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ELL Blog

Linux [Desktop] Tips

https://blog.elijahlopez.ca/posts/linux-tips/ Elijah Lopez

Table of Contents

Which Distro Should I Use?

Fedora KDE

The best distro is functionally the best, stable (for general and niches like gaming and content creation), and has better performance than the alternatives.

  • For functionality, KDE is the best; fractional scaling.
  • For stability, we choose anything but Arch. A perfect example is this comment explaining that when things break, he doesn’t consider it broken if he has to use the internet (arch wiki) to fix the problem. My definition of broken is that the issue cannot be fixed by restarting your computer.
  • For performance, we want to avoid Ubuntu-based distros that use snaps
  • We are left with distros that support KDE out of the box: Namely, Debian based (excluding Ubuntu) and Fedora based.

So why Fedora instead of Debian? Well because it’s more up to date and it’s also not confusing to download unlike Debian.

Webcam Application

KDE

Install kamoso (with Add/Remove Software).

Gnome

Cheese

How to Install yay

Yet Another Yogurt (yay) helps you install packages from AUR using the command yay -S instead of entering in commands to clone and build the package.

pacman -S --needed --noconfirm git base-devel
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git
cd yay
makepkg -si
cd ..
rm yay -rf

How to Install Packages from AUR

You can either do pamac build $PKGNAME or use yay -s $PACKAGENAME which requires installing yay as shown above.

In the next section is an example on how to install visual studio code.

The following is a one-liner way to install packages in yay to skip the prompts.

echo y | LANG=C yay --provides=false --answerdiff=None --answerclean=None --mflags "--noconfirm" -S $list_of_packages

gpg: keyserver recevie failed: No route to host 

gpg --server hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-key KEY_GOES_HERE

If the above fails with “gpg: keyserver receive failed: Server indicated a failure”,

Use sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf and add Cloudflare’s DNS

nameserver 1.1.1.1  # Cloudflare

How to install Visual Studio Code in Manjaro

To install vscode, yay -S visual-studio-code-bin

VSCode Fix ZSH Font 

sudo pacman -Su ttf-meslo-nerd-font-powerlevel10k ttf-firacode-nerd --noconfirm

Set Terminal › Integrated: Font Family to firaCode Nerd Font, monospace or MesloLGS NF, monospace

How to Install Fira Code Nerd Font on Arch

Official install instructions

Suppose you want to install a package on Arch. The first step would be to search for what you want using pacman -Ss a query

> pacman -Ss fira code
extra/texlive-fontsextra 2023.66594-15 (texlive)
    TeX Live - Additional fonts
extra/texlive-latexextra 2023.66594-15 (texlive)
    TeX Live - LaTeX additional packages
extra/ttf-fira-code 6.2-2
    Monospaced font with programming ligatures
extra/ttf-firacode-nerd 3.0.2-1 (nerd-fonts)
    Patched font Fira (Fura) Code from nerd fonts library
extra/woff-fira-code 6.2-2
    Monospaced font with programming ligatures
extra/woff2-fira-code 6.2-2
    Monospaced font with programming ligatures

Next install the Fira Code Nerd Font.

sudo pacman -S ttf-firacode-nerd --noconfirm

To use this font in Visual Studio Code, set the editor font family to firaCode Nerd Font, 'Cascadia Code', Consolas, 'Courier New', monospace.

Set the terminal font-family to firaCode Nerd Font, monospace

Setting Default Browser for Electron Apps 

xdg-mime default firefox.desktop x-scheme-handler/http
xdg-mime default firefox.desktop x-scheme-handler/https

How to fix Sudo Password Not Accepted 

systemctl start systemd-homed
pacman -S pambase --noconfirm   # optional

Virtual Terminal

  • Ctrl + Alt + F4 to go to virtual terminal
  • Ctrl + Alt + F1 to go back to desktop

X-Server Restart

Ctrl + Alt + Backspace (unconfirmed)

How to setup OneDrive on Linux 

yay onedrive-abraunegg

Note: If asked regarding a provider for ’d-runtime’ and ’d-compiler’, select ’liblphobos’ and ’ldc'

Run onedrive to setup account.

Increase number of inotify watchers (number of files that can be monitored)

echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288 | sudo tee /etc/sysctl.d/40-max-user-watches.conf && sudo sysctl --system

Enable the system service

sudo systemctl enable onedrive@$USER.service
sudo systemctl start onedrive@$USER.service
journalctl -u onedrive@$USER # scroll to bottom to check if syncing works

Linux How to Read a File in the Terminal

  • Use less to read line by line (arrow up and down keys)
  • Use more to read page by page (arrow up and down keys)
  • Use cat to output entire file (useful for piping | commands)

How to Install an AppImage on Manjaro

First install appimagelauncher

sudo pacman -S appimagelauncher

Next double click on the downloaded AppImage

Linux Append Line to System File

To append a line to a system file, do not use >>. Instead use commandForOutputGoesHere | sudo tee -a /path/to/file

Steam Scale UI on Linux or Manjaro

Before we get started, reminder to prefer using Steam (Runtime) instead of Steam (Native)

If you have root access, run the following command so that steam will be properly scaled no matter how it is launched (steam desktop shortcut, terminal, game desktop shortcut).

echo "STEAM_FORCE_DESKTOPUI_SCALING='1.5'" | sudo tee -a /etc/environment

If you do not have root access, edit your login shell (~/.profile) instead.

echo "STEAM_FORCE_DESKTOPUI_SCALING='1.5'" | sudo tee -a ~/.profile

Test 1.5 out by using source /path/to/file && steam. If 1.5 isn’t right for you, use nano to edit your file:

sudo nano /etc/environment or nano ~/.profile

Now log out and log back in so that your system will source from either of the files that you edited.

