Gigi's questions

I use Kubuntu and I like to use something similar to Quick Launch from Windows XP. There is this panel where I put my icons via the Plasma menu (whatever it's called), right clicking on the appropriate application, and then selecting "Add to Panel (Widget)" (as per this answer).

As you can see in the image above, for a long time I've had this issue where the icons occasionally disappear. I'm pretty sure they are the ones managed by the Snap package manager, and they seem to disappear when the respective application is updated. The icons do keep working when the invisible icon is clicked, but not being able to see the icon is distracting.

So far, I've had to tediously edit the panel, remove the icon, close the panel, add the icon back to the panel, edit the panel again, move the icon to the right place, and close the panel again.

Does anyone know how to fix this annoying issue?

Operating System: Kubuntu 20.04
KDE Plasma Version: 5.18.8
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.68.0

I've got a few applications pinned in my Kubuntu installation:

When I open one of them, the pinned icon goes away and is replaced by the running application further right:

This makes it a little tedious when I want to open more instances. Although I can click the mouse wheel on the running instance as a workaround, I'd like something like the old Windows quick launch where the icons remain there and you know exactly where to click to run a given application.

I've seen this answer which seems to address the same problem. However, I don't see any "Add to Panel (Widget)" and I have no idea how to add the mentioned "Quick Launch" Plasma widget. I would appreciate some more detailed guidance on how to get this working. Thanks in advance.

I'm using Kubuntu (19.10 or 20.04 LTS), and when I press Window_key+D or hit the "show desktop" icon in the bottom-right corner, it hides my open windows and shows the desktop. However, when I open something else from my desktop, all the windows I had before come back up alongside the thing I just opened.

This is different from Windows, where if you show desktop, your open windows remain minimised even after you open something new.

Is there some way to get the Windows-like behaviour on KDE?

I know how to create a symbolic link to a folder. However, when you access the target folder (e.g. from a symbolic link on the Desktop), it appears as if the target folder is a child of the Desktop folder. I'd like it to work as in Windows where you actually get to the folder and can see it in its real context.

I've come across similar questions, one of which suggests creating a launcher. I believe this is meant for GNOME/Unity Ubuntu and I'm not sure what the equivalent on KDE would be.

How can I achieve this on Kubuntu 19.10 with KDE Plasma?

I am on Kubuntu 19.10. I installed npm via apt, and when I do anything (even simply npm -v), I get this error:

$ npm -v
internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:800
    throw err;
    ^

Error: Cannot find module 'semver'
Require stack:
- /usr/share/npm/lib/utils/unsupported.js
- /usr/share/npm/bin/npm-cli.js
    at Function.Module._resolveFilename (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:797:15)
    at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:690:27)
    at Module.require (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:852:19)
    at require (internal/modules/cjs/helpers.js:74:18)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/usr/share/npm/lib/utils/unsupported.js:2:14)
    at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:959:30)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:995:10)
    at Module.load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:815:32)
    at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:727:14)
    at Module.require (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:852:19) {
code: 'MODULE_NOT_FOUND',
requireStack: [
    '/usr/share/npm/lib/utils/unsupported.js',
    '/usr/share/npm/bin/npm-cli.js'
]
}

I tried a few suggested solutions such as reinstalling node and npm, force-deleting node modules, etc, but nothing worked.

It seems pretty broken to me, and I'm not sure how to fix it. Did anyone have a similar issue and know what could be the matter?

I did not have the same problem on Windows.

I've got two laptops each with the same version of Kubuntu (19.10), both installed less than a month from each other.

By following advice elsewhere on this site, I managed to set them up to see a third machine with Windows on it. I did this by installing winbind and libnss-winbind, and setting the following line in /etc/nsswitch.conf:

hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns wins mdns4

The first laptop worked great and I was always able to ping the Windows machine thereafter. The second laptop also worked, and I was able to ping the Windows machine, but this was no longer the case after a restart. It starts working if I do a sudo systemctl restart winbind, but I'd like to avoid having to do this every time I boot up the machine.

The error I get is the typical:

ping: windowspc: Name or service not known

I also found some advice elsewhere on this site suggesting to put the wins entry immediately after files, but (a) that did not solve the problem, and (b) the first laptop can see the Windows machine just fine with the old configuration.

Having done the exact same procedure on both laptops with the same OS, I'm really not sure what's the problem here. I'm not sure where to look, so can anyone point me in the right direction please?

