John's questions

I just installed Budgie 24.04 and I notice a change which I do not like. Luckily, Ubuntu is great at giving the user choices but I cannot find the setting I'm looking for.

In 22.04, when you use your mouse and drag a window to the top of the screen, it will maximize the window. Now, in 24.04, the default behavior is to only show that window on the top 50% of the screen. This change to the tiling function is not great.

I do see that if I drag and hold the window at the top, it will expand to full screen, but the extra 2-3 seconds every time I do this is really frustrating. I would like to revert to the earlier behavior.

I read some pages which talked about the Extension Manager but when I search for "tiling" I get a long list of "unsupported" items.

Is there any way to change so that dragging to the top of a screen will default to maximizing the window rather than 50%?

Am running Ubuntu Budgie 20.04 and regularly run .Net apps (that I built) through CrossOver (20.0.4) / Wine. I just built a small WinForms utility in .Net 5.0 and tried to run it in CrossOver. A message box displayed with no text. I figured, OK, .Net 5.0 has not been installed in the bottle. However, it seems .Net 5.0 is not on the list of things to install.

Then I read that .Net 5.0 is designed to work everywhere (like .Net Core). So, I followed these instructions and installed dotnet on my Ubuntu.

When I type

dotnet --list-runtimes

I get

Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 5.0.3 [/usr/share/dotnet/shared/Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 5.0.3 [/usr/share/dotnet/shared/Microsoft.NETCore.App]

Then I try to run the app and I get

It was not possible to find any compatible framework version
The framework 'Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App', version '5.0.0' was not found.
  - No frameworks were found.

You can resolve the problem by installing the specified framework and/or SDK.

The specified framework can be found at:
  - https://aka.ms/dotnet-core-applaunch?framework=Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App&framework_version=5.0.0&arch=x64&rid=ubuntu.20.04-x64

When I browse to that link, it redirects here: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet/5.0/runtime/?utm_source=getdotnetcore&utm_medium=referral and I see download .net for Windows or Linux. However, for Windows I can download for Desktop apps and for Linux only server apps.

When I look here: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet/6.0 it shows that the desktop framework is only available for Windows

I'm confused because the message dotnet is giving me implies the desktop framework is available for Ubuntu. However, the website makes it look like that is untrue.

Is there a way to install the desktop framework on Ubuntu or should I redo the utility in .Net 4.8 and run it through CrossOver?

On Ubuntu Budgie 20.04.2 (all updates applied, 16GB ram, SSD, desktop, dual display), and VLC 3.0.9.2-1, when I watch a long video and then stop before the end, when I re-open the video VLC flashes several times and there is no "continue" button in the upper right that I am used to.

If I concentrate, in all the flashes, I can see the "continue" button in one of the flashes but it disappears far too quickly for me to click it (maybe it shows for 50ms).

I tried changing the setting for continue as "ask" and "always" but this makes no difference. I have changed single instance mode between checked and not checked but this makes no difference.

This has been going on for more than a month. I was hoping it was just a bug which would be fixed in an update but since it has not changed, I'm coming here for help.

Any ideas?

I have an mkv file which has (soft) subtitles in it. The video is about 30 minutes long but I want to trim it down to just 6 minutes (say, from 19:00 to 25:00). However, I want to keep the soft subtitles.

I tried using Record in VLC but even with the subs showing, they were not captured in the output.

Then I tried Avidemux but, again, the output is missing subs.

I thought this answer might help (using mkvextract) but the extracted subs were the entire subs and now I'm not sure how to edit it down and re-add them and sync them to the trimmed video file.

I might be naive here but I would think there would be an option to trim the video keeping the soft subs.

My first preference is to do just this: Cut the video down while keeping the soft subs.

Converting the subs to hard subs is an option but less than ideal because the subs will overlap some important information on screen.

I've been using Plank for a couple of years with Ubuntu Budgie. Overall, I have no problems. However, from time to time, I see that my Chromium shortcut is suddenly missing.

Even when I re-add it, it will be there for a while (a few days to a week) then will suddenly not be there anymore. I shut the machine down nightly so I don't think it is related to restart.

I rarely use Chromium but I do use it about once every two days. However, I have never seen this behavior with other shortcuts on Plank, only with Chromium.

Any ideas what would cause this, or how to fix it?

I am using Ubuntu Budgie 20.04 and I am struggling with a new feature in the file manager.

When you are double-clicking your way down through a stack of folders, if you accidentally double-click in the white space (rather than on a folder), it actually goes up one level which is very disorienting when you are expecting it to drill down.

