$0"' '{}' \;

All of these will run strictly sequentially -- they'll only convert one file at a time. Your processor is almost certainly capable of more than that, though; to speed things up, you could use GNU parallel:

sudo apt-get install parallel
shopt -s globstar
parallel 'ffprobe -show_streams -select_streams a:0 {} | grep -F "bit_rate=320000" &&
ffmpeg -y -i {} -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 192k {.}.temp.mp3 && mv {.}.temp.mp3 {}' ::: **/*.mp3

Or:

find . -name '*.mp3' | parallel 'ffprobe -show_streams -select_streams a:0 {} | grep -F "bit_rate=320000" &&
ffmpeg -y -i {} -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 192k {.}.temp.mp3 && mv {.}.temp.mp3 {}'


You could write a script, assuming you only have one cp command in the script, you could use $$ which returns the PID of the shell script, so ps -ef | grep $$ will return your script as well as the cp command, so ps -ef | grep -E "$$.*cp will return the PID of the cp command, then you simply do kill -15 <pid>. Here is a script that does it all, do NOT put "cp" in the name.

#!/bin/sh

cp -r .* /var/tmp/ &

#sleep 30 minutes then kill cp
sleep 1800 && kill -15 $(ps -ef | grep -E "$$.*cp " | awk '{print $2}') || echo "copy completed as kill failed"

This script you can schedule with at or cron.

You probably would like to do the following if you have to use at to kill the script, name this one myScript.sh:

#!/bin/sh

echo $$ > /tmp/myPID
cp -r .* /var/tmp/
rm /tmp/myPID

A second script named killerQueen.sh for at to kill the process after 30 minutes:

#!/bin/sh

if [ -f /tmp/myPID]; then
  kill -15 $(cat /tmp/myPID)
  echo "Copy not complete." > /tmp/message$$
else
  echo "Copy successful." > /tmp/message$$
fi

run the following:

$ myScript.sh&
Job 1
$ at -f ./killerQueen.sh now + 30 minute

This second example is safer, because we kill the script that performs the copy, if it is still running, else we create a file named /tmp/message<pid_of_killerQueen> with the text "copy succeeded".

EDIT, after reading man at and your comment:

cp -r * /var/tmp& echo "kill -15 \$(ps -ef | grep \"$$.*cp \" | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}')" | at now + 1 second


Ubuntu hardware requirements and best version

The main branch of Ubuntu will run in the hardware you have listed.
However it will feel rather slow.

My suggestion is to run Lubuntu or Xubuntu, these two variants of Ubuntu requires less resources, and you'll have a better experience.

Detailed info:

The main branch of Ubuntu 14.04 by default comes with Unity user interface (optionally you can get it with the Gnome user interface), both of these will work in your old machine, but it will feel very slow, not recommended.

Xubuntu 14.04 is the same as Ubuntu, but running XFCE user interface (like WinXP), it's less fancy looking than Unity, but it does the job well, still very customizable, Xubuntu is a good medium ground between fancy Ubuntu and dry Lubuntu, it should run smooth enough on that old hardware.

Lubuntu 14.04 uses the LXDE user interface (like Win95) is even leaner and lighter than Xubuntu, it works well even on 486 machines, so if Xubuntu feel slow for you, you can try Lubuntu.

I usually salvage old machines to donate them for people that needs it, and I put Xubuntu on Pentium 2 to early generation of Pentium 4 machines, Lubuntu on 486 and Pentium 1 machines, any AMD/Intel machine built after Pentium 4 generation tends to runs well on the main branch of Ubuntu.

Make sure to get the i386 version of the CD ISO instead of the AMD64.


'rm' (delete) thousands of files selectively

Either

find . -maxdepth 1 -name 'section1-*.html' -delete

(test it first with -print in place of -delete) or

printf '%s\0' ./section1-*.html | xargs -r0 rm

(test it first with echo in place of rm)


unable to use pip to install packages pkg_ressources.DistributionNotFound

I made pip work again like this. I tried:

sudo apt-get purge python-pip
sudo rm /usr/bin/pip /usr/local/bin/pip
sudo apt-get install python-pip

but then I was getting an error message saying usr/local/bin/pip not found so I created a symbolic link from /usr/local/bin/pip to /usr/bin/pip using:

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/pip /usr/local/bin/pip

and now pip works.


USB boot is skipping and reverting the HDD

If your BIOS is configured to boot from USB drives before the main hard disk but fails to do so, then this is a BIOS problem.

I would suggest checking the manufacturer's support web site to see if there are any BIOS upgrades: if you are lucky, they might have addressed the problem in an update.


How to produce a USB stick from my Ubuntu?

A leading solution for cloning (and system backup) is Clonezilla.

Detailed information and download links are here: http://clonezilla.org


You can try to exclude the directory in find like this:

find /home/karl/dev/beer -path .git -prune -printf "%P\n" | tar -czf beer.tar.gz --no-recursion  -T -

You can check also this discussion.


Ubuntu failed to detect monitor and very low resolution?

Try to install a new graphics driver for your system, a ppa with the newest drivers can be found here.

Add it with

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:glasen/intel-driver

and after that do

sudo apt-get update` and a `sudo apt-get upgrade

Install the xserver-xorg-video-intel using the command sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-intel.


Get back the original Ubuntu Desktop after removing Mate

Please try this command to fully remove the desktop

sudo apt-get remove --purge ubuntu-mate-core ubuntu-mate-desktop

If you have both GDM and lightDM installed please

sudo apt-get remove --purge gdm

Then set light dm to default (use the method you said you use before)

Based on mchids comment below this, you need to edit edit this file 50-unity-greeter.conf

Create a 50-unity-greeter.conf

sudo gedit /usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/50-unity-greeter.conf

The file this opens should be blank so add this to it

[SeatDefaults]
greeter-session=unity-greeter

Save it then

sudo chmod +x /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/50-unity-greeter.conf

Then reboot and see if this helps

TO FIX YOUR ICONS

An easy fix for your icons should be install unity tweaktool from software center (dont know package name for apt, maby someone will edit)

Go to icons and just choose different ones


19.10: I am trying to install Kubuntu alongside windows and there is no option to dual boot

Continue at your own risk
The bootloader should be installed correctly

I'd buy a second drive instald of dual boot though


I can not access any drive(like software, movi, raaz) from ubuntu os but i can access from windows os

In windows 8, Microsoft decided to implement (and enforce) a policy of not allowing your systems to fully shut-down (by default) in order to claim faster boot times. The problem is that this leaves the partitions in a somewhat "fuzzy" state. To avoid causing damage to your system, Ubuntu wisely refuses to mount those partitions. The solution is to force windows to fully shut-down. This can be achieved permanently by turning off fast boot or just once by pressing shift and clicking "Shutdown".


How do I get Mythbuntu to detect my satellite box?

Device: 14f7:0500

Technisat SkyStar USB HD

No, I would not try those instructions: LinuxTV.org >> How to Obtain, Build and Install V4L-DVB Device Drivers  No need to over complicate things.

Try what I used: (adapted from: LinuxTV.org > TerraTec Cinergy T Stick)

NOTE: First unplug device, create/install driver, and then plug back in.

You may need to first install: git, patchutils and Proc::ProcessTable

sudo apt-get install git patchutils libproc-processtable-perl

Then (to not clutter up root directory)

cd ~/Downloads

mkdir drivers
cd drivers

git clone git://linuxtv.org/media_build.git

cd media_build
./build

sudo make install

This (download, re-compile, install) may need to be repeated in future, if kernel changes or updates stop device being recognized. This has happened to me twice this year (to date).

The latest DVB-Sn drivers are a work-in-progress.

UPDATE: (27-Apr-2013)

This again works, as had been broken for last 15+ days.


"request-key: Cannot find command to construct key" when accesing NFS mounted volumes

I've found this thread : https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8807

The solution given by Guillaume Rousse helped to get rid of theses error messages.


What is the use of this second, almost unused Ubuntu partiton?

/dev/sda7 is your 18GB / partition and /dev/sda6 is a 58GB partition you said is empty.

Set a password for "root" account: open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) an run sudo passwd root, then type a password for "root".
Reboot the computer. At the login screen hit Ctrl+Alt+F1 to open the text console and login as root (username: root, password: "the one you typed in step 1").
Create a temporary directory (mkdir /tmp/home) and mount the new home partition (mount /dev/sda7 /tmp/home).
Move the home directories to the new location: mv /home/* /tmp/home/.
Get the UUID of new home: blkid /dev/sda6.
Update fstab: nano /etc/fstab. Add the following to the end: UUID=aaaaaaaa-bbbb-cccc-dddd-eeeeeeeeeeee /home ext4 defaults 0 2. Replace the UUID with the one you got in step 5.
Unmount the new home: umount /tmp/home.
Mount the new home in the correct location: mount /home.
Logout from text console (exit), return to graphics console (Ctrl+Alt+F7 or F8) and login with your account.
Lock the root account: open a terminal and run sudo passwd -l root.

Done.


Is it safe to install ubuntu natty daily build beside maverick?

Sure!

It's safe when you resize your partition to have about 20 to 30 GB unused space.
Then you install from scratch using this unused space, leaving your system untouched. Just don't mess up your partition names during this process.
If done right you'll get a dual boot system that way!

There should be an option within the installer to resize your partition during the install process if you start the installer from the live cd. Be careful when the bootmanager (grub) gets it's entries, not to mess it up. But even this would be easy to fix afterwards.

BUT:

If you are not familiar with the install process I STRONGLY advise to try the whole procedure of the parallel installation on your Virtualbox disk (the one you already have a natty system running on) BEFORE running on your productive system!
Also remeber: Natty is still alpha status, so I would suggest a test run on a virtualbox disk in any case!

