The "Linux questions (and other stuff)" thread

[MoodyBlues]

I'm stumped!

For decades, I've set up each new computer in a very specific, predictable manner, i.e., giving it nine desktops, then individually configuring each of the nine to have its own wallpaper [and, when I used to feel like it, other stuff, like widgets, but my main desktop is always completely free of any stuff...just wallpaper]. Then I set up Desktop Cube as my method of seeing/switching desktops; I give it a wallpaper, different from any of the other nine, and make its end-caps transparent. The final product can be seen in this old 'desktop' post or here:

I'm running Kubuntu [as always] 20.04LTS on my new laptop. When I started to set up my nine desktops...something was wrong...different... Some quick searching online led me to this thing I've avoided [as far as I can remember right now] forever: activities. It seems that you're no longer able to assign each virtual desktop its own wallpaper, and have to do it [somehow] using activities. Okay...

Would someone like to clue me in?! If I ever used activities, I don't remember doing so. Is there an idiot's guide to making your desktop look the way I want? I don't have the energy to do anything very labor- or learning-intensive. I've got my nine desktops set up, my Desktop Cube background image set, and that's where I'm stuck.

 

[Dngrsone]

I'm stumped!

For decades, I've set up each new computer in a very specific, predictable manner, i.e., giving it nine desktops, then individually configuring each of the nine to have its own wallpaper [and, when I used to feel like it, other stuff, like widgets, but my main desktop is always completely free of any stuff...just wallpaper]. Then I set up Desktop Cube as my method of seeing/switching desktops; I give it a wallpaper, different from any of the other nine, and make its end-caps transparent. The final product can be seen in this old 'desktop' post or here:

View attachment 155257

I'm running Kubuntu [as always] 20.04LTS on my new laptop. When I started to set up my nine desktops...something was wrong...different... Some quick searching online led me to this thing I've avoided [as far as I can remember right now] forever: activities. It seems that you're no longer able to assign each virtual desktop its own wallpaper, and have to do it [somehow] using activities. Okay...

Would someone like to clue me in?! If I ever used activities, I don't remember doing so. Is there an idiot's guide to making your desktop look the way I want? I don't have the energy to do anything very labor- or learning-intensive. I've got my nine desktops set up, my Desktop Cube background image set, and that's where I'm stuck.

The bug has been known about for a good six years or so, and the developers don't see it as a problem.

You can get separate wallpapers on Activities; even put different widgets in different Activities, but one cannot, as far as I have been able to determine, get Cube to work with Activities versus Desktops.

I use four separate Activities myself, and I have to make a short list of changes every time I set up a new KDE:

• set desktops to 1
• add activities, change "Switch Activity" shortcut to ctrl+alt+right arrow and the reverse to ctrl+alt+left arrow
• in Configure Desktop, change Layout from Folder to Desktop
• Change each desktop wallpaper
• Under Mouse Actions (still under Configure Desktop) change scroll wheel to switch Activity. This must be done from each activity for it to work correctly

My primary page has a shortcut to the Firefox default profile. Another has a shortcut to a Firefox profile dedicated to reading webcomics, and a third to a profile with a locked-down private window Firefox profile for shopping/research

If you find a way to get cube working with Activities, I would really like to know--I miss that gimmick.

 

[MoodyBlues]

If you find a way to get cube working with Activities, I would really like to know--I miss that gimmick.

I had it working as recently as 19.10. I can't say now HOW I did that.

 

[Dngrsone]

Hrm... just today, I booted up the old laptop and upgraded KDE neon to 20.1; which succeeded in breaking grub2 (because, like an idiot, I forgot to update grub before letting it reboot) and I've been thinking about moving back to neon from Manjaro now that neon is based off the new Ubuntu LTS.

I understand that Manjaro, as one step from Arch, is supposed to be the destination for serious KDE folk, but I am just having too many issues and the support just isn't there like it is for *buntu derivatives.

