KDE disable shadow for Chrome window

 In KDE I turned off shadows in my theme but noticed the Google Chrome window still had a large shadow at the bottom.  I used these steps to force it off.

1. In Chrome right click the empty space to the right of the tabs.
2. Select "Use system title bar and borders" (turn it ON)
3. Right-click the new KDE title bar now showing for Chrome.
4. Go to More Actions > Configure Special Window Settings
5. Click Add Property then scroll down and pick Block compositing
6. Select 'Yes' and 'Force'
7. Click Apply , Okay.
8. Go back into Chrome.
9. Right click at top and turn off 'Use system title bar and border'.

The shadow is now gone.

Fix : Blogger only show 1 post on homepage

 All of a sudden this blog started showing only one post on the homepage.  No matter what setting I changed only 1 post showed on the blog.  The problem was the last post had a 'base64' image in it.  Which means instead of a normal pic the image was made up of the CODE used to render the pic.  When this happens Blogger will only show 1 blogpost on the homepage.  The solution for me was just to take a screenshot of that image, then re-upload it to the blog post in question.  After that it was fine.  In fact when I opened the problem post I got this message at the bottom left :

Block 'sign in with Google' popup

 Add a rule like this to uBlock > My Filters

||accounts.google.com/gsi/iframe/$subdocument

Arch install boots to Grub prompt

Last night I installed Artix (Arch) on my Dell laptop.  After reboot it dropped to a Grub shell.  I know this distro works well and have installed it many times on other laptops.  The fix here was pretty easy.

1.  Reboot, press F2, go into BIOS and turn off RAID storage

2.  Reinstall Artix again

After I did this everything worked fine.

Arch Linux KDE can not change resolution. Only list one resolution.

Just installed Artix on my Dell laptop and notice in KDE only one resolution is listed.  After ~10 min on Google I found this answer

My situation matched theirs.  Command :

inxi -G

 Output was listing the driver as  intel not modesetting

As root I created this file, rebooted, and can change resolution OK now.

/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf

Section "Device"
   Identifier  "Intel Graphics"
   Driver      "modesetting"
EndSection

MX Linux can't browse web 'can not open page'

Odd problem last night.  I'm on my MX Linux (Debian) machine browsing the web then suddenly it says 'can not open page'.  Wifi is still connected.  I can ping 1.1.1.1 but not google.com (unknown host).

Disconnect / reconnect, no luck.  Disable wifi entirely & reconnect, no luck.  Reboot and it works again.  Then ~10 min later same problem.  Browsing fine then suddenly cant load pages.  

I check the wifi config and all the DNS settings are still there.  After a while I checked /etc/resolv.conf and all it had was the loopback not my DNS config :

nameserver ::1
nameserver 127.0.0.1

So I edit resolv.conf as root and added this to the top then everything worked again for the rest of the night.

nameserver 9.9.9.9
nameserver 2620:fe::fe

Linux can not rip DVD can not play in VLC

 Picked up a few DVDs at Half Price Books and want to rip them to my system.  I am using Arch linux (Artix) with external DVD drive from Dell.  Put in DVD, system recognizes it, file manager can see everything.  But Handbrake is failing to rip.  Then try to copy files from DVD to PC, that fails also.  "Failure to read file" or something like that.  Try to play in VLC and doesn't work, you can just hear the disc trying to read over and over.  DVDs are in perfect shape.  Try a different DVD, same thing.  Try a DVD from a different tv show, same thing.

Did some searching then installed this

libdvdcss

After that now everything works fine.  And in File Manager thumbnail previews show up for DVD files now.  Can play them in VLC just fine.

Linux Mullvad error : Unable to contact the Mullvad system service

 I get this error on MX Linux and Artix when starting Mullvad app.  If I drop to terminal and do command below, then the app works normally

sudo mullvad-daemon

I contacted their support about it and they advised Mullvad does not come with the scripts needed to start the service for non-systemd distros.

Firefox Download Failed

Using MX Linux (Debian) all of a sudden I can't download anything in Firefox.  The download fails right away.  If I go to menu > more tools > browser console I can see this error

NS_ERROR_FILE_ACCESS_DENIED

Believe it or not the fix was just to reboot.  After that it works fine now.

Bash script to show demo of all fonts on Linux

 I found this script somewhere, it makes a nice HTML file showing a demo of all your fonts.  I made some small tweaks to the script so it works better.  Here is a screen shot and the code below.  Save it as fonts.sh then chmod +x the file and run it.  Will output fonts.html that looks like this

#!/usr/bin/env bash

cat > fonts.html << __HEADER

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

<head>

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">

    <title>Sample of local fonts matching '$1'</title>

</head>

<body>

__HEADER

fc-list --format='%{family}\n' $1 | cut -d ',' -f 1 | sort -u | while IFS='' read -r fontfamily

do

    cat >> fonts.html << __BODY

    <hr/>

    <div style="font-family: '${fontfamily}', 'serif'">

        <h1>${fontfamily}</h1>

        <p>

            1lLiI -0O- == {} [] The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy brown dog<br/>