Good Luck, Have Fun!

cya, piedro


How to modify default printscreen behaviour?

You can copy a screenshot to clipboard by pressing ctrl + prt sc. You can change this binding by going to System Settings > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Screenshots.


This dialog exists for your own safety, annoying as it is.
To remove it, right click the launcher, click properties, and then go to the permissions tab and choose execute for the users you want to allow.

This will allow you to use the launcher from now on.

To do this for a large amount of launchers in the same directory, open a terminal (in the same directory) and run:

chmod +x *.desktop


Installed Ubuntu alongside Gentoo, now I can't boot

Booting into Ubuntu would not work, but I could boot into recovery mode. From there, running fsck gave me an error like Could not find partition XXXX, which fits with the message I was getting before.

It turns out that every partition has a so-called UUID, which is stored in the /etc/fstab file. When I changed my partitions, the UUID for my root partition did not match the one in /etc/fstab. To find out the correct one, I did

blkid /dev/sda6

in the root command shell in recovery mode, which gave me a different id, call it YYYY. Now, the problem was solved by opening the /etc/fstab file (which was initially read-only, even as root, but the second answer to this question resolved that problem) and changing the UUID there to the correct value. I copied the line that was above it apart from that.

And now I can boot into Ubuntu!


"dd: /dev/disk4: Permission denied" error when making LiveUSB on Mac OS X

One common cause for this is a "locked" SD card. Unfortunately it seems that the sensor in the MacBook Pro and Air can get stuck. It can be fixed with a can of compressed air.

A lot of us ran into this trying to image SD cards for the Raspberry Pi. And with that device you have no option but to boot off of the SD.

This raises a fascinating fact. It seems that the lock switch is a purely mechanical "intent indicator" that must be sensed by the host device. This is analogous to the way the lock switch worked on 3.5" floppy drives, so it should be no shock to those of use old enough to have to punch a hole in our 5.25" floppies to make them writeable. However, because it is called Secure Digital and is solid state, you would expect the card to protect itself, not rely on the host.


How to recover from bad mythtv frontend settings

All you should need to do is run this command in a terminal:
mythfrontend --reset


How to install synaptics clickpad patch?

The instructions are here: http://www.theorangenotebook.com/2012/02/call-for-testing-clickpad.html


Cannot Boot After 15.10 Upgrade [AMD graphics driver problems]

This turned out to be related to Bug #1493888. I use fglrx as my graphics driver, and according to the offical Changelog for Wily Werewolf, that is not compatible at this time.

There are workarounds in the comments of the bug on Launchpad, but it did not work for me personally. I will be downgrading for the time being.

UPDATE: I'm now working just fine on Ubuntu 15.10. Apparently, fglrx will not be supported in Ubuntu 16.04, so moving away from that proprietary driver is ideal if at all possible.

  WARNING: Before you start in on all this jazz, make sure your graphics card actually is supported by xserver-xorg-video-ati. To
  find your graphics card model, run...

  $ lspci -nn | grep VGA

  Your model is towards the end of the line. Then, check the list on
  the official Ubuntu wiki for your model. You may need to ignore
  the letter at the end of the model; mine was a Radeon HD 6520G, but
  I had to search the page for only 6520.

The lack of screen resolution options on the open source xserver-xorg-video-ati driver stems from the fact that, if fglrx is present on the system at all, it will massively interfere with xserver-xorg-video-ati.

If anyone else hits this problem, you can purge fglrx from TTY or recovery mode root. Then, reinstall the open-source drivers.

$ sudo apt-get remove --purge xorg-driver-fglrx fglrx*
$ sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri xserver xorg-core
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Reboot your computer, and you'll find that the problem has resolved.


installed LetoDMS how do I change the data storage to a designated hard drive?

Reading from this page http://www.letodms.com/doc/doku.php?id=install:install it seems to me that you're talking about the folder created in step 3.

It then says in step 7 to set variable $_contentDir to the path to the folder created in step 3.

Can't you create a content folder on the drive you want and set $_contentDir to the corresponding path?

$_contentDir is to be set in <path to letoDMS>/inc/inc.Settings.php apparently.

By the way I think letoDMS is not active anymore, but SeedDMS is its continuation (http://www.seeddms.org).


Call GIMP via the command line to flatten and export a pdf image?

I would look at exporting from R in SVG (PDF will work, but SVG is easier to wrangle, being text based) and then run that through Inkscape.

Inkscape? A graphical application, Oli? Are you mad?

Actually Inkscape can be run from the command line to do batch operations. I use it like that on a server (called from Python) to generate PDF certificates for a client of mine. Here's its man page.

It's most comfortable with SVG. If your input is an SVG you can vacuum-defs and export as PDF in one swift motion.


How to create an ISO image from a bunch of files on the file system?

Few quick steps:

Boot up Linux.
Go to a terminal screen. You can usually right click on the desktop and choose this option from the drop-down menu.

3A. Type dd if=/dev/cdrom of=~/cdrom_image.iso.

OR

3B. Type mkisofs -o /tmp/cd.iso /tmp/directory/ To make an ISO from files on your hard  drive.

You must have permission to access the drive directly using dd. mount permissions are not necessarily the same as dd permissions!
Also... when creating an ISO file, the device must not be mounted. To unmount the cdrom device, use the umount command as follows:

  umount /dev/cdrom

You may also use sudo to ensure you have proper permissions, but this also means you must have sudo access on the system. Check the /etc/sudoers file for information.


I never tried it but it seems Bootchart could help you out (it's available in the Software Center).

  Bootchart is a tool for performance analysis and visualization of the GNU/Linux boot process. Resource utilization and process information are collected during the boot process and are later rendered in a PNG, SVG or EPS encoded chart.

I'm not sure if it will also profile after login in though.


Upstart is not broken. Take a look at the following:

http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#mountall-examples
(will allow you to check your 'mounted' event)
http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#setuid
(will allow you to simplify your job and remove the 'su -c' which is probably causing your problems - su forks by the way).

I think you may be able to simplify your 'start on' to be simply:

start on (filesystem and static-network-up)

Take a look at upstart-events(7), or online here:

http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#ubuntu-well-known-events-ubuntu-specific

See also:

http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#run-a-job-as-a-different-user

Upstart still supports SysV jobs, so if you really want to you can create /etc/init.d/foo.


How do I get a CSL Usb Modem U1-TF to work?


Grub Customizer can help you.

Installation of Terminal:

  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install grub-customizer

Run it and see the section Appearance Settings.


How to convert document from Google Docs to text file

No need to pipe to other program to convert the file. You can download from Google Docs in any supported format, by using the existing parameters in the URL address.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/FILE_ID/export?format=FORMAT

where:

FILE_ID is string ID of target file and;
FORMAT is file format of choice i.e. txt

Then, downloading the document from Google Docs as text file is straightforward by using wget or a web browser. Both methods will download the document as text file as expected.

I have tried myself and the output looks something like this:

$ wget https://docs.google.com/document/d/FILE_ID/export?format=txt
--####-##-## ##:##:##--  https://docs.google.com/document/d/FILE_ID/export?format=txt
Resolving docs.google.com (docs.google.com)...
Connecting to docs.google.com (docs.google.com)... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: unspecified [text/plain]
Saving to: ‘export?format=txt’

    [ <=>                                    ] 649         --.-K/s   in 0s

####-##-## ##:##:## (##.# MB/s) - ‘export?format=txt’ saved [649]

The URL address for other products such as Google Sheets, Google Presentation or even Google Drive would be slightly different.

In terms of documentation, the only relevant guide I found was this dated blog post circa 2014. There is this page of developer guide for Google Drive but not useful as it is. That is all.


You can install virtualbox-guest-dkms package instead, it contains the same guest drivers.

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest-dkms


Yes, since Wubi has the same features as a regular Ubuntu installation, only somewhat slower.  You can install Lamp on Ubuntu desktop.

But to do so Just press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, run the command below.

sudo apt-get install tasksel

and then to install LAMP

sudo  tasksel


How to minimize to tray Thunderbird in KDE Plasma 5.2?

In KDE5 the usual minimize-to-tray plugin works except you can't see icon but notification popup does appear so workaround is to add thunderbird app icon to panel to simulate its notification icon when minimized.  The only difference is the app icon is a little bigger than the one which appears after minimizing.  This way the behavior is exactly the same, in fact better since to open Thunderbird you click on the app icon just once.  Fire-tray plugin never worked for me in KDE5.


Unity 3d not available on Ubuntu 12.04 with ATI Radeon 4570 card

I've a radeon HD3450 and worked until shortly with the fglrx driver. Unity functioned than in 3D. The only think I did is select the additional driver as Ubuntu pointed out in additional drivers, reboot and it functioned. I think your card is quit similar. So look if Ubuntu shows fglrx with additional drivers.

I've some warnings for you:
1. with the fglrx-driver the system is not always stable (at least with my card). When switching you 'll see shortly all kinds of strange graphics and some times the system hangs. Some applications did not function right with this driver. Like the xscreensaver (it does not show a unlock box) or it hangs sometimes when shutting down the system.
2. The radeon driver is sometimes instable when it boots early (look on the internet with keywords: flash or flicker and "radeon.modeset=0"). It is common that most os drivers boot early when the kernel loads. On my system the radeon driver makes it slow and all the time I have flashes with the driver early loaded. To make the driver start late and function right you will have to add the option: radeon.modeset=0 in grub, you can add this command in the file:
/etc/default/grub just behind "quiet splash" the line will be:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash radeon.modeset=0"
3. AMD did drop the support for our graphics cards. So from Ubuntu 12.10 and later it is not supported.

