Sadi's questions

AFAIK this has always been an issue with Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird. They always have a number of elements that don't align with the current theme, which can be fixed by the user creating and/or modifying ".../<profile_dir>/chrome/userChrome.css".

For instance, I add the following block (changing color values according to the GTK current theme) in order to make Thunderbir sidebar look like other sidebars:

#folderTree > treechildren::-moz-tree-row(even) {
    border: 1px solid transparent !important;
    background-color: #eff0f1 !important;
}

#folderTree > treechildren::-moz-tree-row(odd) {
    border: 1px solid transparent !important;
    background-color: #eff0f1 !important;
}

#folderTree > treechildren::-moz-tree-row(selected) {
    border: 1px solid transparent !important;
    background-color: #3daee9 !important;
    color: #ffffff !important;
}

#folderTree > treechildren::-moz-tree-row(hover) {
border: 1px solid transparent !important;
background-color: #3daee9 !important;
}

#folderTree > treechildren::-moz-tree-line {
visibility: visible !important;
}

However, I need a little help in changing hover background color in menus and toolbars (both Firefox and Thunderbird) as can be seen in the screenshot below.

The light grey hover background color seen in the built-in menu of Firefox (and also the menu button, which is the same as other toolbar and bookmark bar buttons) should actully be light blue (like the border color of address bar).

How can I implement this?

I recently began using the command xrandr --dpi 166 for my new laptop running Ubuntu 16.04.3 64-bit after noticing that otherwise the system automatically uses 96 dpi.

However, such a high dpi setting results in extremely big menus and toolbars only in Qt apps I have, such as Master PDF Editor, digiKam and Krita (the latter two are in AppImage format). Other apps running in Java or WINE environment don't pose such problems.

I'm hoping to find a way of manually entering a specific dpi setting for Qt apps or some other way of resolving this problem.

If there is no way of globally specifying a dpi setting for Qt apps, maybe a simple wrapper script entering xrandr --dpi 96 before and restoring the initial dpi setting after such an app could do as well...

My good old Ubuntu used to detect my USB keyboard (having a different layout) with the command xinput -list, get device id, and then issue the command setxkbmap -device "${ID}" -layout "${usbkbd_layout}" to use it.

Under Ubuntu 17.10 (Wayland), things have got complicated. The command setxkbmap works only for some apps, like Chromium, and not for GNOME core apps, like gedit, terminal, nautilus, etc.

What is the Wayland equivalent of setxkbmap to change keyboard layout from command line?

I have two "homemade" indicators which change their icon on the top panel using pkill command and then restarting a python script, but unlike Unity top panel and also unlike "professional" indicators, the new icon for my indicator is not displayed unless I restart Gnome Shell (e.g. Alt+F2, r).

I guess there must be a command to tell Gnome Shell maybe to merely refresh the top panel icons or even merely the icon for that particular indicator???

Having heard the news about Ubuntu's coming move back to Gnome Desktop, I've decided to embrace this change earlier and upgraded from Ubuntu 16.10 to Ubuntu Gnome 17.04, and I'm quite happy about it.

I've already begun enjoying some advantages, like the straightforward option of using the Dedicated AMD Graphics Card instead of the Integrated Intel Graphics when launching applications as seen in the screenshot. This is very helpful especially considering that AMD has stopped supporting Ubuntu after version 15.04 for my hybrid graphics card...

However, I wonder (given the fact that vga-switcheroo is practically useless for me) if there's any way of enabling this option globally in some way so that all applications (e.g. when a file is clicked to open in the default application) run using the Dedicated Graphics Card. What I have in mind is that I'd rather have all apps use the Dedicated Graphics Card when the computer is not running on battery power...

NOTE: It is also possible to launch individual apps using the dedicated GPU by running them with the environment variable DRI_PRIME=1 (e.g. DRI_PRIME=1 inkscape) from terminal. And this can be achieved by manually editing desktop configuration files, and inserting env DRI_PRIME=1 to the Exec= line (e.g. Exec=env DRI_PRIME=1 inkscape %F).

This is not like one of the cases addressed before - I've checked them all.

I've suddenly begun getting that message "... can't be put in the trash. Do you want to delete it immediately?" this morning in my Home directory only.

I have a Home partition (ext4, mounted properly) with symlinks for user folders like Downloads, Documents, etc. to folders with the same names in a Data partition (ntfs, mounted properly).

For example, I cannot move a file in Downloads folder to Trash when I try via Home, but no problem if I try via Data partition, although the file in question has the same ownership and permissions at both locations.