I am sure someone thought this feature is great, and perhaps some like it. However, I just want to disable it.

Is there a way?

I just installed Ubuntu Budgie 20.04 on my main desktop (Acer). I was happily surprised that it can install onto the SSD which was not an option with Ubuntu 18.04. This gave me the added benefit that I did not have to wipe my HDD where 18.04 was installed.

The problem is now when I boot and press F12 (to get the boot menu, which is not a grub menu), I see two options:

• ubuntu
• ubuntu

As these two are identical, there is no way to tell which is 18.04 (HDD) and which is 20.04 (SSD). I would like to rename these two entries but I cannot see where to do this.

I thought it might be picking up things on grub on each drive but I did not see "ubuntu" in grub anywhere. So, I tried Grub Customizer but that only showed me "Ubuntu" not "ubuntu" so I thought it was not that.

Then I decided to try boot-repair. After this, I now see two items when I press F12:

• ubuntu
• USFI: Kingston blahblahblah

As I believe boot-repair only changes grub, I now feel more confident that the answer lies within grub.

As my SSD is Kingston I can now tell the difference. However, I would really like to actually rename these two something like

• Ubuntu 18.04
• Ubuntu 20.04

Is there any way to see this when pressing F12 to get the boot menu?

I have been using Okular (1.3.3) on Ubuntu (18.04) for a while now and feel pretty confident in my ability to be productive in it. However, suddenly, I am lost.

I opened a PDF (as I have done 100s of times) and pressed F6 to get the annotations toolbar. Nothing happened. I checked for stuck keys on my keyboard. Nothing changed. I closed the PDF and opened another PDF and everything works as expected. I went back and opened the troublesome PDF.

Under the Tools menu, Review (F6) is grayed out (disabled). I checked the file to see if it was read-only. It was not.

Any ideas why the annotation toolbar would not be available in some PDF but would in others? Any idea how to fix it?

I found a problem with the way the default install of LibreOffice Impress handles fonts on Lubuntu 20.04. That problem is covered here. In short, the solution was to remove the default install of LibreOffice (the one that gets installed by installing Lubuntu) and installing the snap version of LibreOffice.

Wanting to keep my system nice and clean, I wanted to remove the existing (default) LibreOffice. I tried:

sudo apt remove libreoffice

I also tried various versions of the above, including --purge, etc. However, it kept saying that LibreOffice was not installed, so it would not remove it.

Eventually, I found the software center for Lubuntu (my main machine is Ubuntu). There I could remove, individually, Calc, Impress, Writer, etc. However, there was nothing to remove the over-arching app of LibreOffice.

To be clear, that over-arching shell is still there. I can launch it but it cannot read any files because Impress, etc. are all gone. However, it's still there and I would like to remove it.

I found a lot of help at my other question, including this answer which indicated I should be able to use:

sudo apt remove libreoffice-base-core
sudo apt autoremove

This did not work as apt does not see that LibreOffice is installed.

Package 'libreoffice-base-core' is not installed

I then tried this, based on advice from that answer:

dpkg -l |grep "ii libre"

It returns nothing at all.

I don't see a way to remove the default install of LibreOffice, which I do not need because the snap version is working well.

When I type in:

whereis libreoffice

I get:

libreoffice: /usr/bin/libreoffice /usr/lib/libreoffice /etc/libreoffice /usr/share/libreoffice /snap/bin/libreoffice.draw /snap/bin/libreoffice /snap/bin/libreoffice.math /snap/bin/libreoffice.base /snap/bin/libreoffice.calc /snap/bin/libreoffice.impress /snap/bin/libreoffice.writer /snap/bin/libreoffice.filebug /usr/share/man/man1/libreoffice.1.gz

Can I simply delete everything named libreoffice* everywhere outside of /snap/bin/? Will that break anything?

I'm hesitant to ask this problem here because it might be considered cross-posting. However, I need to decide whether to downgrade from Lubuntu 20.04 to 18.04.

There is a bug with LibreOffice Impress where slides will have text squished together to the point of being unreadable.

The slides are fine on Ubuntu 18.04 and also on Lubuntu 18.04. However, after upgrading a lightweight laptop from Lubuntu 18.04 to 20.04 now I have this problem. The only purpose of this laptop is for presentations so it's a pretty big deal.

The bug was posted on LibreOffice's Bugzilla two weeks ago and there has been no forward movement on it. So, I realize that will take time.

