I’m fortunate enough to have both a desktop and laptop computer. My desktop has a lot more power, a better video card, and is connected to 2 x 24″ monitors, making it really easy for me to learn something on one screen and practice it on another. I prefer to use my desktop computer for…
Eliminating Xubuntu’s Alt key behaviour for gamedev
In the What can you do with a Thinkpad T430s running Xubuntu in 2022 article I mentioned that I was planning on using my T430s for gamedev using the Godot 3 game engine. One issue with running both Godot and Unity under Xubuntu is that both make use of the Alt key. Unfortunately so does…
What can you do with a Thinkpad T430s running Xubuntu in 2022
The Thinkpad T430s came out late 2012, making it almost 10 years old now. When I bought my T430s it came with no hard drive and 4GB of DDR3 RAM. I’ve since upgraded the laptop so it has 16GB of RAM and a 500GB SSD. Currently the laptop is running Xubuntu 22.04 along with some…
Syncthing – Synchronizing my Android cell phone with Xubuntu
In the past couple of years I’ve had to “free” space on my Google drive account because it’s filled up with video and photographs I’ve taken with my cell phone. The first time I filled the drive it took me a very long time to download everything. I learned quickly that the best way to…
Install Google Chrome in Xubuntu Linux 20.04
Despite the fact that many concerns have been raised over privacy issues related to Google Chrome (link to a Wired web site page) it remains by far the most popular web browser. Google Chrome isn’t installed in Xubuntu Linux version 20.04 by default, and our Computer Recycling Project doesn’t install it in our customized version…
My Top 10 programs that run under Linux
Coming up with a top 10 list of favourite programs was more difficult than I thought after so many years of using different software under Linux. In fact the order of these probably changes often, and I haven’t included any command-line tools in this list despite the fact that several probably rank even higher than…
Xubuntu doesn’t have to look “stock”
I saw a post on Twitter comparing different mainstream Ubuntu Linux derivatives, one of which was Xubuntu Linux. You can see that article here: https://dekisoft.com/which-ubuntu-version-is-best/ Unfortunately the article only dedicates 5 sentences to Xubuntu. Those sentences boil down to: It uses the XFCE environment, it’s “old” with “basic” desktop customization features It may not be…
OnlyOffice – LibreOffice and MS Office Alternative
When asked for an alternative to Microsoft Office I almost always recommend LibreOffice. In fact I generally recommend LibreOffice over Microsoft Office because: It’s free (both as in freedom and cost) When pasting from the web it tends to format better than Microsoft Word (in my experience) It can be shared with others freely (you…
(barcode) Improvements to hardware.sh script
Last week I mentioned the hardware detection BASH script I wrote for refurbishers installing Ubuntu-based distributions on desktops and laptops. I’ve made several changes to the script, including: fixing a bug where the script broke on a laptop if a battery wasn’t present changing the margins so more information could be included in the future…