Chris H's questions

My work and home machines both run Xubuntu Focal. Both systems suspend and resume properly every time if I run systemctl suspend in a terminal. However both show (different) intermittent issues using the suspend option under the main menu. The home machine often has no ethernet on resume, while the work machine sometimes doesn't allow me to type my password - the input box won't take focus.

Although the symptoms are different, I'm puzzled by what the menu option is doing. But it's not configurable in the menu editor, and I can't think where else to look. Ideally I'd change it so it issues systemctl suspend just as I do in a terminal.

GParted is giving me a wrong error message, which makes troubleshooting rather hard.

I've got an NTFS partition, 100% full with one file (the .vdi for a Win10 VM using VirtualBox). I'm trying to resize it, and have freed up some space before the partition - it's at the end of the disk. But if I try to enlarge it, or simply to move it left into the unused space, I get the error in the title.

How can I extend this partition? I've copied it as a backup, so as a last resort I'd delete the file from it and recreate, but really I'd like to make another backup before doing that and I don't have room to do so.

Full GParted output:

GParted 0.30.0 --enable-libparted-dmraid --enable-online-resize

Libparted 3.2
Move /dev/sdb2 to the left and grow it from 117.79 GiB to 133.42 GiB  00:00:01    ( ERROR )
        
calibrate /dev/sdb2  00:00:01    ( SUCCESS )
        
path: /dev/sdb2 (partition)
start: 65546240
end: 312580095
size: 247033856 (117.79 GiB)
check filesystem on /dev/sdb2 for errors and (if possible) fix them  00:00:00    ( ERROR )
        
ntfsresize -i -f -v '/dev/sdb2'  00:00:00    ( ERROR )
        
ntfsresize v2017.3.23 (libntfs-3g)
Device name : /dev/sdb2
NTFS volume version: 3.1
Cluster size : 4096 bytes
Current volume size: 126481330688 bytes (126482 MB)
Current device size: 126481334272 bytes (126482 MB)
Checking for bad sectors ...
Checking filesystem consistency ...
100.00 percent completed
Accounting clusters ...
Space in use : 126482 MB (100.0%)
Collecting resizing constraints ...
ERROR: Volume is full. To shrink it, delete unused files.

I (almost) never want to install snaps, and if I do by mistake, almost always end up uninstalling and reinstalling a proper version.

Not being able to turn pdftk in /tmp/ or jupyter over a network share (the latter also installs loads of duplicate python) is never going to work for me. In work I could probably completely disable snaps, but at home there are a few things I might want.

I'm running 18.04 at home and 20.04 in work, so would appreciate answers for both. I'm getting quicker at realising what's wrong when I install something and get unhelpful errors, but the installation, uninstallation, and reinstallation all wastes time.

Software center doesn't say (clearly) if it's installing a snap (tested with jupyter on 18.04), neither seemingly does apt (tested with pdftk on 18.04 and 20.04).

Is there anything I can do to interrupt the snap installer or warn when it's called?

Working from home during lockdown, I seem to need to use the Linux version of some proprietary software (Bruker OPUS). It's the only software that will read the proprietary file format. I don't have a Windows machine or an off-site licence, but the Linux binaries are a free download. The software was last updated nearly 10 years ago and apparently doesn't run under 12.04 or later.

I've installed Lucid in a virtual machine. While I can't get the guest extensions to install I can make ISOs to transfer stuff onto it. However OPUS needs libboost and probably other things (this seems to be one of several reasons it won't install on a newer OS) and the repository for Lucid no longer exists on archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/.

So how can I satisfy dependencies for an OS so old the repositories aren't there any more?

I'm manually sorting a whole load of data files at the moment in Thunar (1.6.15), in preparation for running a script over them, so my filename convention has to be spot on, though they were saved manually.

Checking the filenames is made harder by the variable-width characters use in the (detailed) file list view. Is there a way to set a monospaced font? Ideally I'd use one with very good character differentiation (as I'd get in a terminal, or an editor set up for programming)

Is there a way to switch, on the fly, between colour and monochrome graphics. Even nicer would be to have a preview for how the screen would look to a colour blind user as well. That however is a side-issue, I'm interested in quickly checking how figures I'm working on will look printed B+W.

I've seen this compiz-based solution, but as I understand it, that's for unity only, not xfce, so is there a method.

(technically, the primary machine I'm interested in doing this on is Ubuntu 12.04LTS+XFCE, and not Xubuntu)