Also no problem at all with files in my Home folder, including sub-folders like Public that are not symlinked to my Data partition.

Interesting puzzle for me...

PS: Just upgraded to 15.04 but I don't think it matters... On second thought, it might perhaps be something to do with upgrading from Nautilus 3.10 to 3.14?

PPS: This bug has been finally resolved some time later in version 16.10, and no longer exists under Ubuntu 17.04.

Ubuntu Unity Panel includes menu items Lock and Log Out. But when you click Log Out, you see a dialog box asking if you'd like to Lock or Log Out (a Microsoft-style question for dummies ;-) which I find annoying.

Opening dconf Editor and selecting org > gnome > gnome-session and disabling logout-prompt has no effect, unlike selecting apps > indicator-session and enabling suppress-logout-restart-shutdown, which does what it says -- getting rid of a similar question.

This question complements the question How to change web browser's tab bar background color or image?

It seems changing the whole tab bar bgcolor is not difficult, but how about changing the bgcolor of the active tab?

It's especially necessary when you choose light monochrome icons for your dark theme, i.e. when those light icons are difficult to see in the active tab, toolbar, etc. of chrome/chromium, as seen in the screenshot below.

I have this small bash script which helps use Infinality font rendering options via a more user-friendly Zenity window: http://gnomefiles.org/content/show.php/Infinality+Style+Changer?content=161984

But whenever I launch it I have this "Color Picker" title on Unity Panel together with the icon assigned for "Color Picker" utility.

I wonder why and how this is happening and how I can change it?

