I've had this problem for a while, Google Chrome seems to lower the FPS of WebGL content / games to 60 FPS on a dual monitor setup, even if my main monitor uses 144Hz !

Well, here is what I think is happening: chrome seems to use the first monitor as a reference to determine the desired FPS of WebGL contents. Now, that does not mean the "primary display" setting, I am talking about the actual numbers you can see in Settings > Screen Display, those numbers :

They are assigned by the actual firmware, and so far the only way I've found to change them is to swap display cables on the back of my GPU !

So basically, if your dual monitor setup contains a monitor that is 60Hz, make sure it's not the monitor with number 1 assigned, swap cables until your best monitor is 1, then the problem should be fixed !

Based on this article about Log4Shell, you can search for any occurence of log4j on your linux system with this command:

sudo find / -iname "log4j*.jar"

The / indicate to search from the root directory
The -iname is to specify the case insensitive search terms

If nothing outputs after that command finishes, your system should be okay !

If not, please secure your system.

You just got yourself a new Razer device and you realized you can't configure it without the proprietary Synapse software (which is not available on linux), and now you are sad ?

Be sad no more ! The open-source community got your back.

Step 1 : drivers

What you need to do is install OpenRazer (github repo) ! OpenRazer is a collection of drivers for many Razer devices, this will allow communication between your computer and your devices.

Just follow their instructions in the download page.

Step 2 : GUI

You will also need an interface to let you change settings of your devices.

I recommend using Polychromatic (github repo) because it seems to be well adopted and actively maintained. Just follow their instructions in the download page again.

(there is also a list of other compatible applications at the end of the README of OpenRazer if you want)

PS: You might need to reboot your computer if the application tell you that your device ID is not recognized, even if it is in the list of supported devices, to make sure drivers are properly running.

Happy gaming !!
(or happy "whatever" you do with your computer)

I just discovered this after years of using Ubuntu: every user account you have created on your Ubuntu computer (during installation or afterward) have Read and Execute permission to everything in the /home/ directory of EVERY users, by DEFAULT !!

(just type ll /home/ in a terminal and you'll see drwxr-xr-x !)

This is outrageous, it means that any user account could read every documents, every pictures, every-things of any user, even if that user is supposed to be protected by a password !!

This behavior should be fixed since release 21.04 but it DOES NOT FIX PREVIOUSLY CREATED USER ACCOUNTS !

How to fix

You can manually remove the read and execute permission for other users with this command :

sudo chmod 750 /home/*

And to fix the new account creation process, you have to do this too :

sudo sed -i s/DIR_MODE=0755/DIR_MODE=0750/ /etc/adduser.conf
echo "HOME_MODE 0750" | sudo tee -a /etc/login.defs

After that you should be good to go.

To make sure everything is working, just try to access the home directory of any other user (ex: ll /home/other_user_name_here/Documents/, it should say Permission denied.

More info & a personal note

The only explanation I could find for this unsafe and unintuitive default was :

This default was chosen in the early days of Ubuntu, to support use-cases like multiple family members sharing a single PC and wanting to easily share files with one another or within university environments to support easy collaboration.

But to me that's not a good excuse ! In the past, I might have created a "guest" account (with no password) on a laptop to let other peoples try Ubuntu... or I might have created an other user account on a personal computer to run apps or scripts that I did not trust, thinking it would be unable to access my personal files... WRONG !

If your installation of Ubuntu is not fresh (an old version that you updated since then), this solution might be exactly what you need to permanently fix this bug.

First, check the list of installed input drivers with this :

apt list -i | grep xorg-input

If you see xserver-xorg-input-synaptics and xserver-xorg-input-libinput, good news ! Just uninstall the synaptics package like this :

sudo apt remove xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

The reason is simple : this package is obsolete.

Now restart the xorg server (logging out and then back in will do) and the problem should be fixed ! If it is not, try toggling the "Natural Scrolling" setting in the "Mouse & Touchpad" page of Gnome Settings.

Here is my simple bash script that creates a fresh MySQL database backup every day for the last 30 days, and a monthly backup for the last 12 months, and a yearly backup for the last 10 years !

It saves the backups on the same server (locally) and it does not notify you by email if an error happens, it's up to you to implement those features if you want. (it does keep track of every success/errors in a log file tho).

This script is meant to be executed once every day in a cronjob (but can be executed more than once per day without problems, if desired).

