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 y ellow highlighted sections for the problem and the fix.) Some time in the past 3 years I started having problems with my dialog boxes being "attached" to their background applications in such a way that I could not move or resize the dialog box without dragging the background application along side it. That was a huge problem for me, as much of my work involved the need to see the work I was doing at the same time as having a dialog box open (I will spare you the details).  I searched every Linux forum I could to find a  solution. Not only did I not find a solution, it appeared that I might be the only person on the face of the earth with the problem. (...

(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.) Apologies for posting about a problem and not offering a solution, but I just wanted to point our—once again—how useless the StackExchange forum is for most "normal" (non-programmer) Ubuntu users. After I upgraded my Ubuntu system to 22.04, this message started popping up upon starting or restarting my computer: mtd device must be supplied (device name is empty)? Because StackExchange seems to be the "official" Ubuntu forum, you  would think that something as prevalent and worrisome as this message might elicit a reply from someone who actually is involved in programming for the Ubuntu des...

I have been using Ubuntu Linux as my favorite, and only, Operating System (OS) for more than eight years now, and I will never go back to Windows. I don't dual-boot to Windows, and I don't subscribe to Office365, which has not been a problem for me, even when I worked for organizations that were Windows-centric.  Having said as much, I must say that I have never used the "forums" argument when singing the praises of Ubuntu and Linux or trying to convince others to go all-in on Linux as an everyday and ONLY Operating System. Why? Precisely because I have been using Ubuntu Linux for eight years and have learned that for the average computer user, especially for Windows converts (and aren't we all?), Help Forums suck.  I will elaborate: Dumb questions . Yes, Virginia, there are such things as "dumb questions." For the most part, those who ask dumb questions are not dumb, but many of them are ignorant, in the sense that they are neither programmers or exper...