Dave's questions

What is the name of the program that is invoked when Alt+F2 is pressed, in Gnome?

The grey dialog box presented here, where you can type in the command/program you want to run:

from this article on the Alt+F2 shortcut; what is the name of the executable file that runs this?

I'm running into a problem where when I try to run rhythmbox, it fails and the crash kicks me back out to the login screen.

What kinds of problems can cause this effect?

I had always thought that one of the principles of the unix environment is that processes are independent of one another, so there should only be a limited kind of problems that result in the complete breakdown of my login session.

I want to be able to configure my printer by starting the printer configuration app from the command line. What is its name?

I'm running Ubuntu 18,but I'm not running Gnome (Xmonad instead), thus I can't get to the app via the usual route outlined in the documentation.

I've decided to setup a custom matplotlibrc, and thus I need to pick a backend for matplotlib. What is the best one in terms of not needing to install other additional packages?

I tend to use matplotlib via ipython --pylab, so I want interactive window based plots (when I don't I can switch to Agg).

I've tried WXAgg, but this requires (sensibly enough) WX.

I'd like to be able to execute raml2html to generate documentation for some APIs that are specified using RAML. I have installed raml2html using the nodejs package manager via

$> sudo npm i -g raml2html 

But executing it fails:

$> raml2html interface.raml 
[Error: AssertionError: urllib-sync need node version 0.11.13+]

I've tried doing an

$> sudo apt-get update

to update the libraries. The only packages returned from apt-cache search urllib are python libraries, so I don't think that they are relevant.

What do I need to install/upgrade in order to get raml2html to work?

node is the up to date version v0.10.25

In Evolution, I can open a pull down menu to select an application for opening attached image files. Since I have Gimp installed, it occurs on this list. How can I remove this option from the drop down menu (I never want to run Gimp in this way, but I sometimes accidentially hit it)?

I've looked through Edit->Preferences but didn't see anything that looks like I can configure what applications are presented.

I ran abcde, but wanted to edit the CD information. When I said yes, it gave me a menu of editors to choose from. I unintentionally selected nano as the editor. I canceled C-c'd the process. Now when I run abcde it automatically uses the nano editor, which is not what I want.

Where/how does abcde keep the editor choice selection?

Note: there is no ~/.abcde.conf in my home directory. The system wide /etc/abcde.conf does not include information on the editor choice. I can't figure out how the selection I made during one run is getting to my current attempts.

What I'd like to do is play back audio files (currently mp3, but I'd convert them if I had to), and perform basic audio manipulation on them, equalization, panning etc, and to be able to manipulate the parameters as the media were playing.

In some sense what I want is audacity to support manipulation of its filter plugins while the media are playing, but it doesn't seem to support this. ardour does allow this, but I'd like to know if there is something a litter lighter-weight and less complicated.

So, which ubuntu packages provide this type of functionality.

My evolution (3.0.3) has a maildir directory:

~/.local/share/evolution/mail/local/
                                    cur/##########.######_#.username:2,S
                                    cur/#########.######_#.username:2,S
                                    folders.db
                                    new/
                                    tmp/

folders.db says something about sqlite in it, I can't tell if there are mail messages in that file; the files under cur seem to have messages in them; but they are not in mbox format, and it doesn't look like all of the messages that I have under "On This Computer" are in these files.

There is no ~/.evolution/ directory.

How (and where if I'm not looking in the right place) does evolution store its email?

I'm trying to develop software in python that involves geographic coordinates. I'd prefer to not rely on custom installed software, and only rely on standard packages.

So far, I've only found geopy hosted at Google, which should be useful (it actually provides way more than I need).

Are there any python packages that I should be looking at?

I (just) upgraded from 11.4 to 11.10 and noticed some differences in the behavior of timidity.

I used to (11.4) exectute >timidity midifile.midi without running jackd, and thus using alsa (or pulseaudio?) to produce sound from midi files.

Now having upgraded, this does not work -- currently this command just freezes if jack is not running.

If jack is running, it does work but there is an initial audio glitch (noise burst at the start of playback, analogous to the sound of a plug being inserted) that I'd rather not have to deal with.

All the indications that I have is that in 11.10 timidity will only work (albeit glitchy) with jack on, whereas in 11.4 it did not require this.

• Is there any way to restore timidity's non-jack operation in 11.10?
• Is there a way to get rid of the audio glitch in with jack operation?
• Overall, what underlying changes in these programs and the audio infrastructure are behind this?