            0123456789,.:;?/<>'"[]{}|\-=\`~!@#$%^&*()-=\\

        </p>

    </div>

__BODY

done

cat >> fonts.html << __FOOTER

    <hr/>

</body>

</html>

__FOOTER

echo "fonts.html created"

Linux speakers hum after no audio

 Linux (Artix / Arch) is putting my speakers to sleep after a few seconds of no audio activity and the speakers hum because of it.  Found the fix on reddit

# echo 0 > /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save

Set KDE to use X11 instead of Wayland

 I use Artix Linux and by default it uses Wayland.  Some programs I have don't support that yet so I need to switch to X11 permanently.  If you are in KDE you can log out and change the session to X11 but this doesn't "stick" long term.  The fix is 

- Open KDE start menu

- Search for Login and pick Login Screen (SDDM)

- In the top menu click Behavior

- At the top change it to X11 where it says "Automatically login with session"

- Click Apply

KDE Halloween color scheme

 Put the color file in the following path then go to Settings > Colors

/home/[username]/.local/share/color-schemes/

Color file here : https://github.com/htx80nerd/kde-halloween-colors/tree/main

KDE System Settings crashes opening

I use KDE Systems Settings often sometimes, especially when changing fonts or color themes I might end up inside of it several times in 1 hr.  Sometimes when I open it crashes straight away.

The cause is there is some 'systemsettings' process running in the background.  So the fix here is to open a terminal and kill it then try to open again.

$killall systemsettings

Geany in dark mode on KDE

 This is how to get Geany into light mode using KDE.  My KDE is already in light mode so I am unsure why Geany opens in dark mode.  Open the KDE menu and go to geany then right click > edit.  Then click Applications tab at the top.  In the line 'Environmental variables' add this

GTK_THEME=Breeze

LibreOffice Writer stuck in dark mode

I was able to force LibreOffice Writer into light mode by editing this line to the libreoffice-writer.desktop file found here

/home/USERNAME/.local/share/applications/

You can see your available theme names here

/usr/share/themes/

Orig : 

Exec=libreoffice --writer %U

Edit :

Exec=env GTK_THEME=Breeze libreoffice --writer %U

NOTE THIS HAD TO BE CHANGED ON 2 DIFFERENT LINES

KDE custom keyboard shortcuts using kdotool

For my job I have many windows open across multiple desktops and I often need to get back to a window on a different desktop quickly, or pressing ALT+Tab isnt a good option because I have 5+ windows open.

In KDE system settings search for 'shortcut' then click Add New button > 'Command or Script' and use a command like this

kdotool search --name slack windowactivate

After that click 'add custom shortcut' button and press the keyboard combo you want.

Brave browser and Vivaldi won't open in KDE

 Ran into a weird issue today - suddenly Brave and Vivaldi refuse to open.  Same for Brave Beta.  Running from the command line I see something like this

[15524:15524:0724/100844.416388:ERROR:process_singleton_posix.cc(226)]
read() failed: Connection reset by peer (104)
[15524:15524:0724/100844.550935:ERROR:browser_main_loop.cc(278)]
GLib-GObject: g_type_add_interface_static: assertion 'G_TYPE_IS_INSTANTIATABLE (instance_type)' failed
[15524:15524:0724/100844.550956:ERROR:browser_main_loop.cc(278)]
GLib-GObject: g_type_interface_add_prerequisite: assertion 'G_TYPE_IS_INTERFACE (interface_type)' failed
[15524:15524:0724/100844.550963:ERROR:browser_main_loop.cc(278)]
GLib: g_once_init_leave: assertion 'result != 0' failed
[15524:15524:0724/100844.550966:ERROR:browser_main_loop.cc(278)]
GLib-GObject: g_type_add_interface_static: assertion 'G_TYPE_IS_INSTANTIATABLE (instance_type)' failed
[15524:15524:0724/100844.550969:ERROR:browser_main_loop.cc(278)]
GLib-GObject: g_type_register_static: assertion 'parent_type > 0' failed

I fixed this by chance by going into the KDE settings > Appearance and changing everything back to Breeze.  And under 'Application Style' on the bottom right I clicked 'Configure GNOME/GTK Application Style' and changed that to Breeze (it was blank before).  Did not have to reboot and all browsers launch ok now.  Did have a slight delay with Vivaldi but it seems ok.

Gimp text antialiasing odd color

 On one of my laptops in Gimp the text has this weird teal color on the anti-aliasing part.  If I turn off anti-aliasing the text color is normal.  

The text itself is white, but because the tint around it is not, it makes the text look not-white.  I tried resetting Gimp to default, this didn't help.  I uninstalled Gimp and tried to delete all files in /home/.config - then rebooted and installed fresh.  This did not seem to help either.

The fix seems to be go to Image > Precision change to 32 bit.  Before it was on 8 bit.  I have no idea how or why.   This was happening on brand new images, not some old / existing image that was set to 8 bit incorrectly.

Debian MX Linux cant see emojis

I noticed in MX Linux KDE I can't see most emojis , was able to fix it by installing this then rebooting

apt install fonts-noto-color-emoji

Can now see emojis that previously showed up as boxes