#!/bin/bash
# A simple script to provide a basic, zenity-based GUI to change Infinality Style.
# v.1.2
#
infinality_current=`cat /etc/profile.d/infinality-settings.sh | grep "USE_STYLE=" | awk -F'"' '{print $2}'`
sudo_password="$( gksudo --print-pass --message 'Provide permission to make system changes: Enter your password to start or press Cancel to quit.' -- : 2>/dev/null )"
# Check for null entry or cancellation.
if [[ ${?} != 0 || -z ${sudo_password} ]]
then
# Add a zenity message here if you want.
exit 4
fi
# Check that the password is valid.
if ! sudo -kSp '' [ 1 ] <<<"${sudo_password}" 2>/dev/null
then
# Add a zenity message here if you want.
exit 4
fi
#
menu(){
im="zenity --width=500 --height=490 --list --radiolist --title=\"Change Infinality Style\" --text=\"Current <i>Infinality Style</i> is\: <b>$infinality_current</b>\n✔ To <i>change</i> it, select any other option below and press <b>OK</b>\n✘ To <i>quit without changing</i>, press <b>Cancel</b>\" "
im=$im" --column=\" \" --column \"Options\" --column \"Description\" "
im=$im"FALSE \"DEFAULT\" \"Use default settings - a compromise that should please most people\" "
im=$im"FALSE \"OSX\" \"Simulate OSX rendering\" "
im=$im"FALSE \"IPAD\" \"Simulate iPad rendering\" "
im=$im"FALSE \"UBUNTU\" \"Simulate Ubuntu rendering\" "
im=$im"FALSE \"LINUX\" \"Generic Linux style - no snapping or certain other tweaks\" "
im=$im"FALSE \"WINDOWS\" \"Simulate Windows rendering\" "
im=$im"FALSE \"WIN7\" \"Simulate Windows 7 rendering with normal glyphs\" "
im=$im"FALSE \"WINLIGHT\" \"Simulate Windows 7 rendering with lighter glyphs\" "
im=$im"FALSE \"VANILLA\" \"Just subpixel hinting\" "
im=$im"FALSE \"CLASSIC\" \"Infinality rendering circa 2010 - No snapping.\" "
im=$im"FALSE \"NUDGE\" \"Infinality - Classic with lightly stem snapping and tweaks\" "
im=$im"FALSE \"PUSH\" \"Infinality - Classic with medium stem snapping and tweaks\" "
im=$im"FALSE \"SHOVE\" \"Infinality - Full stem snapping and tweaks without sharpening\" "
im=$im"FALSE \"SHARPENED\" \"Infinality - Full stem snapping, tweaks, and Windows-style sharpening\" "
im=$im"FALSE \"INFINALITY\" \"Infinality - Standard\" "
im=$im"FALSE \"DISABLED\" \"Act without extra infinality enhancements - just subpixel hinting\" "
}
#
option(){
choice=`echo $im | sh -`
#
if echo $choice | grep "DEFAULT" > /dev/null;
then
sudo -Sp '' sed -i "s/USE_STYLE=\"${infinality_current}\"/USE_STYLE=\"DEFAULT\"/g" '/etc/profile.d/infinality-settings.sh' <<<"${sudo_password}"
fi
#
if echo $choice | grep "OSX" > /dev/null;
then
sudo -Sp '' sed -i "s/USE_STYLE=\"${infinality_current}\"/USE_STYLE=\"OSX\"/g" '/etc/profile.d/infinality-settings.sh' <<<"${sudo_password}"
fi
#
if echo $choice | grep "IPAD" > /dev/null;
then
sudo -Sp '' sed -i "s/USE_STYLE=\"${infinality_current}\"/USE_STYLE=\"IPAD\"/g" '/etc/profile.d/infinality-settings.sh' <<<"${sudo_password}"
fi
#
if echo $choice | grep "UBUNTU" > /dev/null;
then
sudo -Sp '' sed -i "s/USE_STYLE=\"${infinality_current}\"/USE_STYLE=\"UBUNTU\"/g" '/etc/profile.d/infinality-settings.sh' <<<"${sudo_password}"
fi
#
if echo $choice | grep "LINUX" > /dev/null;
then
sudo -Sp '' sed -i "s/USE_STYLE=\"${infinality_current}\"/USE_STYLE=\"LINUX\"/g" '/etc/profile.d/infinality-settings.sh' <<<"${sudo_password}"
fi
#
if echo $choice | grep "WINDOWS" > /dev/null;
then
sudo -Sp '' sed -i "s/USE_STYLE=\"${infinality_current}\"/USE_STYLE=\"WINDOWS\"/g" '/etc/profile.d/infinality-settings.sh' <<<"${sudo_password}"
fi
#
if echo $choice | grep "WIN7" > /dev/null;
then
sudo -Sp '' sed -i "s/USE_STYLE=\"${infinality_current}\"/USE_STYLE=\"WINDOWS7\"/g" '/etc/profile.d/infinality-settings.sh' <<<"${sudo_password}"
fi
#
if echo $choice | grep "WINLIGHT" > /dev/null;
then
sudo -Sp '' sed -i "s/USE_STYLE=\"${infinality_current}\"/USE_STYLE=\"WINDOWS7LIGHT\"/g" '/etc/profile.d/infinality-settings.sh' <<<"${sudo_password}"
fi
#
if echo $choice | grep "VANILLA" > /dev/null;
then
sudo -Sp '' sed -i "s/USE_STYLE=\"${infinality_current}\"/USE_STYLE=\"VANILLA\"/g" '/etc/profile.d/infinality-settings.sh' <<<"${sudo_password}"
fi
#
if echo $choice | grep "CLASSIC" > /dev/null;
then
sudo -Sp '' sed -i "s/USE_STYLE=\"${infinality_current}\"/USE_STYLE=\"CLASSIC\"/g" '/etc/profile.d/infinality-settings.sh' <<<"${sudo_password}"
fi
#
if echo $choice | grep "NUDGE" > /dev/null;
then
sudo -Sp '' sed -i "s/USE_STYLE=\"${infinality_current}\"/USE_STYLE=\"NUDGE\"/g" '/etc/profile.d/infinality-settings.sh' <<<"${sudo_password}"
fi
#
if echo $choice | grep "PUSH" > /dev/null;
then
sudo -Sp '' sed -i "s/USE_STYLE=\"${infinality_current}\"/USE_STYLE=\"PUSH\"/g" '/etc/profile.d/infinality-settings.sh' <<<"${sudo_password}"
fi
#
if echo $choice | grep "SHOVE" > /dev/null;
then
sudo -Sp '' sed -i "s/USE_STYLE=\"${infinality_current}\"/USE_STYLE=\"SHOVE\"/g" '/etc/profile.d/infinality-settings.sh' <<<"${sudo_password}"
fi
#
if echo $choice | grep "SHARPENED" > /dev/null;
then
sudo -Sp '' sed -i "s/USE_STYLE=\"${infinality_current}\"/USE_STYLE=\"SHARPENED\"/g" '/etc/profile.d/infinality-settings.sh' <<<"${sudo_password}"
fi
#
if echo $choice | grep "INFINALITY" > /dev/null;
then
sudo -Sp '' sed -i "s/USE_STYLE=\"${infinality_current}\"/USE_STYLE=\"INFINALITY\"/g" '/etc/profile.d/infinality-settings.sh' <<<"${sudo_password}"
fi
#
if echo $choice | grep "DISABLED" > /dev/null;
then
sudo -Sp '' sed -i "s/USE_STYLE=\"${infinality_current}\"/USE_STYLE=\"DISABLED\"/g" '/etc/profile.d/infinality-settings.sh' <<<"${sudo_password}"
fi
#
}
#
menu
option
#
if test ${#choice} -gt 0; then
echo "Operation completed"
fi
#
exit 0

