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...

After a series of power outages at my house I rebooted my Ubuntu machine only to discover that my external drive, a WD My Passport Device, no longer would mount. I tried several fixes found in several forums; none of them worked. This is what finally did work: Disconnect and remove the malfunctioning (unmountable) external device. Launch "Disks" program. (That's what it's called in Ubuntu) Select the disk that fails to mount; in my case "1 TB WD...." Click on the icon that looks like a little gear: "Additional Partition Options." Select "Repair File System." A message will pop up asking you to confirm that this is what you really want to do. As I was at the end of my rope, I hit the "confirm" button. Re-connect (reinsert) your external device to the USB port. In my case, Voila!, my device is now working and all files on my external WD drive once again show up in Files (Nautilus) on my Ubuntu desktop. UPDATE:  After the multiple ...

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.) Let me say first that this might be unique, or almost unique, depending on your flavor of Linux and your hardware. The Issue I don't know exactly how or when this problem began, but I do know that I used Ubuntu exclusively as my OS for a good seven years (and same machine for five years) before the problem reared its ugly head. "The Problem" was that all of a sudden my mouse would "freeze," meaning the cursor of my wireless mouse froze and could not be moved—nor could I click on anything on the screen--without removing the mouse dongle from the USB port, then reinserting it. Unfortunat...

(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.) Scenario and Caveat I download and convert a LOT of public domain books. Sometimes the scanned pdf version is DRM-protected, for some reason that defies all logic for un-copyrighted works in the public domain, and probably defies all legality. I use Okular for my PDF reader/editor. I want to be able to open the pdf in Okular and make bookmarks and annotations. I also want to be able to highlight certain passages, and to be able to copy and paste certain sentences or paragraphs. Finally, often my end game is to produce a docx or odt version. I cannot do that as long as the pdf file is DRM-protected. I need a wa...

(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 .) Occasionally you might get a message in your Notifications area that the snap-store or a snap application needs to be updated but that you first need to close all snap applications to do so. That can be a bit puzzling and frustrating because you don't have ANY applications running, much less a snap application...as far as you can see. At the same time that you get the notifications message, if you open the Ubuntu Software application you probably will see something like this: Now, you can search for and find all sorts of software developer gobbledy-gook, along with a lot of amateur speculation regarding ...