This doesn't work:

$ ls "~/.wine/drive_c/tools/Family Tree v2.0"
ls: cannot access '~/.wine/drive_c/tools/Family Tree v2.0': No such file or directory

But this does:

$ ls "/home/daniel/.wine/drive_c/tools/Family Tree v2.0"
Dossiers                           Dossiers_orig   Infos.opt      Racines.exe  'Register OCX.bat'   racines.CNT
Dossiers-2019.11.03-11.46.tar.gz   Html            REGSVR32.exe   Racines.hlp   Uninst.isu          readme.txt

Given that ~ is supposed to be the same as /home/daniel, what's going on here?

On Windows, I've been using IrfanView as my image viewer of choice for about 15 years. I use it for things like resizing, cropping, flipping and rotating images; converting between different formats; and also certain effects such as blurring or obfuscating part of an image where there is sensitive data.

On Kubuntu 19.10 I've got Gwenview as the default image viewer. It caters for most of my use cases above, but I haven't yet found a way to obfuscate an area of an image.

I've also tried running IrfanView itself under Wine, but the problem there is that it can't see the Linux filesystem, making it pretty useless. I also don't know how to get it into an Open with... context menu when I right-click an image.

I had also written my own cross-platform alternative to IrfanView a few years back, but although it supports some nice image transformations, it still lacks some basic features such as copy & paste as well as area selection.

So basically, what's the easiest way to have a lightweight image viewer with simple editing functions and filters that works as closely to the Swiss army knife that is IrfanView as possible, and be able to obfuscate parts of images with it? (I'm looking for specific features, not just for any alternative.)

Possible solutions that would be acceptable:

• Some way for Gwenview to obfuscate parts of an image
• Other software that can cover all the features I need
• Getting IrfanView under Wine to be able to see images on the Linux filesystem

I'm using Spectacle to take screenshots on Kubuntu 19.10.

If I take a screenshot with Capture Mode set to Active Window, then it takes a screenshot of the active window as expected, but the image has a lot of extra space around the edges, as in the example below. This looks very ugly on a blog because of the amount of wasted space.

Is there any way to remove this extra space and just get the window in the image?

I have Kubuntu 19.10 (Plasmashell 5.16.5) on a laptop. When I plug in the charger, it goes to full brightness.

How can I change this behaviour so that it retains the same brightness, and I don't get a spotlight in my face every time?

I have an HP laptop on which I installed Kubuntu 19.10 (Plasmashell 5.16.5).

I can use the touchpad just fine to move the cursor and click using the touchpad's buttons. However, I cannot click by double-tapping as I would using Windows.

Is there any particular software I need to install for this to work?

I'd like to be able to share files between my Kubuntu 19.10 machine and another machine with Windows 10 on it. So I set up a shared folder on the Windows machine.

From Kubuntu, I can get to the shared folder via Dolphin (the file manager). And if there are files in that folder, I can see them and copy them over. However, every time I try to put a file in it from Kubuntu, I get:

Access denied. Could not write to smb://...

I realise this might be a common request, and before you satisfy that itch to mark this as a duplicate question, I'll point out that I have already tried a few things, such as modifying /etc/fstab (as per this Q&A and MountWindowsSharesPermanently - the latter did not even get me read access) or doing a sudo cp directly into the smb:// folder where I already have access (Cannot create regular file smb://.../test.txt: no such file or directory).

I really don't know what else to try and would appreciate some advice.

if I do an ls -l, I get output such as the following:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root        93584 Apr 21  2017  zipsplit
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root        26624 Ott  5  2018  zjsdecode
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root         2206 Aww 23 11:24  zless
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root         1842 Aww 23 11:24  zmore
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root         4553 Aww 23 11:24  znew

See where the date is... how do I change that to English?

I'm using Konsole on Kubuntu.

Edit: Output of locale as requested:

daniel@cassiopeia:~$ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=mt_MT.UTF-8
LC_TIME=mt_MT.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=mt_MT.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=mt_MT.UTF-8
LC_NAME=mt_MT.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=mt_MT.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=mt_MT.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=mt_MT.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=mt_MT.UTF-8
LC_ALL=

There is clearly a mixture of US-English and Maltese in there. How do I get rid of the Maltese and just keep English? Or, say, change it to UK English?

I have a legacy Windows application that I would like to use with WINE. This application requires a printer to work:

Please install default printer.

I was wondering whether there's some kind of printer driver that I can download and install to make the program work. I've tried PDFCreator, but it doesn't want to install (it says that it's not compatible with my "version of Windows"), and I've also tried installing cups-pdf on the Linux VM but it didn't make a difference.

I suppose I need to install a printer in WINE's own environment (so it needs to be a Windows printer driver). Is there anything I could easily use to deal with this requirement?