I switched back to the radeon driver and use unity-2D (so what? it works). Some 3D functionality functions tough (I think/heard) only not with opengl/Unity. I read on internet tough that it is possible to get it working in 3D (and fast and stable) when you install Ubuntu 12.10 and ad a 3.6 kernel (not standard). See:

http://www.ubuntuvibes.com/2012/10/how-to-enable-opengl-30-support-for.html

I like the Long time support of Ubuntu 12.4 and will stick with Unity-2D (games functions, my video's run fast enough, etc.).

Good luck.


Can I use left alt to type dead keys and use the alt-tab application switcher?

Short answer: Unfortunately, you can't.

Long answer: Technically, if you change the left alt's function, you would have to also alter the Application switcher's keyboard shortcut to something that doesn't use the alt keys.

Finally, I don't know if you're aware that you can also use the System Settings > Keyboard Layout > Options... to edit all kinds of keyboard layout related stuff.


Every function key on laptop works except for brightness

According to the Zenbook Prime community page, the answer is "yes", with a caveat.  It looks like the problem will be fixed in a 3.7.x version of the kernel (see this bug), but still exists in 3.5.x (i.e. Ubuntu 12.10).

For now, you can try applying this patch to the 3.5.x kernel.  For instructions on building the kernel and applying patches, see here.  Again, according to the Zenbook Prime community page the patch is imperfect.  The brightness-down key works fine, but the brightness-up key imposes an ~2 second delay before other hotkey presses are registered.

The community page also lists a couple of workarounds that involve the xrandr command.  The second workaround involves a custom script that is then mapped to Ctrl+Shift+F5/F6.  You could, of course change the keymapping to anything you like (say just F5 or just F6, for example).


You do not need to use nohup since when Upstart runs a program, that process will not be associated with a terminal (by default).

For Upstart, I'd suggest either just having the job call:

exec java -classpath blah MyClass

... or ensuring that /path/to/myjavastartscript.sh calls:

exec java -classpath blah MyClass

Note that the first exec above is an Upstart stanza whereas the 2nd is a shell keyword.
If your shell script does not call the shell version of exec, you'll need to be careful to ensure you set the Upstart expect stanza correctly - see http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#expect.

Regarding stopping the service, Upstart will automatically kill the process it is tracking (the main JVM process associated with MyClass) and any children of that process (technically any process in the same process group (see http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#stopping-a-job)).

Without more details, I'm not sure your start on condition is suitable - presumably, you want the MyClass job start if and only if a configuration file has been setup? If so, the standard idiom is for the jobs pre-start stanza to read in /etc/default/MyClass.conf. If it decides that either the file doesn't exist, or the config file somehow indicates that the service is disabled / not setup correctly, the pre-start can simply call stop to stop the job from (fully) starting (see http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#pre-start). The advantage of this approach being that your start on condition can then be reliably set to whatever set of conditions should cause the job to start. When those conditions are met, Upstart will run the job; the pre-start will run, determine the configuration is not yet valid and simply exit. The day the admin does decide to configure the service, the job will fully start.

See http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#determining-the-start-on-condition-ubuntu-specific and http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#ubuntu-well-known-events-ubuntu-specific for determining the start on condition.

Note finally that you should really always specify a stop on condition too. See http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#stop-on.


List of defined aliases

Type alias, you'll get a list of all defined ones in your environment.

$ alias
alias l='ls -CF'
alias la='ls -A'
alias ll='ls -alF'
alias ls='ls --color=auto'

List along the file they've been set in

To find the files that your aliases have been defined in, use this solution, with a little bit altering it:

$ PS4='+$BASH_SOURCE> ' BASH_XTRACEFD=7 bash -xl 7> /tmp/mylog
$ grep "alias " /tmp/mylog | grep -e /home -e /etc

Which gives you a list of files, stating what alias defined there, the output is similar to:

++/home/ravexina/.bashrc> alias 'la=ls -A'

Which states 'la=ls -A' has been set in my .bashrc.

Important files

There are many places that we can define our aliases, the most important ones might be:

Standard ones:

~/.bashrc
~/.bash_aliases

One of them in order:

~/.bash_profile
~/.bash_login
~/.profile

Works but not a good place, unless you want it system wide:

/etc/bash.bashrc
/etc/profile

And any other place which get sourced while running a shell.


Would running Ubuntu (or another distro) on my low spec computer instead of windows improve performance much?

The answer is yes and no.

The operating system itself will run smoother, easier, yes, and as a plus it will not take as much hard drive space (irrelevant). But the computer can only do what it is capable of, changing the operating system will not improve performance of applications unless they are slightly more optimized for that operating system. They still take the same amount of resources for the same tasks.

On the other hand, it will improve performance because windows runs a lot more background processes, and does many other things to slow itself down, and when the OS is not taking up as many resources as it would on windows, it will allocate more for your intensive usage. So, in theory, yes, Ubuntu will be faster and be able to run your applications more smoothly.

As a tip, if you want more speed out of it, it would be very smart to go with the XFCE version of ubuntu, it is a lighter version on the GUI side of things, so it's better for your case.

And no worries, we were all new at one point ! :) Cheers. Hope this helps clear it up a little bit.


Error while running Trello on Ubuntu 18.04

Run this command and the error solved:

sudo apt install libgtk2.0-0:i386


Unsure what triggered the leak, but it may be related to Mesa and DRM stuff, because that's what got upgraded on a sudo apt upgrade along with update-notifier and stuff, and a reboot solved the issue for me.
On yakkety btw.


Try using Boot-repair(Detailed instructions are given on the page)

It solves most of the booting problems.

If it is unable to solve your problem then we will need more information to solve
your problem

hope this helps!


PPA purge does not seem to remove the PPA?

Let's start with two items:

The name of the PPA: SDL2 Backport to Bionic.
Your release from the PPA URL you provided: Xenial (which is not Bionic)

From these two facts, we can draw a conclusion: The 18.04 PPA is unlikely to have provided any usable packages to your 16.04 system.
The corollary to that conclusion is that the PPA has perhaps never worked for you, and has only returned error messages every time you tried.

How to check for the PPA files on your system:

The list of the 10 packages and versions provided by the PPA is here

Use apt-cache policy <package_name> to check the source and version number of  each of the listed packages. If the package version and source match the PPA, uninstall the package.

Here's an example:
$ apt-cache policy hello             <--- The example page name is "hello"
hello:
  Installed: 2.10-2ubuntu2           <--- Version number. Should EXACTLY match the version number provided by the PPA
  Candidate: 2.10-2ubuntu2            +-- Sources. The PPA should be listed as a source.
  Version table:                      V
 *** 2.10-2ubuntu2 500
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Deleting the PPA:
There are two steps to deleting a PPA:

Uninstall the packages (you did this in the section above)
Delete the apt source , so apt doesn't re-install the packages

You already found the apt source: A file in the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ directory. Delete that file: sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/<filename>. You can also use your Software & Sources control panel to delete the PPA source.
Good practice is to run an apt-update after making any change to your apt sources: sudo apt-get update. The update should have no errors or warnings.


hbase client running output "Usage: mapfile infile outfile"

Above problem was solved by doing following things.

In order to run application,follow

Run configuration

2.In main class tab, search for your project main class it should be something like package_name.main_class

Now run, it will solve the above problem


As pointed by ThiagoPonte the answer is located at this link.

I'm marking this as answered.


You can start the guest using virsh, by simply running virsh start vmname where vmname matches the output from virsh list --all. All this does is actually start the machine, it does not connect you to it in any way.

The only way to do that would be through VNC/Serial/SSH, but all of these are configured at guest-level. You can try virsh console vmname, but I have never used this myself, so cannot vouch for its effectiveness. See also these Ubuntu instructions.


php-xdebug can only be installed for php 8

I've been looking for a solution to this and found Ondřej Surý's PPA, which you can install with:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install php7.4-xdebug

Here it worked for me,
Hope this helps.


Thunderbird Ctrl+n for new message not working since I subscribed to news accounts

Which account have you set as default? Right click on an account name, choose Settings and at the bottom of the accounts list, there's a dropdown menu called Account Actions. Choose Set as Default for the appropriate account.


The python equivalent of the shell's positional parameter array $1, $2 etc. is sys.argv

So:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys

def getPermutation(s, prefix=''):
        if len(s) == 0:
                print prefix
        for i in range(len(s)):
                getPermutation(s[0:i]+s[i+1:len(s)],prefix+s[i] )

getPermutation(sys.argv[1],'')

then

$ ./foo.py abcd
abcd
abdc
acbd
acdb
adbc
adcb
bacd
badc
bcad
bcda
bdac
bdca
cabd
cadb
cbad
cbda
cdab
cdba
dabc
dacb
dbac
dbca
dcab
dcba


Can I install Ubuntu on dell inspiron 3521 with windows 7

Yes you can, but if you want a better experience with that amount of RAM and in that specific hardware I would recommend using a light flavour of Ubuntu instead (Xubuntu or Ubuntu Mate).

http://xubuntu.org/

https://ubuntu-mate.org/


With Ubuntu LTS, what are all the support options available? (my ubuntu doesn't work after an update.)

LTS is an abbreviation for “Long Term Support”.

From LTS

  A new LTS version is released every 2 years. Starting with Ubuntu
  12.04 LTS, both Desktop and Server versions will receive 5 years support. There is no extra fee for the LTS version; we make our very
  best work available to everyone on the same free terms. Upgrades to
  new versions of Ubuntu are and always will be free of charge.

Here, support means:

Updates for potential security problems and bugs (not new versions of
software)
Availability of Commercial support contracts from Canonical (if applicable)
Support by Landscape, Canonical's enterprise oriented server
management tool set (if applicable)

So it is not a usual 'technical support' with a toll-free number and a technical support executive that you might be thinking.

