Sean Bone's questions

I just switched to Ubuntu 22.04 and noticed that if the mouse cursor is up against the left edge of the screen, the dock icons are not clickable, unlike Ubuntu 20.04 where they were.

Note that this seems to only occur with Ubuntu's dock; disabling the "Ubuntu Dock" GNOME Extension and using GNOME's native dash bar in the activities overview works even if the cursor is against the bottom screen edge.

This may seem like a minor gripe but honestly it's already getting annoying, especially when using a touchpad and the dock auto-hide feature (since revealing the dock requires going up against the screen's edge). It feels like an unnecessary regression.

Does anyone know how to change the clickable area so it behaves more like it used to?

Ubuntu 20.04

Ubuntu 22.04

I'm running Ubuntu 18.04, and want to try the Awesome window manager. I installed it with sudo apt install awesome. How can I switch between GNOME and Awesome?

I found this answer, but I can't see how to "log out, choose the one you want, and log back in." under GNOME.

I'm trying to install pycairo, but my symlink is sending it to python 2, though it requires 3. How do I get around this error?

# ./waf build
  ./options()
The project was not configured: run "waf configure" first!
root@Archimedes:/home/archimedes/Downloads/pycairo-1.10.0# ./waf configure
  ./options()
Setting top to                           : /home/archimedes/Downloads/pycairo-1.10.0 
Setting out to                           : /home/archimedes/Downloads/pycairo-1.10.0/build_directory 
  ./configure()
Checking for 'gcc' (c compiler)          : ok 
Checking for program python              : /usr/bin/python 
Checking for python version              : (2, 7, 3, 'final', 0) 
The python version is too old, expecting (3, 1, 0)
(complete log in /home/archimedes/Downloads/pycairo-1.10.0/build_directory/config.log)

Is there a way to send it to /usr/bin/python3 instead of /usr/bin/python (the symlink) when it checks for python? Thanks!

I have been fiddling with my Python installation on Ubuntu 12.04 (I was having trouble installing a python library), and at one point my python command wasn't working. It turned out the symlink was missing (I must have removed it by accident lol), so I made a new one pointing to Python 3.2 (originally pointed to 2.7):

sudo rm /usr/bin/python
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/python3.2 /usr/bin/python

Problem: the software center and update manager weren't working:

~$ software-center
  File "/usr/bin/software-center", line 152
    print time.time()
             ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

I guessed this was because I had changed the default python version (2.7->3.2), so I changed it back to 2.7. Now they work fine, but I'd still like to change the 'default' python version (i.e. the one called with python in the terminal).

Is it possible to do that in Ubuntu 12.04?
Thanks!

I have a Python script which I would like to execute at every startup. I can run it by adding this to the startup applications:

python3 /path/to/script.py

That works, but it doesn't open a terminal window, so I can't see the program's output. How could I make it open a terminal window and execute the script in there?

Note: I get the window to stay open with input(' ') at the end of the Python script. Thanks!

Since in Ubuntu 12.04 there weren't integrated screen savers (btw, why?), I looked for a tutorial online and installed XScreensaver 5.15. The problem is that it won't start the sccreen savers until I've actually opened the preferences window - then it says

The XScreenSaver daemon doesn't seem to be running on ":0". Launch it now?

If I click OK, it then works.

Is there a way to get it to run when the computer starts up? A screen saver is kindah useless if you have to tell it to start every time you turn your computer on...

Here's my XScreenSaver entry in Startup Apps:

I'm trying to update Ubuntu from 10.04 to 12.04 on an Acer Aspire laptop PC. Unfortunately I started the process another time, and was forced to abort... kindah wish I didn't do that now...

Now Update Manager says I need to run a partial upgrade because a previous upgrade didn't complete. When I run this, it tells me the system contains broken packages and to try using apt-get or synaptic before proceeding.

I ran sudo apt-get update and it works fine, but sudo apt-get upgrade returns:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  libc-dev-bin: Depends: libc6 (< 2.12) but 2.15-0ubuntu10.3 is installed
  libc6-dev: Depends: libc6 (= 2.11.1-0ubuntu7.10) but 2.15-0ubuntu10.3 is installed
  libgssapi-krb5-2: Depends: libkrb5-3 (= 1.10+dfsg~beta1-2ubuntu0.3) but 1.8.1+dfsg-2ubuntu0.10 is installed
  libkrb5-3: Depends: libkrb5support0 (= 1.8.1+dfsg-2ubuntu0.10) but 1.10+dfsg~beta1-2ubuntu0.3 is installed
  libnih1: Depends: libc6 (< 2.12) but 2.15-0ubuntu10.3 is installed
  python-louis: Depends: liblouis0 (>= 1.7.0-2) but it is not installable
E: Unmet dependencies. Try using -f.

So I tried sudo apt-get -f install and this is what it told me:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... failed.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  libc-dev-bin: Depends: libc6 (< 2.12) but 2.15-0ubuntu10.3 is installed
  libc6-dev: Depends: libc6 (= 2.11.1-0ubuntu7.10) but 2.15-0ubuntu10.3 is installed
  libgssapi-krb5-2: Depends: libkrb5-3 (= 1.10+dfsg~beta1-2ubuntu0.3) but 1.8.1+dfsg-2ubuntu0.10 is installed
  libkrb5-3: Depends: libkrb5support0 (= 1.8.1+dfsg-2ubuntu0.10) but 1.10+dfsg~beta1-2ubuntu0.3 is installed
  libnih1: Depends: libc6 (< 2.12) but 2.15-0ubuntu10.3 is installed
  python-louis: Depends: liblouis0 (>= 1.7.0-2) but it is not installable
E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.
E: Unable to correct dependencies

Which brings me to the question: what are held packages?

Anyway, I tried synaptic package manager next. First thing, it said You have 7 broken packages on your system! Use the "Broken" filter to locate them.

These are the packages that show up (just six):

libc-dev-bin
libc6-dev
libcssapi-krb5-2
libkrb5-3
libnih1
python-louis

I marked those for removal, but when I try to apply it tells me 3 ESSENTIAL packages are marked for removal (none of which I marked myself, btw):

e2fsprogs
hostname
util-linux

So I unmarked those and tried to apply, but:

E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages. *[several times!]*
E: Unable to correct dependencies
E: Unable to lock the download directory

I also tried using sudo do-release-upgrade, but it returned this:

Investigating network-manager
Package network-manager has broken Depends on libnm-glib4
  Considering libnm-glib4 0 as a solution to network-manager 3
  Holding Back network-manager rather than change libnm-glib4
Investigating gnome-games
Package gnome-games has broken Depends on glchess
  Considering glchess 1 as a solution to gnome-games 0
  Holding Back gnome-games rather than change glchess
Done

Broken packages

Your system contains broken packages that couldn't be fixed with this
software. Please fix them first using synaptic or apt-get before
proceeding.


Preparing the upgrade failed

Preparing the system for the upgrade failed so a bug reporting
process is being started.
=== Command terminated with exit status 1 (Mon Feb 25 18:07:53 2013) ===

It might also be worth mentioning I initially tried using an ISO-imaged disk, but that didn't give me the usual set of choices (like 'Try Ubuntu 12.04', 'Upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04' etc.). Instead, the screen kept changing 'shades' of black, producing nothing... I know the disk works because I've used once before.

I'm not much of Linux expert - is there something I'm overlooking? How can I perform this upgrade? I'm even willing o clear the computer's HDD if necessary.

Thanks al lot!