Luke's Ubuntu and Linux Hacks

(We recommend you bookmark this blog. Trying to find helpful information in forums usually just ends in making you frustrated and angry. This blog does not speculate or guess. If we post it, we've tried it and it works. As with all our posts, if you don't care about the background info, you can head straight to the yellow highlighted sections for the problem and the fix.) What happened I will probably never know what actually happened. I can tell you only what I was doing when my computer threw up the " Oh, no. Something has gone wrong. Contact Your System Administrator " screen and scared the bejeebers out of me. So, I was working in two separate windows at one time on a single display for my Linux machine. I do this fairly often, but I've never run into the "Oh, no" issue before. What I did differently this time was that, while in the second Window, I decided to restart my computer for reasons I won't go into. The next thing I know, the computer n...

(We recommend you bookmark this blog. Trying to find helpful information in forums usually just ends in making you frustrated and angry. This blog does not speculate or guess. If we post it, we've tried it and it works. As with all our posts, if you don't care about the background info, you can head straight to the yellow highlighted sections for the problem and the fix.) I download and/or convert a lot of books from archive.org. A lot. Tons. Most of those books are in the public domain and are not restricted by DRM. They are downloadable, editable and readable in pdf, epub, etc. formats. Occasionally a book is still copyrighted Some of those copyrighted books are available to read for one hour at a time; those books cannot be downloaded. But other copyrighted books are available for 14 days and may be downloaded, but only as DRM-protected books.  Until recently, all those 14-day downloadable books were downloadable only as .ascm files, which meant they could be unlocked for r...

(We recommend you bookmark this blog. Trying to find helpful information in forums usually just ends in making you frustrated and angry. This blog does not speculate or guess. If we post it, we've tried it and it works. As with all our posts, if you don't care about the background info, you can head straight to the yellow highlighted sections for the problem and the fix.) Background Rarely am I jealous of "anything Windows," but one of those is the Windows Power Tool that takes a screenshot of an image file and allows you to OCR any text in the image. But while I covet an exact replica for Linux use, I have settled on NormCap as my favorite alternative. I tried some other Linux alternatives, but I won't waste time and space on details of why I did not like them.  My only beef with NormCap is that the Flathub version simply will not work on my Ubuntu 24.04 machine. I am far from being a programmer, but my guess is that it has something to do with a clash between t...

(We recommend you bookmark this blog. Trying to find helpful information in forums usually just ends in making you frustrated and angry. This blog does not speculate or guess. If we post it, we've tried it and it works. As with all our posts, if you don't care about the background info, you can head straight to the yellow highlighted sections for the problem and the fix.) RANT (or skip and go straight to HOW TO...below) I love Catfish, the search engine, and I use it extensively, especially when I need to search an attached USB drive (MyPassport) for content text, which cannot be done in Files (Nautilus) on an Ubuntu machine (despite the promises of the OS 24.04 release). When 24.04 was released, I decided to forego my umpteenth Upgrade and do the “full monty” fresh install. After the install, I was totally dismayed and very irritated to discover that virtually all the programs I run were now available only as snaps, not only in the initial install, but post-install in the Sof...

(We recommend you bookmark this blog. Trying to find helpful information in forums usually just ends in making you frustrated and angry. This blog does not speculate or guess. If we post it, we've tried it and it works. As with all our posts, if you don't care about the background info, you can head straight to the yellow highlighted sections for the problem and the fix.) Background I recently decided that, rather than upgrading my Linux Ubuntu OS for the umpteenth time, I would do a fresh (new) install of version 24.04. As usual, everything went well, except for one minor (actually MAJOR) keyboard problem I had immediately after booting up the new Ubuntu install: When trying to type a capital "E" using the Right-Shift key, I got nothing. I still was able to use the Left-Shift key + e to form my capital E, but I am an extremely high-volume writer and that solution is not sustainable long-term.  What I Tried (aka, Useless Forums) Okay, based on my ultimate revelation...

(We recommend you bookmark this blog. Trying to find helpful information in forums usually just ends in making you frustrated and angry. This blog does not speculate or guess. If we post it, we've tried it and it works. As with all our posts, if you don't care about the background info, you can head straight to the yellow highlighted sections for the problem and the fix.) The Problem: Suddenly and without warning, each time I opened a new tab in my Chrome browser (in Linux, but presumably the same problem exists in all OS's), the Developer Tools Console (window, sidebar) opened automatically along the right side of the tab. What Changed? This is the first question anyone should ask after something unexpected happens on your computer. In my case, I had unplugged my keyboard and plugged it back in, in an attempt to correct another unrelated problem.  Searching the Forums Not a complete waste of time, because I did actually arrive at the solution below, but what a mess and a ...