If you want any help, you can always describe your problem here or in ubuntuforums and surely you will get help.

Read this to know how to ask a good question in Ask Ubuntu!


Updated XPS 13 to 18.04 this morning, scaling all over the place

Run this command:

  sudo nautilus

Now go to /usr/share/applications directory.

There you will find all the .desktop files of applications.

Now suppose you want to scale google-chrome only, click on the google chrome icon, right click on it and click on "open with other application". The select "Text Editor".

Now find the line "Exec= ". In case of google chrome you will see,

  Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable %U

Now add this option "--force-device-scale-factor=1.2". You can put 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 whatever is suitable to you (you have to try it yourself).
Example, like in this case edit that line with this

  /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable --force-device-scale-factor=1.2 %U

and save the file.

Now, it should only increase scale factor for google chrome.

In this way you can increase or decrease scale factor only of those applications that you choose and even how much amount you want.

I know this is not a perfect solution, but this is better to have no solution at all ...

Hope this will help you.


It appears that in /usr/src/linux-source-3.2.0/debian.master/config/i386/config.common.i386, from the linux-source-3.2.0 package, the maximum number of CPUs on 32-bit is set to 8, set with CONFIG_NR_CPUS=8 in that file.

This is perhaps a bug, though you really should be using the 64-bit version, which does have the max number of CPUs configured to 256. The 64-bit installer should not be crashing. If it is, it could be a bad CD write, or possibly bad hardware, which the 32-bit installer doesn't hit due to small differences in how the hardware is used.

If you do wish to use 32-bit with more than 8 CPUs, it looks like you will need to recompile the kernel, after changing the config, or file a bug report and wait for a fix to get released as an update (assuming there isn't some very good reason for limiting it to 8, and it won't be changed; though it seems like the -pae kernel should have this higher than 8, even if the non-pae one doesn't).


How can I tell the update dialog box from showing while I am doing some presentaion or etc?

On that Update Manager dialogue, click "Settings".

Then, next to the option "Automatically check for updates", use the drop-down list to select "Never".
"
You can still get updates by opening Update Manager yourself and clicking "Check", or by using sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade, but it won't pop up by itsself any more.

From the command line you need to edit the file /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic

I believe changing all those options to "0" will result in the behaviour you expect.

How can I make Ubuntu check for updates less often?


Unity stopped working after zeitgeist uninstall

Fixed by installing unity add-ons: unity-place-applications and unity-place-files.

I can call this a bug: uninstall zeitgeist, install zeitgeist and you lose unity application and place files add-ons. They should be independent.


How to customize GRUB menu entries (e.g. the name)?

You should take a look at GRUB Customizer.


First, portability. Nothing wrong if you are sure bash ( and preferably same or newer ) version will be everywhere you use the script. If you're a developer or sysadmin that expects software to be used on Unix-like OS besides Ubuntu, and they may or may not have bash,  then bashisms won't be understood by /bin/sh.

Second, POSIX compliance. If you write  and submit scripts to be included as part of OS or a project, they often required to be in /bin/sh syntax, which is basically what POSIX standard is.  /bin/sh is often preferred for performance reasons, so if you need speed in shell scripts, bashisms and  therefore bash maybe something to avoid.

In short, bashisms aren't bad. It really depends on the context for which you write a script. If it's a certainty that bash will be available, and not very outdated, then by all meens use the features - they're there for a reason.


After some digging around I think I found a better solution than blacklisting ucsi_ccg.

I'm not sure why, but moving up from kernel 5.3 to kernel 5.4 fixed the issue and the USB-C port seems to be working as well. I don't get any more error messages, it takes a little bit more than 30 seconds to wake up from suspend which is not the fastest thing ever but I don't know if it should be faster or this is just how it is. Certainly faster than before and no more errors.


Cannot lock Mellow Player application to favourites bar

The Exec= line seems to be wrong. Change it to

Exec=/home/YOUR-USERNAME/Desktop/MellowPlayer-x86_64.AppImage

(Put your username in place of YOUR-USERNAME)

Then follow this Q&A: Can't add Custom .desktop files to dock 17.10


How do I share the MySQL server running on Ubuntu under Docker with a Windows PC?

Error 10061 means the network connection has been refused and this would happen under only two circumstances:

The firewall is blocking access
You’re trying to connect as root

For the first issue, you’ll need to confirm that the Docker container is listening for external traffic on 3306 and that the my.conf file has a binding to 0.0.0.0 rather than the default 127.0.0.1.
For the second option, don’t connect as root. Create an account with GRANT ALL ON *.* WITH GRANT OPTION to essentially give that account the same permissions as root.
Hope this points you in the right direction


Will it be possible to run android apps on ubuntu phone?

In short the answer is:
No

The most important reason being that:
Ubuntu apps will be written in QML toolkit and HTML5 technologies. Whereas Android apps are mostly written in Core Java.

It has been discussed in detail at the following link


Ubuntu 12.04 - After release-upgrade from 11.10 - no more root login?

Ah, never mind

sudo sh -c 'echo "greeter-show-manual-login=true" >> /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf'

is not enough. Afterwards, you need to switch from gdm to lightdm

dpkg-reconfigure lightdm

and use lightdm, then reboot and use the new login option
With gdm, it will still not work...


Should I put /var in a separate partition for a database server?

I've tried to run one of my natty servers with a separate /var a couple of weeks before - it just doesn't start.
There seems to be a pretty long history of Ubuntu having various problems with /var on a separate filesystem

So, your best bet is to have some separate data partition, just not put there your entire /var


How can I execute a file without execute permissions?

Check file ownership
Please do this before anything further (unless you are sure you own the file).
Check and make sure that you own the file which you are trying to execute with one of the following methods.
Graphical

Right click the file.
Click 'Properties'.
Click the 'Permissions' tab.
Ensure that the 'Owner' field says your username. If it doesn't see "Change file ownership" below

Command Line

Execute this command in a terminal
 [ ! -O "/path/to/file" ] && echo "You don't own the file"

If it prints "You don't own the file", see "Change file ownership" below.

Change file ownership
Execute this command in a terminal
sudo chown $USER:$(id -gn $USER) "/path/to/file"

Executable Files
An answer I found from a comment by Lekensteyn on an answer for a question about chmod on NTFS partitions which I think deserves it's own question and answer, full credit to Lekensteyn.
Use this command for executable files (substituting /path/to/executable with the correct path):

64 bit executable files:
 /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 /path/to/executable

32 bit executable files:
 /lib/ld-linux.so.2 /path/to/executable

If the above doesn't work (or raises file not found errors), try using this before the above command
cd "$(dirname /path/to/executable)"

All the above commands will not work for text based scripts (Bash, Python, Perl, etc.), see below.
Check if a program is 64 or 32 bit
Use this command to find out if a executable is 32 (x86) or 64 (x86-64) bit
objdump -f "$file" | grep '^architecture' | cut -d, -f1 | sed 's/architecture: //'

If it says i386:x86-64, then it's 64 bit. If it says i386 only, then it's 32 bit.

Scripts
For text based scripts (Bash, Python, Perl, etc.), you should use the command specified in the first #! line in the file.
For example, if the first line of the file is
#!/usr/bin/env python3

then run these commands in a terminal (substituting /path/to/file with the correct path)
cd "$(dirname /path/to/file)"       # Not strictly necessary, see section below

# Replace '/usr/bin/env python3' with the first line without the front #!
/usr/bin/env python3 /path/to/file  # Use './file' if you want

Java .jar files
For Java executable jar's, you can simply use these commands (substituting /path/to/jar with the correct path):
cd "$(dirname /path/to/jar)"   # Not strictly necessary, see section below
java -jar /path/to/jar

When you don't need cd "$(dirname /path/to/file)"
These are possible circumstances where you wont need to use cd "$(dirname /path/to/file)" before running the program with any method: If at least one is true, you wont need cd first.

The program doesn't perform any file operations itself (example: it only uses apt-get)
The program uses cd (or equivalent) to change to an absolute path before doing any file operations (example: cd "$(dirname "$0")")
The program doesn't reference any relative paths (paths starting with ./ or starting with no slash)

If unsure, add cd "$(dirname "$0")" (or equivalent) to the top of the script (if applicable) or use cd "$(dirname /path/to/file)" anyway.


Verification failed: 0x1A security violation

Your last resort would be removing the bios chip from the motherboard using a hot air solder, then flashing it with a usb programmer. Take the laptop to a repair shop and ask them to do that.


If you get this problem, make sure you're on the open source NVIDIA driver through "Software Sources" and restart your computer. Do not log in, instead, let it sit for a bit and the noise should clear up.


Open a Terminal and type whoami

This will work on every Unix/Linux System.


Slow download speed but high surfing speed

As someone who works within the ISP industry I can confirm this is likely due to the fact you are downloading torrents.

For example, by using Deep Packet Inspection we can discover and then implement traffic shaping on particular types of transit.

This will mean that your general internet surfing will be fine - whereas torrents etc will suffer from capped/shaped speeds.


hotkeys do not work sometimes in ubuntu 12.04

This 'strange behaviour' is caused by the fact that sometimes I use shortcuts in Russian keyboard layout in which they do not work due to this bug.


Ubuntu 13.04 How I get Menu options like Win*?

Oralover, as you said, when you open the Gnome launcher, on your left side you can see a row of some 6 apps or so. In the same row you can see the last icon (9 white squares). Click it and you'll see the complete list of your Applications. You can scroll through it to find a desired app, or you can browse them by categories on the far right.


virtualbox - Failed to load VMMR0.r0 (VERR_SUPLIB_WORLD_WRITABLE)

i had the same issue on ubuntu 14.04 (64bit) i just uninstalled it form /opt/Virtualbox

by running the ./uninstall.sh and installed the new version 4.3.18 and it ran perfect


Shell cannot find executable when duplicate name deleted from PATH?

