Updated 'Must-Have' GNOME extensions list
Posted on Sun, Sep 3, 2023
| Alan Pope
Back in December 2020 I wrote up my personal Must-Have GNOME extensions. It’s been nearly three years, two job changes, and a few Ubuntu upgrades, so I thought I’d take another look.
tl;dr:
What changed Out I no longer have these installed.
Sound Switcher Indicator This used to crash a lot for me, to the point I’d go and look for it in the panel and it was missing. I figured if I don’t realise it’s gone, I probably don’t need it that much.
[Read More]ZeroTier is my personal VPN
Posted on Thu, Aug 31, 2023
(Last modified on Tue, Sep 12, 2023)
| Alan Pope
Back in July, Martin introduced us to ZeroTier on the Linux Matters podcast, episode 8. He detailed why he’s using the tool and how. Worth a listen.
Per their website, ZeroTier “lets you build modern, secure multi-point virtualized networks of almost any type. From robust peer-to-peer networking to multi-cloud mesh infrastructure, we enable global connectivity with the simplicity of a local network.”
Interesting marketing, but do I need this though?
[Read More]Why use Microsoft Edge on Linux
Posted on Tue, Aug 29, 2023
| Alan Pope
Yesterday, I wrote a little about the applications I’ve seen crash on my Ubuntu Linux laptop over the last six months.
Some people questioned why I use Microsoft Edge as my primary web browser on Ubuntu. I thought I’d write up why, and how a couple of the built-in features are appealing to me.
tl;dr it’s multiple profiles, stability, speed, tab sleep, and vertical tabs.
Multiple personality disorder I have tried to keep work and personal browser profiles separate for some years now.
[Read More]Six months of crashes in Ubuntu
Posted on Mon, Aug 28, 2023
| Alan Pope
tl;dr: I downloaded the application crash data for my work Laptop. To probably nobody’s surprise, Zoom is the most crashy thing in the last six months on my laptop.
New laptop When I joined Axiom at the end of 2022, I was given some budget to buy a work laptop. My friend and co-presenter of Linux Matters Podcast, Martin Wimpress was looking for a new company laptop around the same time.
[Read More]i386 in Ubuntu won't die
Posted on Sun, Aug 27, 2023
(Last modified on Mon, Aug 28, 2023)
| Alan Pope
(yet)
tl;dr In a recent thread on Mastodon, it was revealed that Ubuntu 23.04 users can’t install the Steam deb package from the Ubuntu archive without jumping through some technical hoops. It turns out this was a mistake, a bug was filed, and future builds shouldn’t have this problem.
It’s not immediately apparent whether the (currently ‘broken’) ISO images for Ubuntu 23.04 will be rebuilt (unlikely) or if this will stay broken in 23.
[Read More]Why I use Ubuntu
Posted on Sun, Aug 13, 2023
(Last modified on Mon, Aug 28, 2023)
| Alan Pope
It’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m cooking the family dinner, so I’m also listening to a podcast. I just listened to the latest episode of Linux Downtime. In it, Amolith, Gary and Joe discuss why they use the Linux distributions they do. While the food cooks, I thought I’d take 20 minutes to bang out a blog post mulling why I (still) use Ubuntu.
However, this turned more into a bit of a trip down memory lane and certainly didn’t get banged out in 20 mins.
[Read More]Year of The Broken Desktop
Posted on Thu, Jan 5, 2023
(Last modified on Mon, Aug 28, 2023)
| Alan Pope
This morning I attempted to start work on my desktop PC and couldn’t. The screen is black, it doesn’t want to wake up the displays. I used the old REISUB trick to restart, and it boots, but there’s no output on the display. I did some investigation and this post is mainly to capture my notes and so others can see the problem and perhaps debug and fix it.
The setup is an Intel Skull Canyon NUC connected to an external GPU enclosure which contains an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060.
[Read More]Adrift
Posted on Mon, Jun 14, 2021
| Alan Pope
Over the weekend I participated in FOSS Talk Live. Before The Event this would have been an in-person shindig at a pub in London. A bunch of (mostly) UK-based podcasters get together and record live versions of their shows in front of a “studio audience”. It’s mostly an opportunity for a bunch of us middle-aged farts who speak into microphones to get together, have a few beers and chat.
Due to The Event, this year it was a virtual affair, done online via YouTube.
[Read More]Actually Upgrading Ubuntu Server
Posted on Wed, Mar 17, 2021
(Last modified on Tue, Aug 22, 2023)
| Alan Pope
Yesterday I wrote about my attempt to upgrade one of my HP Microservers, running Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. Well, today I had another go. Here’s what happened.
I followed the recommendation from yesterday, to compress the initrd.img using xz compression rather than the previous default gzip. Previously the upgrade failed because it needed 140M disk space in /boot. With the change to the compression scheme, I now have 154M, which should be enough to start the upgrade.
[Read More]Upgrading Ubuntu Server
Posted on Tue, Mar 16, 2021
(Last modified on Tue, Aug 22, 2023)
| Alan Pope
I have a few old and crusty HP MicroServers in the loft at home. I started out with one when HP did a cashback offer, making them very affordable. Over time I’ve acquired a couple more. One, named colossus is running rsnapshot to provide backups of my other machines. Another, called shirka is a Plex Media Server and the last, robby is a general purpose box running various jobs and reports.