My question is, is there anyone who has seen this or has some idea on how it can be fixed, perhaps some workaround so I don't need to install Lubuntu 18.04 again?

On my main computer (Ubuntu 18.04) when I double-click a Zoom (video conferencing) unconverted video, it converts just as one would expect.

My work computer is extremely minimally equipped so I installed Lubuntu (18.04), which works great. However, after installing Zoom, double-clicking just flashes the conversion window, which quickly disappears, and nothing actually happens.

I installed Zoom on Lubuntu basically the same way I did on Ubuntu. I downloaded the Ubuntu 64-bit .deb file and installed it with GDebi.

The app was downloaded from https://zoom.us/download#client_4meeting, with the options for Ubuntu, 64 bit, 14.04+ selected. The version in question is 3.5.374815.0324.

I feel fairly confident it is not so much a problem with the app as it is some libraries that they are surely depending upon.

Question: What libraries might these be so I can install them manually?

My Ubuntu won't start.

While booting up, it comes up with a list of things its doing (which I do not normally see). Everything says "OK" next to it which makes me think everything is OK. However, after it displays the following:

Started dispatcher daemon for systemd-networkd.ally.ed before the ppp link was shut down...

it just stays there. Everything still says OK but it is clearly not OK as I never get the login screen. I've tried waiting 35 minutes, still no change.

I did some searching and found this answer. I tried it and I do not think it helped. It did change something as now the final line says:

Started dispatcher daemon for systemd-networkd. any system changes.pp link was shut down...

I am starting to think that this final line is being overwritten so there might be multiple statements, which is all the more confusing to a new user like myself.

As I said, it never gets past this point. However, when I press the power button Ubuntu does shut down nicely, so I know it is not frozen but I also do not see a way to use my machine.

I tried restarting with an earlier kernel but that did not help.

Do I need to reinstall my OS or is there some way to recover from this?

For the past week or two, I've noticed my login process to be slightly different than normal. This made me wonder if there is a security issue I should worry about. So I started searching here, but could not find a clear answer.

I see many questions about being caught in a "login loop" but that is not what is happening to me (at least I do not think so).

When I startup my laptop running 18.04 (encrypted boot drive, up to date OS) I have to enter my decryption password. This is as it has always been. Then, I am greeted with the normal login screen. I enter my password and it looks like it was accepted (no bad password message, the screen is all purple momentarily but I can still see the mouse cursor, but I cannot move it) and before the desktop background (or any desktop icons) shows, I am returned to the normal login screen. There is still no message to indicate that my password was wrong. I enter the password, again, and it starts as usual.

What is so strange to me is that this is always a double login. That is, it never prompts me only once and it never prompts me more than twice.

I looked for the ~/.xsession-errors file but I do not seem to have it.

I've used this laptop for a year with 16.04 and I installed 18.04 just after it was released and there have been no hardware changes.

Any ideas?

I just updated to the latest LibreOffice (6.0.4.2) but I changed from the traditionally installed version to the snap version of LibreOffice.

Now, when I run Mendeley (1.19) I no longer see the option to install the LibreOffice plugin.

Could this be a problem with snaps being different from regular installs? Most importantly, is there anyway to get the plugin to work?

I prefer to use snaps so they are always up to date but if I cannot work as I used to, then I'll just go back to the old style of installing apps.

I recently made the jump from 16.04 to 18.04. I did a fresh install, including encrypting my entire drive, but now I am having problems that I did not have in 16.04.

As a little background, I have an external USB HDD from which I run Ubuntu on a desktop. I also have a laptop which uses the internal HDD. Everything was working great with 16.04. That is, I could boot, run, everything was fine. I could connect my USB HDD to my laptop, give the encryption password, it would mount, and I could copy files between the drives. Remember, all of the drives in question are encrypted boot drives.

There were some issues with this setup, though. The main problem was solved by making sure each encrypted HDD used a unique volume group name. Once I got that, everything was fine for a long time.

Then I installed 18.04 on my laptop (encrypted drive). Worked great, even after I changed the volume group name.

Sadly, I can no longer connect my 16.04 HDD to my laptop (laptop is running 18.04). I get the small, unencrypted, boot partition to mount and I see the main encrypted partition in the sidebar, and I even get prompted for the password when I click on the main partition. However, once I enter the password it says that I cannot mount that drive and the drive disappears from the sidebar (I am doing all of this with the GUI).

I installed 18.04 on another USB HDD and my 18.04 laptop cannot mount the 18.04 USB HDD either. My 16.04 USB HDD can mount the 18.04 USB HDD. My 18.04 USB HDD cannot mount my 16.04 USB HDD.