To speed up path name lookups, the shell keeps an internal cache mapping the short names of commands to their full path name.  This is probably what you are experiencing here.

You can issue the following command to inspect the current cached path for the program:

hash -t xxx

This will be pointing to the now missing executable.  You can clear the cache for a particular name with the following command:

hash -r xxx

Note that this problem will only affect shell sessions that executed the command in the old location.  Any new shell sessions should have a clear lookup cache and find the command as expected.


12.04 scrolling two finger not working dell 6430u

It is fixed on 12.10, but it seemed it will not be fixed on 12.04. See this bug-report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1089413

More Informations here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/opensuse/+bug/606238


Where can I find the sources list for 19.04?

Steps required:

Run these commands in WSL console only. Otherwise, the file/folder permissions will be incorrect. Also, use chmod to correct any file permission.
Open Ubuntu cloud image website: https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/19.04/release/
Download the ubuntu-19.04-server-cloudimg-amd64-root.TAR.XZ file. Because it is smaller than others ;)
Extract the /etc/apt folder with tar -xvf ubuntu-19.04-server-cloudimg-amd64-root.tar.xz etc/apt command. Do not add the leading slash in the folder path.
Now copy the sources.list file or any other required files as you need.


Determining the effective file permissions

If a user is in group2, then they'd follow the group permissions for the directory FOLDER. i.e.
rwx

Presuming that they are not user1 and also not in group1, then we'd look at the "other" permissions for FILE. i.e.
r--

Hence, they only have read permissions for this file. Note that this is a bit confusing. They cannot directly modify this file, since don't have write privileges. However, since they have wx for the directory, they could rm this file, then replace it with a new one. (N.B. the inode would probably change, and they wouldn't be able to chown it to the original owner, so it's not exactly the same as directly modifying the file.)
So in general, the permissions inherit from the most-parent directory. As permissions get more restrictive, they restrict the children files and directories. However, as above, if you have wx permissions to the top-level directory, there are workarounds.

EDIT
Similarly, if you edit the file with vim, then you'll see a change in inode. It's not "editing" it, but "over-writing" it.
$ echo foo > file
$ ls -li file
5213942 -rw-r--r-- 1 sparhawk sparhawk 4 Aug 16 15:34 file
$ sudo chown root:root file
$ ls -li file
5213942 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4 Aug 16 15:34 file
$ vim file
$ ls -li file
5214750 -rw-r--r-- 1 lee lee 7 Aug 16 15:35 file

Note the change in inode after vim overwrites the file. Also note that vim gave a warning that the file was readonly. I had to save with :w!.


How do I avoid Compton drawing shadows on the Gnome-Do window?

Add it to shadow-exclude array:

# Shadow
...
shadow-exclude = [ "class_g = 'Do'" ];

in

/home/<user>/.config/compton.conf

Or specify it with compton launch command. Example:

compton -c --shadow-exclude 'class_g = "Do"'

Reference: man compton


after upgrade to php7 connection to mysql from php DB returns DB Error: extension not found

PHP offers multiple interfaces to interact with MySQL. One of those interfaces, the one containing functions like mysql_connect(), mysql_query() etc., has been marked as deprecated (meaning "this is outdated, don't use it anymore") for years and years. With the release of PHP 7, those old functions have finally been removed from PHP.

It looks like your database layer is using those outdated and now removed functions. You should replace them with one of the newer interfaces to MySQL that PHP offers, like mysqli or pdo.


RuntimeError: This module can only be run on a Raspberry Pi!

The RPi.GPIO module only works on a Raspberry Pi. You can't use it on a odroid-c1 board.


Music/podcast player with speed control?

playitslowly
Different to the suggestion of the application's name this player is able to change to a higher or lower pitch or to different playback speeds. Also included is the ability to loop over a section of the audio file (for transcription purposes), and to save the file at a given different speed.

Screenshot from Debian
The package is in the repositories (universe) from Ubuntu >=11.04. Here is the project's home page. The player is based on gstreamer, so any files compatible with that will be played.


How to limit the user access to a directory in external drive?

The best is to use some additional software that manage auth/access for you git repo.

gitolite  https://gitolite.com/gitolite/index.html

gitosis   https://github.com/tv42/gitosis , the projet is dead

Or if you want more , gitlab is opensource so you can install on your PI


how to copy and paste with cursor in ubuntu commad line terminal except GUI

If you are asking about the console , aka the command line without a graphical interface, you can use the mouse to copy paste if you install gpm which stands for General Purpose Mouse

sudo apt install gpm

Here is a video of it in action in Virtualbox but it is the same on a console outside virtualbox

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk1p45VMVpM


Ubuntu 19.04 Screen Tearing with Nvidia Gtx 1660 ti

Generally, it is more helpful when you give details about your hardware.

Is your computer a laptop, and therefore a Nvidia Optimus?
Is your tearing on your laptop display, but not on an external monitor?
If the answer to those two questions is yes, your tearing can't be solved with composition pipeline.

Your problem needs "prime synchronisation" to fix it.
Why? Read this https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/957814/linux/prime-and-prime-synchronization/

Degree of difficulty: You need to use a terminal (such as the app called Terminal).

Effort required: Allow about five minutes to fix.

Ubuntu 19.04 does not enable this by default, because the default display manager, gdm3, disables external monitors when the nvidia driver is in modeset=1 mode. This is a long-standing bug in gdm3, which is not a very high priority to fix, apparently. The Ubuntu devs decided to sacrifice tear-free graphics instead of external monitors.

You need to
a) change your display manager to lightdm if you need external monitors
b) get nvidia running in kms (modeset = 1)

For (a)

sudo apt install lightdm

and accept the choice to make it the default.

If installed already,

sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm

(this is also how you swap back to gdm3 if you want to. Also, the kde display manager, sddm, works too ... so kubuntu and xubuntu users already have a working display manager).

(b)
In nvidia mode, you'll get tearing on the laptop unless you enable prime sync.
Create and edit the file below (I use vim, but you can use nano if you don't know vim)

sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/zz-nvidia-modeset.conf and include this content:

#enable prime-sync
options nvidia-drm modeset=1

then exit back to the shell, do this to put the nvidia driver in your boot image, so it can be loaded along with the kernel:

prime-select nvidia
sudo update-initramfs -u

then reboot.

(You don't need to reboot to make prime-select nvidia work, logging out is usually sufficient to change between nvidia and intel modes, but you do need to reboot to get the nvidia driver running in modeset=1 mode)


Can any body help me in upgrading my Ubuntu os to latest version 12.04 from 11.10? Have anybody faced issues?

It will retain your old files and software. The first time I upgraded to 12.04 my system crashed after a month due to some bad post-upgrade software updates, but it was the first time in my three years of using Ubuntu that it had happened. I re-installed 12.04 and now it's running smoothly.


Open-source alternative to Adobe InDesign

Try out Scribus.

Wikipedia:

  Scribus is designed for flexible
  layout and typesetting and the ability
  to prepare files for professional
  quality image setting equipment. It
  can also create animated and
  interactive PDF presentations and
  forms. Example uses include writing
  small newspapers, brochures,
  newsletters, posters and books.

You can install it by running:

sudo apt-get install scribus

Also see the question Good Publishing Tool and the thread Open Source InDesign?


Ktorrent problem (lagging) on kubuntu 15.10

Let;s try something else...!! I have already done this until they fix Ktorrent

Download & Install another client in C++ written an Qt..!!

Do these steps..

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:qbittorrent-team/qbittorrent-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install qbittorrent

enjoy it..!!! It also has a web interface so to connect remotely leaving your PC open to download any torrent you like ...all that remotely.
Have fun.!


You need to specify amount of the tries and interval of sending a packet to the server. You can put the following lines in your .ssh/config file:

Host examplehost
    Hostname examplehost.com
    ServerAliveInterval 180
    ServerAliveCountMax 2

This will send a packet to the server every 180 seconds (3 minutes) and it will try two times before it closes the connection after getting no response from the client.


Not able to install the lastest version of Teamviewer on my Ubuntu?

Working on your computer as root is not a good idea; you can easliy ruin your system. I would use sudo instead.

You are getting the error message because the path is incorrect; you are trying to install it from ~#, which refers to the root directory, since you are logged in as root. That is most certainly not where the file is located.

I think you are making it unnecessarily complicated: you can run the installer (teamviewer_linux_x64.deb) by double clicking (from your own user account), the Software Center will ask you for your password.

If you want to install it from the command line, again, do that from your own user account.
Either cd to the path first, like:

~$ cd ~/Downloads
sudo dpkg -i teamviewer_linux_x64.deb

or enter the full path:

sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/teamviewer_linux_x64.deb

(assuming the file is in the Downloads folder)


If you do this on the sly your best option is to use Wireshark. This program can scan every packet on your network and then you filter the results on the HTTP protocol.

sudo apt-get install wireshark

That installs the program. As its a very popular program you will find many guides on the internet using this program.

Look at this for an example https://serverfault.com/questions/96272/how-to-filter-http-traffic-in-wireshark

PS: Based on laws in certain countries, "on the sly", can be illegal


Read only file system errors, especially with discord

Snaps are distributed as read only images. What you're seeing is not a fault; it's the expected behavior.

If you do a mount | grep snap it will show the snap images currently in use:

/var/lib/snapd/snaps/gnome-system-monitor_57.snap on /snap/gnome-system-monitor/57 type squashfs (ro,nodev,relatime,x-gdu.hide)

Note that it says (ro, nodev...). ro means read only. Squashfs is a ROM-oriented file system for read only media. Squashfs doesn't really support writing to the image.

