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.) The Background Recently I was going about my business as usual on my computer, when I noticed that my system sounds had been silent for quite a while. Because I rely on them heavily in the type of work I do, that is a no-no. When I clicked on Settings, Sounds, I saw that the Output Device box was pre-populated with "Dummy Output Device," and no other choice. My normal choice is my desktop speakers, which were all plugged in still and had power to them.  As always, I am embarrassed and surprised when I allow myself to search the Ubuntu forums (especially StackExhange) because I found nothing there bu...

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 always, if you don't want to be bored by the Scenario, simply jump to the Instructions portion below. Scenario: I download a ton of public domain books and other publications that I use for research and republication. Though I try to be disciplined and meticulous in categorizing the downloads into numerous folders and sub-folders, with more than 10,000 files I find myself doing a lot of searches for certain words or phrases in certain files within certain folders. Here's an illustrative example. I have a single word I am looking for because it has been, for 75 years, a hot topic in general public discourse (let's say, so as not to offend anyone, the word is :"blooper.") Then I want to export or copy and paste the search results (list of files...