So, since I will have to create a bootable USB drive for repairing neon 20.1 on the old lappy; maybe I will take it for a test run.
Maybe I will research this and see if I can replicated your past accomplishment

 

[MoodyBlues]

Maybe I will research this and see if I can replicated your past accomplishment

Yes, please do! I've had my nine-desktop-each-with-its-own-wallpaper-with-desktop-cube arrangement for so long, I don't know what to do without it!

Seriously, I have screenshots dating waaaaay back showing this...and I want it back! Here's my cube now:

It's not that I don't love seeing pictures of my beautiful, beloved, deceased Wilshire on all nine sides, but I'd rather have different pics. Like I have FOREVER!

 

[Dngrsone]

Yes, please do! I've had my nine-desktop-each-with-its-own-wallpaper-with-desktop-cube arrangement for so long, I don't know what to do without it!

Seriously, I have screenshots dating waaaaay back showing this...and I want it back! Here's my cube now:

View attachment 155258

It's not that I don't love seeing pictures of my beautiful, beloved, deceased Wilshire on all nine sides, but I'd rather have different pics. Like I have FOREVER!

Yeah. The different wallpapers in virtual desktops was a mess programmatically, I guess and the developers are adamant that they will not return that functionality. There are several years of complaints, bumps and bitching about the issue, and the programmers say they are working on a solution, but it's not a priority.

I have switched to using multiple activities, as I previously posted, but the only animation for switching activities is the simple slide. If they would port the cube animation to the activities side of things, there would be some happiness...

***

On an unrelated note, Windows actually saved my hard drive last night: I had powered up the old lappy to look at KDE neon 20.x, upgraded my v19.x neon OS on it, and the upgrade borked grub2

I tried a couple different linux USBs to get grub updated and even installed a fresh LInux on some empty drive space and nothing was working: I ended up with a very generic Ubuntu grub which would hang up while trying to boot Mint something or other...

So, knowing I still have Windows partitions on there, I made a Recovery drive and booted that up. It couldn't repair my boot, but it did allow me to boot from rEFInd, which allowed me too boot into one of the too many operating systems on the drive and repair the EFI boot tables

I think the original issue was Manjaro... it does grub differently than the *buntu-based OSes, and so when I updated neon, the process wiped out the boot tables.

 

[MoodyBlues]

On an unrelated note, Windows actually saved my hard drive last night:

Those are words that will never be spoken by me!



Seriously, I'm glad you got your problem worked out. I wouldn't have the option of doing it the way you did. But, luckily, I haven't needed to deal with any GRUB-related issues in many years, so it hasn't been something I've thought about.

As for the desktop/wallpaper thing...how the hell did I make that work on Kubuntu 19.10?! I wish I could remember... I wonder what about implementing it was so bad that the devs have basically sworn it off.

 

[Dngrsone]

Those are words that will never be spoken by me!



Seriously, I'm glad you got your problem worked out. I wouldn't have the option of doing it the way you did. But, luckily, I haven't needed to deal with any GRUB-related issues in many years, so it hasn't been something I've thought about.

As for the desktop/wallpaper thing...how the hell did I make that work on Kubuntu 19.10?! I wish I could remember... I wonder what about implementing it was so bad that the devs have basically sworn it off.

Couldn't say. I am thinking that I am going to ditch Manjaro and go back to KDE neon. I am definitely going to want to put rEFInd on the lappy, as well, LOL

I am on the mailing list for the bug, so I will know if someone suddenly decides to actually do something about it.

 

[Davdi]

My wife's PC (Gigabyte Sniper G2 M/B, Kaby Lake Core i7. 32GB DDR4 and a 2GB Nvidia card (I forget which) developed severy screen corruption in Mint 20.1. It's either driver or kernel related - it only started with 5.x kernels. She's now on Debian 10 (Kernel 4.19) and all is well - for now.
Meanwhile, I've finally said goodbye to my one remaining Win 10 install, it's nww Suse tumbleweed which is very fast running on the Samsung SSD.