Short version: Even when everything has unique a volume group name, 18.04 with full disk encryption seems no longer able to mount another boot drive (16.04 or 18.04) with full disk encryption.

What could I do to fix this?

I have read this question which might make this question a duplicate:

The linked question is for 12.04, which is quite old, and I wanted to see if there was a newer, more preferred option.

Situation: I have a desktop machine, about 8 years old, which does not have any USB 3.0 ports. I added a USB 3.0 PICe card specifically so I could run my entire system off an external USB 3.0 drive without slowing down to USB 2.0 speeds.

Sadly, when I went into my bios to set my boot drive to the USB drive, which was now connected to the new USB 3.0 port, I could not select the drive. It seems my computer's bios is too old to recognize the newer card and I do not see any updates from the mainboard's manufacturer.

Once I boot into my drive (while connected to a USB 2.0 port) I can easily access anything connected to the USB 3.0 ports. So, I'm hopeful that there is an answer waiting to be found.

My question: Is there a way I can boot from something like a LiveUSB stick but just use that to transfer the boot over to the USB drive connected to the 3.0 ports? So, I would only need the LiveUSB (or other option) just to get my existing drive to boot up normally.

Related to this question, it seems the only way I can access one encrypted boot drive from another encrypted boot drive (both using the default encryption options when installing Ubuntu) is if the two drives have different volume group (VG) names. By default, Ubuntu uses the volume group name "ubuntu-vg" and if you have two volume groups with the same name, lvm2 has a problem.

A bigger problem was when I read this and decided to rename my active boot drive's VG to something different. Then I rebooted and cryptsetup would no longer recognize my password. It gave me the error

unknown fstype, bad password or options?

Using a LiveUSB I renamed the VG on that boot drive back to ubuntu-vg and it booted again (relief).

Now, if the VG names must be unique but they also cannot change, then there is a problem. I did not see an option when I installed Ubuntu to set the VG name. I guess it is either hard-coded or in a config file somewhere. I checked the smaller (unencrypted) boot area on the drive and I see in

/grub/grub.cfg

There are some references to this "ubuntu-vg" which makes me think I can change it.

However, I am still fairly new to Ubuntu so before I go being a creative person with another non-bootable drive, I would love some input from the experts here.

Can I rename the VG using vgrename then change /grub/grug.cfg by doing a find-and-replace all of the old VG name to the new VG name and magically everything will work?

I created an encrypted 2TB boot drive using the standard method from an Ubuntu 16.04 LiveUSB.

I am trying to access that 2TB drive from another system (also Ubuntu 16.04.3) which is running from 1TB encrypted boot drive. When I connect the extra (2TB) drive, I am prompted for the password, which I enter correctly, and I get no other message. Everything seems fine.

I look in Nautilus and all I see is the little 511MB boot section of the 2TB drive.

I open Disks and I see the 2TB drive and the graphic shows the following:

The problem is that I do not seem to have access to the large 2TB partition, just to the little pre-boot area.

From the image, you can see the lock is unlocked. It says it is unlocked. It says the device is /dev/sdb5.

I tried to mount it using:

mount /dev/sdb5

I got an error:

mount: can't find /dev/sdb5 in /etc/fstab

So, I tried

mount /2tb /dev/sdb5

I got:

mount: only root can do that

So, I tried

sudo mount /2tb /dev/sdb5

I got:

special device /2tb does not exist

As you might guess, I am quite new to Ubuntu. I might be missing something quite simple but it does seem it should be easier to access this drive.

What can I do access the main partition on this 2TB drive?

My boot drive is a 1TB drive and is working fine. Another 1TB drive is acting a bit flaky so I want to move some data (200GB) from my flaky drive to a folder on my boot drive (900GB free on my boot drive).

Using the Unity DE, I click on "Computer" on the left and I see lots of folders but I am unable to create a new folder here. I tried the File menu but New Folder is disabled.

I can create folders under my profile but this is data I would prefer not be under my profile.

Is there a way to add folders on the boot drive without those folders being under my home directory? If there is not, must I re-partition my boot drive to be able to use all of the empty space?

When using Unity, Nautilus (the file manager) had a nice way to bookmark folders.

This question is about Cinnamon's file manager, Nemo. I do not see any way to bookmark a folder. My folders go quite deep and I would like to avoid the constant navigation delay.

Is there a way to add bookmarks in Nemo?