For a specific task I want to select a decent font. For that I want to compare the text “E G PM” for all my installed fonts (or even more). Especially the bold face of a font (if it has any) will more likely match my requirements.

A quick visual viewing will probably sort 90% out already, so I was thinking of seeing a list of my string in the different font faces available on my system.

The font viewer/manager I tried are not up for the task. Which app could help me here or how can I quickly solve my problem otherwise?

The apps I tried are:

• fontmatrix (binary from trusty sources installed on bionic)
  • version 0.6.0+svn20110930 (0.9.99)
  • a bug hinders your configured text to be shown (font name is always shown)
  • it does not show the bold face of a font in the list (just regular)
• gnome-specimen (also from trusty)
  • you have to add each font face individually (2-3 clicks) to seem them
  • you see substituted fonts (if glyph is not in font) without being warned/told
• fontypython crashes at startup
• fontmanager.app is unusable in i3
• gwaterfall
  • text is fixed to “Lazy dog...”
  • needs each font selected individually (4 clicks at least)
• font-manager
  • has a great browse mode, but in that mode it doesn’t show your own text (only font name)
• gnome-font-viewer can’t set text
• typecatcher
  • custom text, yes
  • shows just regular type face for each font (i.e. not bold or others)
  • requires 1 click to see the font
  • doesn’t show system fonts(?), only a big selection of downloadables
• Opcion
  • horrible user interface
  • doesn’t show bold type face (and others) in the list
• FontViewer
  • makes fonts look ugly (doesn’t antialias or whatnot)
  • no list, no bold face
• kfontview
  • doesn’t find system fonts itself (select font with “Open...” on a font file)
  • doesn’t do lists of fonts
• FontBase
  • is the best one so far...
  • shows “google fonts” (so many; chances high to find something useable?)
  • adding /usr/share as font directory turns the program slow
  • shows custom text for all font faces; easy to scroll
  • (clicking the wrong button activates all fonts with no way to return to your selection from before → not a good mechanism to mark fonts for future reference)

/var/log/dmesg was a useful boot time dmesg dump. I can’t find that any more in Ubuntu 16.04. Is it somewhere else?

(/var/log/kern.log* is limited; it catches kernel messages only after the logging daemon is running. Further is it cumbersome to find the right kern.log.X.gz file where the last boot happened. (It might have been rotated away, too.))

I'm on a fresh install of Ubuntu 16.04.1, but are fighting with many Bluetooth problems. -- I was surprised that the Internet is not plastered with bug reports. Is it only me? Bluetooth worked fine for years with my last 14.04 install.

• Bluetooth indicator shows Bluetooth "off", settings show "on" (see screenshot)
  • to reproduce: this happens quite often, just toggle the switches couple of times
• indicator shows three paired devices, settings shows only one (see screenshot)
  • happened after a bunch of unsuccessful pairing trials
  • How can I unpair/remove those devices?
• indicator disappears, even though "Show Bluetooth status in the menu bar" is enabled
  • to reproduce: switch off Bluetooth in the settings window

The problem

This is a broken Dropbox indicator in gnome-flashback on Ubuntu 16.04.1. (Dropbox version: x86_64-9.4.94)

As it can be seen here, it works fine in Unity. But how can I get that in gnome-flashback (as appindicator)?

The workaround

When I force Dropbox to present itself as old-fashioned systray icon¹ the menu gets usable.

Open questions

• What convinces Dropbox to present the color icon in gnome-flashback when it runs as appindicator? As indicator it is black&white in Unity.
• Can I fool Dropbox to believe it runs under Unity? Can I force "appindicator mode"?
• Is there something wrong in the Dropbox code failing to decide properly between systray/appindicator? This colored icon looks like the result of half systray, half appindicator...

¹ You can force Dropbox into "systray mode" by running dbus-launch dropbox start or DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS= dropbox start instead of starting it with a plain dropbox start.

On a laptop you usually have working keys for changing the backlight and you see OSD notifications while changing them.

How to patch this up for “normal” desktops? How to get parts of this going?

I use NetworkManager with a WLAN that has two access points (same SSID).

Is there a quick way to switch between

• auto selection
• force to connect to one specific access point
• force usage of the other access point

Command line solution is also fine (as long as NetworkManager can keep managing the device).

Edit: some people think I can easily configure different entries and select between those. This is not true: even with two entries (with fixed BSSID each) with different names (but same SSID), the menu only presents one entry (with the name of the SSID) without indicating BSSID or name of the corresponding trusted entry.

And I do not care about the console here (I care about X11)...

I see in /var/log/Xorg.0.log that my X-server picks up xkb_rules evdev from somewhere I can’t find.

It also seems to take xkb_model and xkb_layout from the config file /etc/default/keyboard. And I’m asking myself, is that hardcoded in X or the evdev driver?? The man-pages don’t mention that file, as usual... :-(

So, where is the code that connects that file to X?

After upgrade to 14.04 trusty I got a nice "cheat sheet" for unity keyboard shortcuts.

I saw it briefly after login. Changing the display brightness on my laptop made it disappear already.

Can I see that exact window with the shortcuts again?

In Unity global menus auto-hide, which is completely nuts. – But in general I like the functionality for maximized windows (as long as it doesn’t disappear).

Which DE can do global menus and has them:

• permanent (no timeout)
• for maximized windows only?

We know that do-release-upgrade “does a release upgrade”. But at a little lower level what does it really do?

I plan to do a more manual upgrade, for instance the Debian way: aptitude update and aptitude full-upgrade after setting up the sources. Actually, I plan to do it entirely interactive with aptitude. But that leaves me curious about what else do-relase-upgrade does, except hosing up my sources.list.

Another question lists a bunch of Desktop Environments.

Because of limited screen space (1024×600), which of them make it easy to hide/remove window frames/borders/decorations (including title bar) for full screen windows?

The last time I did this with maximus (configured not to maximize windows by itself), a GNOME2 top panel and the “Namebar Applet” (to see the window title in the panel). All three seem a little bit abandoned, so I look for alternatives...