 

[Davdi]

Aaaand.... Still on Suse Tumbleweed, this time on my HP Pavilion 10x2 detahcable mini laptop. It's been running Tumbleweed for about a year now quite happily, currently on kernel 5.11.x. Yesterday on boot, I got this GRUB error message - error symbol 'grub_is_lockdown' not found entering rescue mode... and a grub rescue> terminal prompt. I'll be consulting the internet later, but meanwhile and help would be most welcome.

 

[Davdi]

Update the HP Pavilion 10x2 is now running Mint 20.1 Kernel 5.4.x

 

[Umair Aslam]

With all the splintered discussions about Linux around here, I thought perhaps we could have a thread dedicated to all things Linux. Whether you're a new Linux user, or someone considering installing Linux, or have specific questions or solutions about a Linux feature or program, how about posting here? I'll start by pasting in some code I posted in a totally non-computer related thread!

The following bash code will replace spaces in file names with underscores:

#!/bin/bash

ls > /tmp/current_files
mv /tmp/current_files ./current_files
cat current_files | tr ' ' '_' > current_files_new
FileCount=$(wc -l current_files | awk '{print $1}')
count=1
while   [ "$count" -le "$FileCount" ]
do     ReadAwk="FNR=="$count
    OldName=$(awk $ReadAwk current_files)
    NewName=$(awk $ReadAwk current_files_new)
    mv "$OldName" "$NewName" > /dev/null 2>&1
    count=$(($count+1))
done
rm current_files
rm current_files_new
exit 0

My advice is that you try it first in a temporary directory with copies of files, just to verify for yourself that it works as expected. Also, if you're unsure what any part of it does, feel free to ask.

Edited to change how new forum software displays code blocks.

 

[nickdalzell]

On the 'windows saved my hard drive' topic, I had quite the opposite with a Dell All-in-One a few years ago. It got a windows 'update' without my permission since it ran Windows 10, and when I came back from work that evening, it had some low-res screen saying 'the update didn't install properly' [restart]' so I did. Dell SupportAssist immediately came up, scanning my hard drive, telling me it's 'bad' and needs replacing. Skipping the test which came up on every POST if booting windows boot manager would just shut the PC off. telling the results 'screw you' also shut the PC off. it outright refused to boot, telling me the HDD was bad. it was most certainly not bad and software isn't capable of destroying hardware, so I decided to prove my point by installing Linux onto another partition. Linux ran just fine on the supposedly 'bad' hdd and I even installed some Linux SMART monitoring utilities and all the SMART tests passed. That system went for years with that Linux install working fine. But to this day, should i attempt to switch boot priority to 'windows boot manager' since all the data there still exists, and is accessible to Linux, it will still boot into SupportAssist telling me my hard drive needs replacing.

 

[Davdi]

I'd been dual booting Win10 and Linux Mint for several years when a Windows update effectively killed windows in a similar way. I backed up the data on the Windows partition from Linux and deleted the Partition. for good measure I backed up the Linux partition, then used GParted to expand it to use the whole hard disk. The machine rebooted just fine and is still running Mint (21.2)

 

[nickdalzell]

the Dell POST-based SupportAssist seems to fail the 'short read test' but won't allow you to skip testing or boot after it fails. Linux continues to run fine. There is just literally no way to boot Windows since that service is somehow part of Windows Boot Manager and can't be skipped. If you edit the boot arguments for it via Linux, it will just immediately shut down without booting Windows. So whatever it's doing, it is hardcoded to shut the system down if it fails a test or can't find SupportAssist. I still have no clue why it assumes the hard disk is bad when in fact it is not.

SupportAssist doesn't show up when booting Linux, only when trying to boot 'Windows boot manager' which shows up like it were another disk drive within the setup utility. linux partition just shows up as the name of the hdd, WDC followed by tons of numbers.

 

[Davdi]

I'm looking for recommendations for a Debian compatible soundcard as the on board sound has died on my Asus/AM7 board. Debian thinks the sound hardware is working, but the speakers disagree (and yes. I've tried other speakers).

 

[AugieTN]

I have always had good luck with Creative sound card with Linux. I have a creative card in my main computer running Linux Mint 21.3

Also just found this:
Good sound cards for Linux Mint - Linux Mint Forums