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.) 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 ...

(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 Rather than upgrade to Ubuntu 24.04 after many years of doing nothing but upgrades, I decided that a new, or fresh, full install might be a good idea. It was, overall, with very few glitches. One of those glitches was installing one of my favorite (and crucial to my work) applications: Calibre. What I Did I boogied over to the Calibre website and copied the code for the binary install, same as I had done for several years to both install Calibre originally, then to do version upgrades. What Happened When I opened a Terminal and pasted in the Install code, I got this result: You are missing the syst...

(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.) OS : Ubuntu 23.10 Browser : Chrome Issue : I download a bunch of books from archive.org. Suddenly, on my Linux computer, each time I clicked on a download button (pdf, epub, etc) to download a book, a page popped up with "500 internal server error" message.  In the Forums: Useless information with a bunch of technical gibberish, including on the message board at archive.org. Test : I went to my wife's Window's machine, logged in with my name, launched Chrome, went to archive.org, and had no problem downloading the same book that I could not download on my Linux machine. At first, I thought i...