To schedule it's execution, simply call crontab -e in a terminal (while being logged in as the user that will run the script), and add this :

PATH=/usr/bin
30 2 * * * bash /path/to/script/backup-database.bash

This will run the script once every day at 2:30 AM.

PS. Before writing this script, I read this article (which contains good alternatives btw), but I just didn't want to install and setup postfix on my server so... I wrote this script.

I hope it helps you !

Based on personal preferences, which are : I want an OS that is simple, elegant, modern and deprived of visual clutter because I work on a plethora of personal projects all the time (coding/3D/web/art etc) therefore I don't want to waste my time also fixing an OS to make it work well. It needs to work well out of the box.

I also like the idea of getting used to a "stock distribution", meaning that I can install it on many computers, delete it and reinstall it completely without having to transfer my tweaks from one installation to an other in order to feel comfortable.

My research began with the intention of finding the best Linux distribution after using Ubuntu for about 10 years. I wanted something new and better, but ended up choosing Ubuntu again, because it's still the best.

This post is about a promising contender to Ubuntu that I almost installed on my main PC, but retracted when I saw some of it's flaws...

So, lets dive in :

Say hello to Zorin OS 15.3 Core !

Here is why I like it and why it might beat Ubuntu (eventually) :

I like how the desktop environment look. Clean and simple, well spaced. It does not "strive for attention", it is just there, waiting. Ready to serve !

I like how their website look. It breathes and present the OS very well. It's a promising indicator (in my opinion) because if the distribution's authors can't even design their website properly, how can they design their OS properly ?

I like the absence of an OS top bar alongside a bottom bar. It's like being constantly fullscreen-mode without having to F11 all the time.

I like the files on desktop disabled by default, it forces me to organize my stuff ahead of time instead of just throwing everything on the desktop for so long that I forget what it was, until it's "cleanup-time" and I dump everything "as-is" in my big pile of dumped things. - true story.

I like that it's been around since 2008. It's not just some folks that woke up one morning with a new distro name in mind, who just took Ubuntu then picked some packages and voilà, a new OS is born !

And now lets explore why it's not perfect...

I dislike their dark mode

Every OS/website/everything should have a dark/night mode ! But sadly this one is not done right. The accent color is too much present. It's like they applied a big color filter on top of everything.

It could even mess up your perception of colors especially if you are working on art or any visual stuff !

Well, look for yourself :

It seems like they tweaked things just so it work for their default blue accent color, and completely forgot to look at other accent colors (which they provide a "curated list of" by the way, you can't choose the specific color you want, you have to pick from their list).

And the icons color stays bluish even if you choose a completely different accent color.

The settings cog icon has a white opaque "hole" in the middle...

Overall, the dark mode feels like an after thought (and it probably was, since it's kinda new to the OS).

I like dislike the existence of a paid version

At first I was okay with that since it looked like the best OS ever on the surface. I would be welling to donate some money if it has solved my quest for the perfect OS, but it didn't !

Beside the work that has been done on the gnome apps bar, the rest feels just like a basic Ubuntu + Gnome experience. I don't think they deserve to receive money after seeing how little work have been done on their end compared to the whole Ubuntu > Gnome > Debian > Linux stack behind them...

It is not well polished

In french we have an expression for that, its "tourner les coins rond", it means like when you pass the aspirator in your room and you don't go fully into corners, you make round turns. It basically means that you botch the job. You do the most obvious part and omit the details.

That's what it feels like they did, but ironically they didn't really make round corners, it's quite the opposite :

Sometimes apps overflow out of the rounded corners (and I'm not talking about old apps, I'm talking about firefox, the default browser pre-installed with the OS !).

Sometimes windows corners are round, sometimes squared ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Sometimes when you hover things that are in the corner of a window, the background color goes outside the rounded corner.

Weird design choices

Like this dashed lines to indicate that the area can be scrolled... I don't understand from where that "convention" is coming from ?

In conclusion

We can see the Zorin OS vision and where it wants to go. And I share that vision for a desktop environment, but it is poorly executed for now.

If they could fix those issues, (and I don't see why they couldn't because Ubuntu nails rounded corners and dark theme so well, since Zorin OS is based on Ubuntu, how could they mess it up ?) it would be a very solid contender to Ubuntu.

In the meantime, I'll stick with Ubuntu !