The .desktop file "/usr/local/share/applications/InfinalitySettings.desktop" contains the following text:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Infinality Style Changer
GenericName=Infinality Settings
Exec=/usr/local/bin/InfinalitySettings
Icon=gnome-settings-font
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=GTK;GNOME;System;Settings;Fonts;

And here is the contents of "/usr/share/applications/zenity-color-selection.desktop" which has this title and icon:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Type=Application
Categories=Graphics;2DGraphics;RasterGraphics;GTK;
Name=Color Picker
GenericName=Color Picker
Comment=Pick a color from palette or any color on your screen
NotShowIn=KDE;
Icon=preferences-color
#Icon=applications-graphics
Exec=zenity --color-selection --show-palette
Terminal=false

One of the reasons why I don't like Ubuntu's default theme Ambiance is the unacceptable inconsistency between GTK2 and GTK3 toolbars as seen in LibreOffice and Chromium/Chrome web browser.

This is not the case in the Greybird theme, for example, which proves that it is possible.

I would appreciate if someone can help tweak this.

Note: a similar problem with menus (inc. ComboBox menus) has been addressed here: Consistency of GTK2 menus with GTK3

The two screenshots below show how Greybird and Ambiance themes display applications like (from top to bottom) Chrome, LibreOffice and KKEdit (with an "undefined" toolbar bgcolor which is inappropriate with the icon theme to be used in the case of Ambiance as opposed to consistent looks of Greybird or Faience ), unlike other apps like Nautilus and gedit, which I added at the bottom of the Ambiance screenshot.

Greybird theme:

Ambiance theme:

I've been happily using Parcellite clipboard manager for some time now. But after upgrading from Ubuntu 13.04 to 13.10, which also meant upgrading Parcellite from 1.1.4 to 1.1.5, I no longer have Parcellite Unity panel indicator. Any suggestions?

Very oddly, I cannot watch any videos a TV channel website, for example this one: http://www.kanald.com.tr/GalipDervis/Videolar/

I can see from the frame source that it contains an embedded Adobe Flash video and some Java scripts (all of which don't pose any problems elsewhere).

I've tried different web browsers (Chrome/Chromium/Firefox), but it seems I have some sort of video codec problem in my system.

I have installed all sorts of gstreamer plugins, codecs, etc. (maybe too many?) to avoid such problems, but strangely I can watch these videos using Linux Mint 15 Live Session on the same machine.

I wonder how I can find out why a particular video (like this one) won't work on my system?

I have a number of video files (MOV) which I only need to rotate 90° clockwise.

As it may be needed in the future as well, I first tried using ffmpeg and then mencoder command line in a Nautilus script but unfortunately I wasn't satisfied with the reduced quality of output video.

Avidemux GTK has produced the output video in the same quality as the input video. But I would ideally like to use it from command line, i.e. avidemux2_cli, although I couldn't find any info about the use video filters like rotate in the documentation.

I often import photos and videos (mostly having JPG and MOV extensions) from digital cameras and tablets to my PC, and I would ideally like to see them sorted according to the dates and times they were taken already present in their EXIF data. And hence my wish to rename them all preferably using a simple Nautilus Script by preferably inserting the date and time stamps before each filename.

I have so far managed only to bring together the following Nautilus Script, which I believe is far from perfect:

for i in *.*
do
mv -i "$i" "$(exiftool -CreateDate "$i" | awk -F ': ' '{print $2}')_"$i"" 
done

What I don't like in this renaming method is the colons used in EXIF date and time stamps (e.g. "2013:09:03 20:55:09_IMG_0108.JPG") which might create problems when transferring these files later to other environments (e.g. Windows).

This command (using exiv2 instead of exiftool) conveniently enables manipulation of date and time stamps but its drawback is that it doesn't work on video (e.g. MOV) files:

exiv2 -k -r '%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S_:basename:' rename "$i"

So I'm hoping someone can come up with a better solution. And it would be magic if it even managed to convert the original filenames and extensions to lowercase as well!