Alternatively, you could edit every single one of your game desktop entries in addition to your steam shortcuts,

To fix scaling, simply run

sudo nano /usr/share/applications/steam.desktop

If you have gedit, you can use that instead.

Next scroll to the first Exec for the desktop entry, and add -forcedesktopscaling=1.5 like below

Exec=/usr/bin/steam-runtime -forcedesktopscaling=1.5 %U

Save the file and restart steam (the next section has a command for shutting down apps by program name).

You will also have to add this argument to all game shortcuts.

How to Pin or Favourite Games on Steam Linux

Copy the desktop file to your local applications directory. This will let you pin / favourite the game to your start menu. You can choose to delete the original shortcut afterwards.

mkdir ~/.local/share/applications
sudo cp ~/Desktop/Game.desktop ~/.local/share/applications

How to Force Close Apps on Linux 

killall steam

version GLIBC_2.38 Not Found

Man I tried to show my friend today how my Manjaro system was running and of course it breaks.

Manjaro fucking sucks. Let’s get that straight. I tried running a pacman command and it doesn’t upgrade my system. I did something and everything broke.

pacman
pacman: /usr/lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.38' not found (required by pacman)
pacman: /usr/lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.38' not found (required by /usr/lib/libalpm.so.13)

To fix this issue,

  1. Download pacman-static
  2. `cd ~/Downloads && chmod +x ./pacman-static``
  3. sudo pacman -Syu glibc-locales --overwrite /usr/lib/locale/\*/\* --noconfirm reference
  4. sudo ./pacman-static -Syu --noconfirm
  5. sudo pacman-mirrors -f5

Hey hey hey, we fixed it.

My laptop’s battery drained so when I started it up again I got the error in the following section.

Failed to Start Light Display Manager Error

In the lightdm logs, you’ll see the following.

failed to start seat: seat0

First step is to get terminal access

  1. Ctrl + Alt + F2
  2. Enter your username and then your password
  3. sudo pacman -Syu --noconfirm
nmtui    # connect to a wifi network if you are using wifi
sudo pacman -S lightdm-gtk-greeter --noconfirm
sudo pacman -Syu
sudo systemctl start lightdm

How to Enable Wi-Fi in TTY/TTL

  1. Ctrl + Alt + F2
  2. nmtui

How to Install Python 3.10 on Manjaro (or Arch)

Try this first.

yay -S python310

It didn’t work for me, so this is how I did it.

cd ~/Downloads
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/python310.git
cd python310
makepkg -si
# the directory is 360 MB, so only if that's a lot for your system, remove it
cd ..
rm -rf python310

This will take a LONG time…but it works.

Music Caster runs on Linux again!

How to Reduce Firefox Scroll Speed or Sensitivity

The scroll speed on Firefox is too sensitive. To reduce it,

  1. Go to about:config
  2. Search for mousewheel.default.delta_multiplier_y
  3. Set to 75 or change until satisfactory
  4. You can test the scroll speed on this post itself

Fix Touchpad after Waking From Sleep

See my other post

Black Screens on Monitors

When dual-booting Windows and Fedora, after a few weeks I started encountering a problem where after 5-15 minutes my displays would go Black, audio still worked, however my NVIDIA 5070 Ti would start spinning at 100%.

I first thought this was a wayland problem, so tried KDE plasma x11 and still encountered the same problem. I then thought it was a KDE/Fedora problem so I booted into Windows. To my surprised, I encountered the same problem after 10-15minutes.

After searching I found some advice to turn off GSYNC. So boot into Windows and turn off GSYNC.

I speculate the problem stems from using one GSYNC supported monitor with a non-GSYNC supported monitor. There must be some sort of NVIDIA driver bug that didn’t account for a setup so when the GPU tries to leverage GSYNC (variable refresh rate), it tries to do so on all monitors instead of just the supported monitor. And maybe the supported monitor doesn’t support it properly either. So the failure comes from being unable to rectify when GSYNC support isn’t working? I’m not too sure, I didn’t bother testing using only one monitor.

App Images

Install AppImageLauncher

To install on Fedora, we need to download an RPM file corresponding to our CPU architecture. Most PCs are x86_64, so you are look for x86_64*rpm or something.

How to Resize Partition?

I don’t recommend using GPARTED Live. Instead you can boot into the same Live ISO that you used to install Linux, and from there, you can install gparted through Discover (or whatever the software store is on your distro). From there, you can simply resize (expand). You’ll see a warning but from experience, grub will work fine even if the free space you are allocating preceeds the partition you want to expand.

Adding Aliases

Sometimes you need to use the command line for long ass commands.

nano ~/.bash_aliases
alias x="command"
nano ~/.bashrc
. ~/.bash_aliases

How to Connect XBox One Controller Over Bluetooth

Install xboxdr

How to Play Epic Games or GOG Launcher Games

Install Heroic, an Open Source Epic Games and GOG Launcher

If some games don’t work with Heroic, you can do the following

  1. sudo -H nano /etc/environment
  2. USE_FAKE_EPIC_EXE=true