For me, the best linux distribution is still Ubuntu. I've been using Linux for more than 10 years, it's on my main PC, my work PC (when I can), and all my other laptops/computers (well, except one cheap chromebook).

I chose Ubuntu for my main PC in 2014 after playing with a couple distros and I've been using it ever since. At the time it was an obvious choice, but water has flowed under the bridges and a couple other good looking distros have popped-up !

I recently looked at all the good looking ones I could find and (sadly?) I've been disappointed. Most of them are in fact Ubuntu-based, that must mean something...

Why Ubuntu is still the best

Because it's a very polished experience

Every aspects of the OS and the desktop environment is polished to fit within the "Ubuntu experience". I rarely encounter visual bugs or design flaws.

Especially for a main PC (or an OS you show someone to convince them that Linux is the best), you need something solid, cohesive and that's what you get with Ubuntu.

Because it looks modern

So many linux distros look an feel old, not Ubuntu.

Because it's stable

Being a Debian-based distribution, packages are solid and stable.

Because it's well supported

The community behind Ubuntu is bigger and it's so much easier to find solutions online for problems you may encounter.

Because : perfect dark theme

I use dark themes wherever I can now, and Ubuntu's is very well balanced for use during the day and also during the night. It's not too dark, not too bright, colors are neutral. My eyes are very happy !

Because there is not much things to be unhappy about

Well, besides that time they included Amazon stuff by default, or the fact that they try very hard to push their Snaps forward...

The only thing I began to be unhappy about is the title bar, I think it's a waste of space considering you have a dock that mostly contains empty space (who completely fills his dock with applications shortcuts ? not me). But that can be fixed with gnome extensions anyway.

Other than that, no complaints !

Conclusion

Ubuntu is still the best option if you want a Linux-based OS that you can count on. I'll still be using it for the next couple years !

Other distributions I've considered that are worth a look :

• https://zorinos.com/
• https://elementary.io/
• https://www.deepin.org/
• https://pop.system76.com/
• https://garudalinux.org/
• https://hefftorlinux.net/

This has been annoying me for years, every time I tried to type width in SCSS, the first snippet suggested after typing the first 2 letters (wi) was that annoying warning snippet :

but not anymore !

TL;DR

The snippet is added by a core package named language-todo...

To prevent it from annoying you ever again :

1. disable the language-todo package
2. close Atom
3. re-open Atom

Problem solved !

To disable a package, open your atom Settings (Edit > Preferences), then go to the Packages left tab, type language-todo in the text field and click the Disable button when you found the appropriate package.

Bonus knowledge : How to find where Atom snippets comes from (on Ubuntu)

This might come in handy if you ever encounter another snippet problem...

There are three places where snippets can reside :

1. in the file where you add your own snippets (~/.atom/snippets.cson)
2. in the directory where the community packages you installed are : ~/.atom/packages/ (in a directory named snippets at the root of each packages)
3. in the directory where Atom is installed (/snap/atom/current/usr/share/atom/ on Ubuntu, if installed through snaps, otherwise try /usr/share/atom/ but I'm not 100% sure)

To search for snippets, open all those places in Atom (..lol) and search for all instances of the snippet you are looking for (CTRL + SHIFT + F) until you find a file containing it !

Do you ear a very annoying crackling or popping sound coming from your speaker whenever an audio source start playing on Ubuntu 20.04 ? Well, that's because a couple releases ago they enabled power saving feature of the sound card by default, and that's what causing this.

The fix is pretty simple, you just have to disable the power saving extension in the pulseaudio config. Type that in a terminal :

sudo nano /etc/pulse/default.pa

Then find this line :

### Automatically suspend sinks/sources that become idle for too long
load-module module-suspend-on-idle

and comment it like so :

### Automatically suspend sinks/sources that become idle for too long
# load-module module-suspend-on-idle

Then save and exit nano (CTRL + O, CTRL + X).

Then go on and restart pulseaudio with this in a terminal :

systemctl --user restart pulseaudio.service

And you should be good to go !

I just had this problem where I could not pair a Microsoft Designer Keyboard on Ubuntu 20.04 because I was supposed to enter a PIN / Passkey code but it was never displayed to me by Ubuntu.