I often plugin a USB keyboard to my laptop (in addition to external monitor and mouse, which all virtually convert my laptop to a desktop computer) and I prefer using a different keyboard layout then.

I have to manually change the current keyboard layout each time I plugin this USB keyboard.

And I'd like to use an automated way for this, if possible.

Radu's answer to the question here gives some clues, but it seems I'll need a startup script for this task as the device ID for my USB keyboard changes every time the computer starts.

This startup script will probably first include the command xinput -list | grep "USB Keyboard", and another command to grab the first USB Keyboard ID number displayed and then use it in the final command to set my chosen layout for that USB keyboard as below:

setxkbmap -device <NUMBER> -layout <LAYOUT>

The title says it all actually. There might be one or two KDE apps that I might prefer to the Gnome alternative.

• I'm not afraid of having to install many KDE packages (libs, etc.) which might take considerable amount of disk space.
• I'm not afraid of having to use some additional packages (libs, etc.), probably meaning more CPU load and/or memory usage than its Gnome equivalent, when that application is running either.
• But I'm afraid installing a KDE application might entail some KDE software constantly being loaded and running in the background every time Ubuntu starts, even when that application is not being used.

So, I will very much appreciate an answer from people who really know and who really have experience on this subject.

Computers sold with pre-installed Windows 7 have a small "System Reserved" boot partition at the beginning of the disk which is not really necessary as Windows can boot alone or alongside Ubuntu without this. So I've decided to remove it from a couple of machines which went OK (except the extra effort of moving/resizing partitions to the left and sometimes having to repair Windows boot manager).

In one of the machines, however, I was surprised to see that the new partition numbers start from 2 in GParted. And the output of fdisk -l is like this:

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb2   *        2048    52426751    26212352    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb3        52426752   942684159   445128704    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb4       942684160   976773119    17044480   12  Compaq diagnostics

It took me some time to discover that the reason for this was the fact that somehow a zero-size invisible partition was left after I deleted that partition as seen in the output of sfdisk -l below:

   Device Boot Start     End   #cyls    #blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1          0       -       0          0    0  Empty
/dev/sdb2   *      0+   3263-   3264-  26212352    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb3       3263+  58679-  55416- 445128704    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb4      58679+  60801-   2122-  17044480   12  Compaq diagnostics

Apart from the unseemly partition numbering, I'm curious to know how I can ged rid of this weird partition?

I have created a custom conky showing weather forecasts in 3 cities like this:

But recently I've begun to see a strange behavior. After a few seconds, a white background a bit larger appears underneath like this:

I've attempted to overcome this by trying a number of changes in the configuration file .conkyrc and the only effective one was changing own_window_type value from override to normal. But then I not only have this conky disappear when I choose to minimize all windows, but it also displays a transparent background of the same size like this:

My conky window settings are like this:

update_interval 1
total_run_times 0
cpu_avg_samples 1
net_avg_samples 1
no_buffers yes
double_buffer yes
imlib_cache_size 0

background yes
own_window yes
own_window_type override
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
minimum_size 300 480
maximum_width 300
alignment top_right
gap_x 2
gap_y 28

draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders no
stippled_borders 0
border_inner_margin 0
border_outer_margin 0
border_width 0

text_buffer_size 1024
override_utf8_locale yes
use_xft yes
xftfont Ubuntu:size=10
xftalpha 1.0
uppercase no
temperature_unit celsius
draw_shades no
draw_outline no
default_color C0C0C0
default_shade_color 000000
default_outline_color C0C0C0
color1 C0C0C0
color2 B2B2B2
color3 808080
color4 D4D4D4

TEXT
${image ~/.conky/base.png -p 0,0 -s 300x480}

Can somebody tell what might be causing (and how can I overcome) this unwanted canvas underneath my conky window?

I have opted for menus without icons system-wide for reasons of simplicity and speed.

But I still get icons in Nautilus context menus. I don't mind the icons on Open With menu items too much, but all those identical icons on Nautilus Scripts (especially when you have many scripts) look ugly.

I wonder if there's a way of disabling these icons at all?

I think the ideal solution for me is a Nautilus Script that performs encoding conversion on selected files.

The following script reads the encoding of a selected file and performs utf8 conversion if it's not utf8, but I couldn't figure out how to make it work on multiple files:

CHARSET="$(file -bi "$1"|awk -F "=" '{print $2}')"
if [ "$CHARSET" != utf-8 ]; then
iconv -f "$CHARSET" -t utf8 "$1" -c -o "$1.utf8"
fi