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...

As of the date of this post—and really, since Ubuntu and/or Gnome announced a "Star" feature for the Files function (Nautilus), it has been pretty much a useless feature. When first released, you could open up Files (Nautilus) and add Star to the file navigation bar (Visible Columns). Starting somewhere around the Ubuntu 22.10 release and continuing into 23.04, you cannot do that; which is odd, because you still have a limited ability to star folders and files, you just can't open the Files function and add "Star" to your Visible Columns.  I would really, really like to be able to star some folders and files, but the star feature is limited to folders and files under the Documents directory only, and, like I said, even if you right-click a file or folder and choose the star in the Properties dialog, after you star the item the star cannot be displayed in Files (Nautilus).  As always, there are some useless conversations in the Ubuntu Forum around this issue. You...

 (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 ditched Microsoft OS completely and forever and installed Ubuntu Linux on all my machines roughly eight years ago. During that time, I have installed every upgrade, which amounts to somewhere around sixteen if you include version 21.04. I never had even a minor glitch on any of my machines until the very recent 21.04 upgrade attempted on an older Fujitsu laptop. Before you jump to any conclusions, no, I did not try to force the upgrade by using the terminal. I waited for the "official" upgrade to show up in Software Updater, which happened only today because of some problem that occurred on some...