To quickly check if that's your case too, when you try to pair the keyboard does it hangs for a couple seconds before failing ? And when you press ENTER right after initiating pairing, does it fail right away ? If yes, thats probably because the pairing expect you to enter a PIN code (but you can't see it).

Step 1 : finding the device

I fixed that problem by using the command line interface tool named bluetoothctl.

Simply type bluetoothctl in a terminal and press enter, this will initiate interactive mode.

Then from there, type in scan on to start scanning for bluetooth device, once you see your keyboard, just copy its mac address (it should look like that : 2F:6B:12:49:2C:8E).

If you missed it, you can also list found devices with the devices command.

Then stop scanning with the scan off command.

Step 2 : bluetooth agent

Now, the part that fixed the problem for me was the bluetooth agent. A bluetooth agent is what is responsible for managing pairing code exchanges between devices.

To make sure an agent is active, type agent on AND also type the default-agent command. That's what fixed the problem for me ! For some reasons, the active agent was not handling my keyboard pairing pin...

Step 3 : pair the device

Now type pair 2F:6B:12:49:2C:8E (while replacing the MAC address with the one you copied earlier).

This should now print something like this :

[CHG] Device 2F:6B:12:49:2C:8E Connected: yes
[agent] Passkey: 123486
[CHG] Device 2F:6B:12:49:2C:8E Paired: yes

It basically tells you the passkey you are supposed to type on the bluetooth keyboard, finally ! Type it in and press ENTER.

At this point it should work !

You can also type trust 2F:6B:12:49:2C:8E (while replacing the MAC address again) to make sure the pairing persist after reboot.

After that, type exit to exit the interactive shell and you are good to go !

It's basically the same problem that happened with Ubuntu 17.04, but now it's Ubuntu 19.10 that has reached it's end of life !

Here is the full error messages I get :

Hit:1 http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable InRelease
Hit:2 http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu eoan InRelease
Ign:3 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan InRelease
Ign:4 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan-updates InRelease
Ign:5 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan-backports InRelease
Ign:6 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan-security InRelease
Err:7 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan Release
  404  Not Found [IP: 91.189.88.142 80]
Err:8 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan-updates Release
  404  Not Found [IP: 91.189.88.142 80]
Err:9 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan-backports Release
  404  Not Found [IP: 91.189.88.142 80]
Err:10 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan-security Release
  404  Not Found [IP: 91.189.88.142 80]
Reading package lists... Done
E: The repository 'http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan Release' no longer has a Release file.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.
E: The repository 'http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan-updates Release' no longer has a Release file.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.
E: The repository 'http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan-backports Release' no longer has a Release file.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.
E: The repository 'http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan-security Release' no longer has a Release file.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.

Normally you would open /etc/apt/sources.list and replace every instances of http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu by http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu, but this time around it does not work because the Release.gpg seems to be missing... which will give you this error :

The repository 'http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan Release' does not have a Release file.

EDIT : apparently the release file is back so this might still work !
If it doesn't, just continue reading :)

I also tried http://archive.canonical.com/dists which is missing files too.

I finally stumbled upon this answer suggesting to go on https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archivemirrors and find an official mirror that still has a working directory.

Currently this one : http://de.mirrors.clouvider.net/ubuntu/dists/eoan/ is still working. If it doesn't at the time of your reading, try those that are marked with Last update unknown first until you find one that is still working...

Did you update to Ubuntu 19.10 on your Dell XPS 13 and now it won't boot, printing messages like error: Unknown TPM error and Must load kernel first (or something similar).

There is a bug repport related to this issue which apparently come from grub 2.04. Many people say that disabling TPM or Secure boot in the BIOS (press F2 while computer starts) will fix the issue, but in my case there is no mention of TPM in my BIOS and secure boot was already off... So what to do next ?

I had an old bootable USB stick laying around with Ubuntu 14.10 on it, so I wanted to use that to access my file system and maybe install a previous version of Grub or something... but it all went better !

I rebooted my laptop with the key plugged in, the booting was extremely slow (to the point I was not sure my usb key still worked...) but eventually it booted up, and not in Ubuntu 14.10, it booted Ubuntu 19.10 on my actual laptop ! I'm not sure of what happened there, maybe the grub of my usb stick kicked in, then he booted the ubuntu installed on my laptop, I dunno.

I then updated all packages, rebooted without the USB stick plugged in (just to be sure), and everything seems to work properly !

I hope it will be that easy for you too :)