The result of this is that you can't edit the content of a snap. This is a security benefit, and in your case a problem.

In your case, adding a new desktop entry, pointing to the snap, housed in your home directory would probably be a good work around. You'd be able to set the icon on the new desktop element.

The other alternative would be to unpack the snap, modify it, and repack it, but this would either disable updates, or be overwritten with each update.


is there an UBUNTU distro for a motorola chip Mac?

Lubuntu offers support for PowerPC on the LTS stream. Download here.


Can't upgrade from 11.10 to 12.04 due to low disk space in /

Your question is not very clear. 6GB is not a particularly large amount of space for a Ubuntu install. It will depend what you already have in other folders. If you could post the result of the below from the terminal (use Ctrl-Alt-T to start it):

df -h

We may be able to help you more.

Also try sudo apt-get autoremove && sudo apt-get clean to remove old/unneeded packages and then run df -h again.

Bill


How to make firefox from snapcraft access home directory?

Strange, I have an issue only with saving the files (on Kubuntu).
To fix this I have tried to install Firefox with --devmode and --classic flags to remove the snap security confinement.
I have tried also to use /media directory as a target after connecting it with sudo snap connect firefox:removable-media.
All the above didn't help, but I have paid attention that retrying the download makes the job, i.e. clicking the retry icon in the download manager window.


nginx troubleshooting Ubuntu 16.04 ( dependency problems)

Check /var/log/nginx/error.log
There might be some clue in there for you.  I had this:

2017/02/04 14:55:09 [emerg] 25011#25011: mkdir() "/var/cache/nginx/microcache" failed (2: No such file or directory)

So I manually created the /var/cache/nginx subdirectory and re-ran the install and it succeeded.


Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti driver for Ubuntu 20.04

It appears these steps are the solution you are looking for


You can use glxinfo (form the meta-utils package) for information about your driver and OpenGL.
Run

  glxinfo | grep OpenGL

for info about your driver and OpenGL.

You can use lspci for info about your PCI devices (so, VGA too).
Use

  lspci -v -s `lspci | awk '/VGA/{print $1}'`

for info about you video card.


How to allow members of a group to read current and new files on a directory?

set the group for directory /data/sales to group purchasing.
set all files in /data/sales/ to the group purchasing
set the permissions for the directory and the files to "read". The means they can not remove a file and can not change a file.

If I understood it correctly I would say ...

chgrp -R purchasing /data/sales
chmod 2750 /data/sales
chmod -R 0740 /data/sales/

1st one: set all files and dirs to group purchasing
2nd one does the dir itself
the 2 means files in the dir will be created with the group permissions
3rd one does the files inside the dir
the -R does all files inside /data/sales/
the 7 is read, write, execute for the owner
the 5 means read and execute for the group. Users in the group can not delete and can not create new files. This applies to new files too.
the 4 is read for group. So the group can view files, not alter then and not delete them.
the 0 is no access for others

I assume owner gets full permissions and others get none. If those need to be applied too the 2nd and 4th digit in the commands need to be adjusted.

Commands also assume the one changing this has permissions to do so. If not add a sudo in front of the lines (or use root).


Ubuntu 20.04 weird problems on mariadb-server-10.3 upgrade

I had to reinstall to fix. Obviously if you can do a backup first, do one!
sudo apt remove mariadb-server mariadb-server-10.3 mariadb-server-core-10.3 mariadb-client mariadb-client-10.3 mariadb-client-core-10.3 mariadb-common
Note: I didn't have to restore any of my databases. I saw the following message while running the command above:
dpkg: warning: while removing mariadb-server-core-10.3, directory '/usr/share/mysql' not empty so not removed
So if you want to do a backup, which you should there are no excuses, you can do so from ('/var/lib/mysql') the your databases should be stored.
Reinstall/restore MariaDB:
sudo apt install mariadb-server mariadb-client


This command did the work for me:

sudo dpkg -i vagrant_2.0.1_x86_64.deb


Steps to follow depend on if you wanted to install something over Fedora, or just reclaim the space so you can use it with Ubuntu/Windows (you didn't specify)....

"Gparted" is the name of the package you're looking for. It's probably already installed (http://gparted.sourceforge.net/ if not), so try just searching for it in the Dash.

You should be able to find the Fedora partition in gparted and either format it as a storage space(NTFS should be useable by both Ubuntu and Windows) , or delete it and extend whichever OS's partition to add it to the existing ones.

Notes:

1 - Be careful about highlighting the right drives/partitions before making changes.

2 - If you're going to extend the Ubuntu partition, you'll probably want to do that from the CD/USB you used to install.


Why does Ubuntu use Launchpad instead of GitHub or Bitbucket?

This list contains the reasons why it did not use back then and why it should not move now

Launchpad used Bazaar which was
developed long back. GitHub did not
exist that time (as Robin said)
Launchpad was launched in 2004 and
GitHub in 2008

GitHub is not open source. GitLab or
Gitorious would be a better choice
in this case. I know Launchpad was
not FOSS initially, but it was
released later

Initially GitHub did not have many
features which Launchpad had, like
teams. GitHub does not have a build system
integrated with it, like PPA

Many projects in Launchpad heavily
make use of the "Merge request" functionality
which has very basic support in GitHub. It
is called "Pull request" but Launchpad has better
features and more detailed than GitHub

GitHub's Bug Tracker is next to useless (this
may have changed by 2021). My pet project for
a bug tracker might be more useful

Launchpad is owned by Canonical and they pay
the developers. They have the complete control
over their product. GitHub also is owned by
GitHub/Microsoft.

GitHub uses Git for tracking releases using
branches and tags. In Launchpad, which uses Bazaar
also has this feature, but Launchpad explicitly
enforces this outside the source control system.
This would be a bit more easier for people who
have to handle versions but don't want to dig
inside the source code.

Just a small note: Github vs. Launchpad and git vs. bzr is sort of religious topic. I want to stay away from this endless discussion. I use which fits the use-case.


What are the most common shortcuts you use?

Go to System -> Preferences -> Keyboard shortcuts.   You'll see a list of the default configured and configurable shortcuts, including the ones for launching a web browser or terminal.
You'll be able to set these (within some limits) as you like.

Setting a file browser to launch appears to be a bit trickier.   GeekGumbo has a terrific blog entry on setting up Windows-like shortcuts, which is probably worth checking out :  Keyboard shortcut to File Manager in Ubuntu (Windows + E for Nautilus)


Long Press the power button and force shutdown it. Try to power on after few minutes (About 10-12 minutes). Also unplug any other devices like USB Stick etc if available.


Using second hdd as storage for all users

Nope, you don't have to create a partition for every user, instead you just have to move your old /home to your external HDD.
By default /home is the place for all user files unless "root" though your user files normally will sit here.
For case of permissions by default users can see other files without the ability of changing or modification, if you also want to remove the read permission then easily you can change permission of each user home using chmod command. For example suppose I have a user named test.
$ ls -ld /home/test

drwxr-xr-x 40 test test 4096 Jul  1 14:00 /home/test/

This is the default permissions of user test home and as you can notice it have r-x for others and hence other users can list files in other's home and can read those files.
If you want to prevent users from reading others user's files.
sudo chmod o-rx -R /home/test/

Now let's make sure:
$ ls -ld /home/test/

drwxr-x--- 40 test test 4096 Jul  1 14:00 /home/test/

read my asnwer https://askubuntu.com/a/638799/150504 for more information about permissions.
Now how to move old /home to new path(hdd)?
Take a look for my answer here: https://askubuntu.com/a/643445/150504


VirtualBox Storage Mount Directory/Prefix - VERR_PERMISSION_DENIED

According to this VirtualBox ticket: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/17583

  This is intentional as we did some fixes in that area. Please change that parameter from the host side using VBoxManage instead. - pentagonik

I was able to perform this with the same command from the host side via the following command:

VBoxManage guestproperty set [VM Name] /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/SharedFolders/MountPrefix "/"
VBoxManage guestproperty set [VM Name] /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/SharedFolders/MountDIR "/home/user"

After trying this however, my Ubuntu 18.04 VM still mounts it under /media/ with the prefix sf_, so I'm not sure this even works right now.


How to hide title bar in Firefox 57 Quantum?

Update - May 2018

Firefox 60 has now been released to all users with support for Client Side Decorations. Go to Menu > Customise and uncheck Title Bar in the bottom left corner. This works in all distributions to my knowledge, although apparently it looks a little strange still in KDE.

You can check your browser version by going to Menu > Help and selecting About Firefox. If you are not yet on Firefox 60, you should be able to update through your distribution package manager or by downloading it directly from Mozilla.

The information below here is probably irrelevant unless you are on an older version of Quantum such as 57, 58, or 59.

Enable Client Side Decoration

If you are willing to switch to Firefox 59 (currently available on the Nightly channel), it supports a very rough prototype of CSD, or Client Side Decoration, which allows the browser to render its tab list where the title bar would normally be. This reduces the amount of window chrome at the top and probably gives the effect that you are looking for.

On newer builds of Firefox Nightly, CSD can be enabled by going to Menu > Customise and unchecking Title Bar in the bottom left corner.

On older builds of Firefox Nightly, this option may not be present, and as such you may need to use the following method.

Navigate Firefox to about:config
Search for the property widget.allow-client-side-decoration and set it to true
Reboot Firefox

Right now, this feature comes with the caveat that it may not work correctly on all systems. It certainly works on Fedora, and while is not working right now on my Ubuntu 17.10 PC there have been recent articles showing it working fine. If not, new Nightly versions are pushed out (unsurprisingly) every night so you can expect a fix very soon.


Ubuntu 20.04 Text Not Displaying Properly

It turned out to be some font issue. I guess some font got deleted after upgrading?