[Read More]Ubuntu Wiki Reboot
Posted on Mon, Mar 15, 2021
| Alan Pope
It’s time to replace the Ubuntu Wiki. In fact it was probably time to replace it a few years ago, but we are where we are. It should be a reliable and useful resource for the Ubuntu community. It’s failing at that. We have failed here.
Aside: There are actually multiple wikis in use in the Ubuntu project. The primary one is wiki.ubuntu.com, which has been in use since forever (in Ubuntu terms).
[Read More]The Old Desktop Switcheroo
Posted on Fri, Mar 12, 2021
| Alan Pope
In August 2019, I tweeted about how I’d been running KDE Neon for eighteen months, since February 2018, and how I was switching back to GNOME Shell on my primary laptop. In that thread I also suggested I might switch back!
Today I've in-place upgraded from that 18.04 KDE Neon install to @ubuntu 19.04 with @gnome. I still love KDE of course, and will likely switch back at some point, or may install it on another machine - maybe my Thinkpad X220.
[Read More]Back In The Studio
Posted on Thu, Mar 11, 2021
| Alan Pope
Last month I mentioned that myself, Mark and Martin have decided to come back for Season 14 of the Ubuntu Podcast. Well, we’re back today with S14E01, titled “Navy Chefs Remit”.
Over the thirteen years, the episode titles have had a theme in each season. We don’t reveal the theme, but let our listeners figure that out, for fun. Sometimes it has a bearing on the content of the episode, but often not.
[Read More]Desktop Webapps
Posted on Tue, Mar 9, 2021
(Last modified on Fri, Mar 12, 2021)
| Alan Pope
I appreciate many people already know how to do this, but I’m surprised how many don’t, or don’t realise what it does. Forgive me if you know about this feature of Google Chrome.
A little while back I managed to win two separate eBay auctions for 16GiB DDR3 SODIMMs to install in my ThinkPad T450. This took it from the previously installed 16GiB to the expansive 32GiB.
Then I opened Google Chrome.
[Read More]Learning Dart & Flutter
Posted on Mon, Mar 8, 2021
| Alan Pope
I’ve said many times, I don’t consider myself a software developer. Much like I don’t consider myself a professional chef. I can write code, just as I can cook. What I make isn’t ground breaking, but it won’t poison anyone either, and I enjoy doing it.
Coding for me started on the ZX81 in BASIC then on to the Spectrum and other 8-bit microcomputers. I dabbled with Z80 and 6502 assembly language.
[Read More]Finding Ubuntu Crash Reports
Posted on Sun, Mar 7, 2021
| Alan Pope
This post is more an aide-mémoire for myself, but may be useful to others.
I recently wrote a little story about bugs, the crash reporter and errors website in Ubuntu. Sometimes a user will want to look for their crash reports, and in fact that question came up today on the Ubuntu Discourse.
Back when we shipped Unity desktop as the default desktop environment in Ubuntu, there was a simple button to take a user to their previously uploaded crash reports.
[Read More]Hirsute Yaru Call for Testing
Posted on Sat, Mar 6, 2021
| Alan Pope
Ubuntu Hirsute - the development release which will become 21.04 enters User Interface Freeze on March 18th! That’s less than a fortnight away!
However, with two weekends and plenty of evenings between now and then, its a great time to start testing the Yaru theme we ship in Ubuntu by default. The Yaru team have been busy and provided this short list of some of the main changes since the last release.
[Read More]Unbreaking Unbootable Ubuntu
Posted on Thu, Mar 4, 2021
| Alan Pope
I run Ubuntu Hirsute - the development release which will become 21.04 - on a bunch of systems. It’s a trade-off though, getting the latest crack each and every day. Being at the bleeding edge of new packages landing means I can experience brand new shiny bugs on my systems. Bugs like 1915579 which rendered my system unbootable. Nobody wants to see this on boot:
I had updated yesterday and clearly something went wrong.
[Read More]You Don't Need To Ask
Posted on Mon, Mar 1, 2021
(Last modified on Tue, Mar 2, 2021)
| Alan Pope
Ubuntu - the Linux distribution - has been around for 17 years. Over that time many projects and initiatives have been started, some successful, others less so. Not everything we try can work out, but as a group, we should feel empowered to try.
The Ubuntu community isn’t quite the same as it was back in 2004-2010, and nobody I know argues that it is. People who were keen and active contributors may have had circumstantial changes which meant they moved on.
[Read More]A Tale of Two Updates
Posted on Wed, Feb 24, 2021
| Alan Pope
Helping your users stay up to date on their workstation is something I believe OS vendors should endeavour to do, to the best of their ability. Some users aren’t able to find time to install updates, or are irritated by update dialogs. Others are skeptical of their contents, some even block updates completely.
No OS vendor wants to be “That Guy” featuring in the news as millions of their customers are found to be vulnerable on their watch.
[Read More]