Went into Tweaks and blindly changed fonts to known fonts and things are all fixed.


C Shell variants and Bourne Shell variants

C shell (e.g. csh, tcsh) and Bourne shell (e.g. sh, bash) are two shell families. These two have differences in syntaxes and implementation of various operations.

The examples you have shown are how these two family handle redirection of file descriptors. Both commands are redirecting STDERR (file descriptor 2) to STDOUT (file descriptor 1), sending STDOUT to the file config.out, so all the STDOUT and STDERR are being redirected to the file. And also sending the command to background by & at the end.

Historically, C shell uses >& to redirect both STDOUT and STDERR at once while Bourne shell uses two redirections to do so, at first sending STDOUT to the file and then sending STDERR to the place STDOUT is going i.e. the file.

Note that, the above discussion is true for all C shell an Bourne shell family of shells for the sake of portability. But now a days many things have changed and these type of things are modified for the sake of efficiency in newer implementations of various shells e.g in bash (or zsh/ksh) which has inherited from Bourne shell, you can do the above with &>:

./configure &> config.out &

As you can see it is actually the reverse of csh syntax, >&.


How to enable the double star ** (globstar) operator?

You are looking for the globstar shell option which was introduced in bash version 4.

If you unsure what version you are running you can test that via:

$ echo $BASH_VERSION
4.4.12(1)-release

Check if it is enabled via:

$ shopt globstar

It defaults to off. If you want to use it you have to enable it:

$ shopt -s globstar

Then it will work as expected. You might want to add this to your .bashrc for it to be always enabled in new shells.

To disable it:

$ shopt -u globstar

See help shopt for details.


Invalid partition table after windows removal

Hi according to your description, you did exact the same as I did. The solution is simple but cumbersome:
Your partition with the boot files is probably the second (sda2) as you have put Ubuntu “behind” the windows partition. With the cleaning of your windows partition the boot files from this partition were wiped too, thus the BIOS cannot reach any bootable files any more and produces the error.

Solutions:

a) swap partitions

with an external drive, some dd and gparted and boot-repair you could “swap” the partitions. This would put your boot files in the beginning of your harddrive and makes the BIOS happy.

b) create boot partition

shrink the first partition and create a new partition in front of the drive (500MB) mount to /boot With gparted make this the boot partition

c) reinstall

backup /home/user
reinstall with proper partitioning

only one partition
one / one for /home
one for /boot (make this the first partition) others as you like

restore user data

Good luck :)


Chrome windows very sluggish when active on different workspaces

The problem was solved when I deactivated hardware acceleration. The scrolling is still just a little bit less smooth when YouTube is running on another workspace but this is hardly noticeable.


VSFTPD 553 Could not create file. Error:Critical file transfer error

I think I've had the same issue. I have enabling passive mode, then resolved it.
vsftpd.conf
pasv_enable=YES
pasv_addr_resolve=YES


Does Ubuntu have an equivalent to the AUR (Arch User Repository)?

Yes, PPAs. That's the closest you can get right now. If you don't think they're equivalent enough for you, then the answer right now is simply "no". Some comments on your claimed differences:

  PPAs have compiled packages, while the AUR features both compiled packages and source packages

PPAs ship source packages too. PPA uploads must be source uploads. Users can access both the source (for example they can rebuild the sources themselves), or binaries built from those sources.

  Since PPAs are specific to the Ubuntu release, many PPAs are out of date.

This is true. However, users can quite easily copy a package from any PPA to their own PPAs, including to a different release, while choosing to rebuild them if necessary on the way. See the Package details -> Copy packages page. If there is anything that needs updating to work with a newer release then that won't work, but I presume that's the same with AUR.

In terms of PPAs being up to date, that is presumably simply a matter of volunteer time (who can do the same pocket copy as above), rather than any fundamental difference between PPAs and AUR.

  Many PPAs don't build properly, even though the projects are more or less stable

Same answer as above. This has nothing to do with infrastructure or mechanism and everything to do with volunteer time.

  PPAs don't seem have a rating system where users can vouch for working package repositories.

Agreed.

  There are tons of AUR packages that come directly from GitHub, so installing a package like something-git will usually give you the latest package straight from GitHub.

You could arrange for this to happen automatically in a PPA, but I admit it is far from trivial to set up.

Arrange for an automated VCS import from Github.
Create a build recipe.

None of this is exactly the same, I'll grant you. If you want more ABS/AUR -like functionality in Ubuntu, I think you need to go into more detail of how exactly your proposed changes would work in terms of what Ubuntu already has.


ubuntu does not boot and get stuck on the logo

BIOS
Lenovo Helix 2
You have BIOS version GFET55WW (1.34).
There's a newer BIOS available. Depending on your exact model #, you'll find:
For Helix (Type 20CG, 20CH) Laptop (ThinkPad), BIOS version 2.12 can be downloaded from here.
For Helix (Type 3xxx) Laptop (ThinkPad), BIOS version 1.44 can be downloaded from here.
Note: Confirm your model # to know what BIOS to download.
Note: Have good backups before updating the BIOS.
memory
Go to https://www.memtest86.com/ and download/run their free memtest to test your memory. Get at least one complete pass of all the 4/4 tests to confirm good memory. This may take many hours to complete.


Error when running HardInfo in terminal?

The first line has been reported as a bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hardinfo/+bug/1473142

I'm guessing the second one relates to that bug, but to answer your question: No you shouldn't worry so long as the program works the way you expect it to.

Looking through the source code, 'gnome-about' is only referenced in a function that detects your desktop environment. If it still detects your desktop environment, I don't think it matters.


Expanding partition - Ubuntu server on QNAP VM

I had the same issues.  This post helped fix it.

https://superuser.com/questions/917988/gparted-cannot-resize-extended-or-lvm-partition

Basically, Increase Storage in QNAP VM Manager settings (Ubuntu knows nothing about this bit yet).  Get hold of GPARTED from https://gparted.org/download.php and attach as a CD to the Virtual VM settings.

* BACKUP YOUR VM IN CASE THE NEXT STEPS GO WRONG *

Change boot order so CD gets booted.

Boot - This starts GPARTED.

Unlock (Deactivate) the LV partition you want to extend, if necessary.  Extend into the Unallocated space.  Apply and then shutdown.

Change boot order in QNAP VM so Disk gets booted.  Then follow post above with lvdisplay, vgs, lvextend and resize2fs commands.  Reboot.


Wireless connection keeps dropping randomly on Dell Inspiron N5110

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx

Apparently the b43 series has some problems with Ubuntu.
The link explains how to update your drivers for the WiFi card.
I am writing from my phone so can't copy and paste all the details, but take care to use the commands specific for your version.
I hope it helps


You have a EFI boot, I think mbr will not work for you.

Can you choose Win8 boot option from GRUB?, if not try to use Grub Customizer to fix any boot issues.
Install it

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer

(Or from Ubuntu Software)

First run and you can see the win8 boot entry, press Save and reboot your machine.
In GRUB menu selected Windows boot option and press and hold SHIFT key before press ENTER, you will enter to RECOVERY mode and then you can choose repair boot issues for windows.


Ubuntu 12.10 restarts unexpectedly and runs very slow

Your question is two-fold, I'm answering one part here: "my laptop  is very slow". The sudden restarts should be asked in a different question.

Your hardware is relatively old and low-specced for this recent Ubuntu release. More specifically, you're probably hitting the slowness of Unity 3D. Since the 12.10 release the Unity 2D, meant for these devices, was removed. More on that topic is in this OMG!Ubuntu! article.

From here I believe you have two options:

Try one of the official derivatives of Ubuntu with a different desktop environment: Lubuntu (LXDE powered), Kubuntu (KDE powered), Xubuntu (XFCE powered). These are not using Unity and your desktop will look completely different.

There's no need to reinstall the current Ubuntu installation! Just install the lubuntu-desktop / kubuntu-desktop / xubuntu-desktop metapackage (for Lubuntu / Kubuntu / Xubuntu respectively - pick one) and you'll be able to choose the desktop environment to run at the login screen.

While KDE isn't as lightweight as XFCE and LXDE, I think it runs pretty well on older hardware with 2GB memory by installing the kubuntu-low-fat-settings package.
Install Ubuntu 12.04 with proper Unity 2D support. It's an LTS release (5 years support), so I'd recommend this if you only want to put effort in getting it to run once.


Yes, you can create a USB stick that will load Ubuntu when plugged to your computer during boot. Detailed instructions about it are here: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows


Samba Domain Member Not Pulling AD Group/User info

Thanks to help from @Rowland, I was able to conclude that this issue stemmed from multiple issues:
Primarily that Domain Users did not have a gid (confirmed by checking the attribute in Windows Users and Groups console). After adding that gid, and expanding the idmap range, my issue seems to be solved with all of my groups and users being shown. I've also been able to test access with domain users with complete success.
EDIT: I've now expanded to include all of our groups, and everything related to user/groups and ACLs are working perfectly!


How do I create stand alone packages from ubuntu repository

Use super deb creator. You can make stand alone packages for upto Ubuntu 11.04.
For more details check the official website.
http://hacktolive.org/wiki/SuperDeb_Creator


How can I throttle my browser downloads?

Well your question is not clear as you didn't specify how you are downloading these files. As others mention in the comments:

Most torrent clients support bandwidth limiting.
Command line tools has too (wget, curl, youtube-dl...)

For web browsers it is nice to look for a download manager like jdownloader. Personally, I prefer DownThemAll plug for Firefox.


Right-click the .tar file and select "Extract Here". Open the file os/linux/config.mk with any text editor and change HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT=n to HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT=y. Proofread, save and close the text editor.

Install the prerequisites:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic build-essential

Now compile the driver.

cd Desktop/2011_1007_RT5390_RT5392_Linux_STA_V2.5.0.3_DPO  # or wherever you extracted the folder
sudo su
make
make install
modprobe rt5390sta
exit

Be sure the conflicting driver isn't loaded:

lsmod | grep rt28

If rt2800pci is loaded, it should be blacklisted:

sudo su
echo "blacklist rt2800pci"  >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
exit

If you get an error at make, stop and ask us.


The cause

The reason why you get this error message is that the package bt-dw1705-firmware provides a firmware file that the linux-firmware package wants to overwrite or update.

The package management mechanisms of Linux operating systems are designed to prevent different packages from overwriting each others files and leave the system in an inconsistent state. That is why you get this error.

Solution

The bt-dw1705-firmware doesn't seem to be a Ubuntu package and therefore is probably not supported or maintained anymore, while linux-firmware clearly is.

You should remove bt-dw1705-firmware either with sudo apt-get remove bt-dw1705-firmware or if that doesn't work with sudo dpkg --remove bt-dw1705-firmware and run sudo dpkg-reconfigure linux-firmware afterwards.

Alternatively you could use sudo dpkg --force-overwrite linux-firmware according to this answer. But this will probably cause the issue to re-appear as soon as linux-firmware is updated again.

The answer was approved by the OP, so it's safe to assume that the firmware file in linux-firmware works, no matter which solution you pick.


Don't automatically open the folder of mounted devices

Click on Applications->System Tools->dconf Editor

In the window which opens, Select org from the side bar, then gnome and then desktop and then media-handling Uncheck the automount-open from the right side bar.

See the picture.


The normal Ubuntu download that is not Wubi installs in a new partition.  Like just about every other Linux distribution, such as Red Hat, Debian, etc, it will look for any other operating system, like Windows, and create a dual boot configuration for all of them.

But be aware that once you install any of them, you can't simply erase it because the boot configuration file is on the last one installed.  If you delete it, Windows will not boot unless you restore its boot loader using either the original Windows boot disk, or a 3rd-party utility.


Is it possible to use Logitech c310 webcam full-featured?

Don't be fooled by the specs.

This camera does not have the features you mention. And don't be fooled by the specs Logitech provides you. It's all software.

E.g.:

  Photos: Up to 5 megapixels (software enhanced)

The camera's sensor is just 1280x720, so good luck in taking 5MP pictures. It'll just be a fuzzy blown up thing in Windows.

  Logitech webcam software:

  Pan, tilt, and zoom controls
  Video and photo capture
  Face tracking
  Motion detection

This is all just software enhancements as well (fake!). It does not have a zoom lens, it does not have a servo motor to pan/tilt, it does not move on face movements, etc.


You can again start the apt-mirror process. It will continue from where it is stopped.


Cannot install ubuntu 11.04 apps on live usb

Maybe i am using an old ubuntu version and the repo is shut ?

That would be correct. 11.04 is an EOL (End Of Life) Ubuntu release. Unless you want to add the repositories back, use a later version of Ubuntu.


Evince shows font in too big style when opening pdf from Internet

I think the problem might be that you're missing a font.

In some PDFs, not all fonts are embedded, which means that you have to have these fonts installed on your system. If you don't have them installed, the PDF readers use a substitution font, which looks right most of the time, but not always. Looking at your provided sample, you can see in the emb column which fonts are embedded:

user@host ~ $ pdffonts 1210.3720.pdf
name                                 type              encoding         emb sub uni object ID
------------------------------------ ----------------- ---------------- --- --- --- ---------
ZVTVKO+CMR9                          Type 1C           WinAnsi          yes yes no      65  0
TNKPNO+CMTI10                        Type 1C           Custom           yes yes no      63  0
EUBKWD+CMMI6                         Type 1C           Custom           yes yes yes     50  0
Times-Roman                          Type 1            Standard         no  no  no      27  0
WUHOVD+MSBM10                        Type 1C           Custom           yes yes yes     46  0
TXXCOH+CMMI8                         Type 1C           Custom           yes yes yes     44  0
WENRPZ+CMSY10                        Type 1C           Custom           yes yes yes     42  0
UKDDMC+CMR8                          Type 1C           Custom           yes yes no      40  0
DZKPHZ+CMMI12                        Type 1C           Custom           yes yes yes     38  0
QGXROH+CMR12                         Type 1C           Custom           yes yes no      36  0
WFOOEY+CMMI10                        Type 1C           WinAnsi          yes yes no      34  0
JFGGLS+CMCSC10                       Type 1C           WinAnsi          yes yes no      32  0
JNCOFM+CMR10                         Type 1C           Custom           yes yes no      30  0
BNDGFL+CMBX12                        Type 1C           Custom           yes yes no      28  0
THENUM+CMSS12                        Type 1C           Custom           yes yes no      84  0
BQAVRP+CMEX10                        Type 1C           Custom           yes yes no      98  0
DCOWCX+CMTI12                        Type 1C           Custom           yes yes no     110  0
SFKKYE+CMSY8                         Type 1C           Custom           yes yes yes    107  0
SDEAPX+rsfs10                        Type 1C           WinAnsi          yes yes no     100  0
AGBIOF+CMSY6                         Type 1C           Custom           yes yes yes    125  0
ONCRWT+MSAM10                        Type 1C           Custom           yes yes yes    117  0
GFZVVH+CMR6                          Type 1C           WinAnsi          yes yes no     257  0
CZBFJH+CMR7                          Type 1C           WinAnsi          yes yes no     322  0
BBIJMN+CMTT10                        Type 1C           WinAnsi          yes yes no     317  0
ZVTVKO+CMBX10                        Type 1C           WinAnsi          yes yes no     313  0

As you can see "Times-Roman" isn't in the PDF and probably substituted with a wrong font.

Things to try:

Open the terminal application and install the Windows fonts, which
include Times New Roman:

sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer
Install another pdf reader, which may be substititung the font differently, e.g. muPdf

sudo apt-get install mupdf

Right click on the PDF and choose the program to open the file
Modify the original PDF:
See this question on Stack Overflow


Why no internet access despite appearing to be connected to wireless network?

try setting a satic ip address.

open the terminal

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

You will see something like

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

change it to

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
        address 192.168.1.100
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        network 192.168.1.0
        broadcast 192.168.1.255
        gateway 192.168.1.1

this assumes that your router is at 192.168.1.1.


You can enter more keyboard combinations, separating the quoted string representing your key presses by a comma, e.g. as in

switch-input-source=['<Primary><Shift>m','F9']


This was a bug that has been fixed. See the developer's blog for information.


Can't install libssl-dev, dependency problem

Your software sources seems to be outdated. Run sudo apt-get update to get make your repository information up-to-date.


Is there any Application level firewall for Ubuntu 16.04? (with GUI)

Douane

  Douane is a personal firewall that protects a user's privacy by allowing a user to control which applications can connect to the internet from their GNU/Linux computer.

Installation

Until now (2017/05/22) there isn't Ubuntu packages available. You must build it from source.

These installation instructions are based on information from the Douane Wiki and tested on Ubuntu 16.04.2 64-bit.

Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) to run the commands.

Preparation

Update your system:

sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade

If you get a notification asking to restart your computer, then restart it.

Install the dependencies

sudo apt install git build-essential dkms libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-regex-dev libboost-signals-dev policykit-1 libdbus-c++-dev libdbus-1-dev liblog4cxx10-dev libssl-dev libgtkmm-3.0-dev python3 python3-gi python3-dbus

Create a directory for compilation

cd
mkdir Douane
cd Douane

Build the kernel module

git clone https://github.com/Douane/douane-dkms
cd douane-dkms
sudo make dkms

Check if the module was built and installed correctly:

lsmod | grep douane

You should see something like:

douane                 20480  0

Build the daemon

cd ~/Douane
git clone --recursive https://github.com/Douane/douane-daemon
cd douane-daemon
make
sudo make install

Build the dialog process

cd ~/Douane
git clone --recursive https://github.com/Douane/douane-dialog
cd douane-dialog
make
sudo make install

Start the dialog process:

/opt/douane/bin/douane-dialog &

Then check if it is running:

pgrep -a douane-dialog

You should see something like:

21621 /opt/douane/bin/douane-dialog

Build the configurator

cd ~/Douane
git clone https://github.com/Douane/douane-configurator
cd douane-configurator
sudo python3 setup.py install

Start the daemon and setup automatic starting

I had to insert the following text in the file /etc/init.d/douane in order to enable the automatic starting of the daemon:

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          douane
# Required-Start:
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: Douane firewall
### END INIT INFO

Open the file for edit:

sudo nano /etc/init.d/douane

Then paste the above text after the program description. Press Ctrl+O,Enter to save, then Ctrl+X to exit the editor.

This is the first 21 lines of the file after I inserted the text:

#!/bin/bash
#
# douane      This shell script takes care of starting and stopping
#             douane daemon (A modern firewall at application layer)
#
# Author: Guillaume Hain zedtux@zedroot.org
#
# description: douane is the daemon process of the Douane firewall application. \
# This firewall is limiting access to the internet on application bases.

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          douane
# Required-Start:
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: Douane firewall
### END INIT INFO

# Source function library.
. /lib/lsb/init-functions

Now you can set up the auto start and start the daemon:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable douane
sudo systemctl start douane

Activate the filter and auto start the dialog

Start the configurator:

douane-configurator

Then make sure the switches Use Douane to filter my network traffic and Auto start Douane on boot are both turned on.

You can review the filtering rules in the Rules tab. Right clicking a rule you get an option to delete it.

Test

If everything is fine you should see the Douane window asking for permission when you open applications that uses network connections.