Ubuntu

Created: 2017-03-19 14:49:04 -0700 Modified: 2022-05-22 11:37:44 -0700

Installation (reference)

I just followed the steps here for creating a bootable USB on 3/19/2017. It covers everything, so I’m not going to write it out again. Downloading the ISO took a pretty long time, then using Rufus took ~6 minutes with a USB 2.0 drive.

I then restarted my laptop (being an Inspiron, I had to press F12 to choose the boot order), went through a bunch of steps, and realized that I shouldn’t use the Ubuntu partitioner because it didn’t work for me for some reason.

So I booted back into Windows, hit Win+X, chose “Disk Management”. I then shrunk my C: volume from 900 GB to 500 GB (I figure Windows should have more space than my Linux partition). Note: if you can’t shrink the volume to the extent that you want, then you may have to defragment your disk.

I then went back to the Ubuntu installer and used the unallocated volume for Ubuntu.

Update from 10/31/18: I installed without using WUBI on a disk that did not have a Windows installation. I first needed to use disk manager to free 100GB, then I needed to make a 2 MB unformatted partition and flag it with bios_grub. I actually did this through the Try Ubuntu feature from the flash drive and ran gparted (which I had to install). Then, after that, I used the boot repair tool to set up GRUB on it. The boot repair tool needed to be restarted after the gparted changes were made.

Uninstallation

If you installed WUBI (Ubuntu IN Windows): https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WubiGuide#How_do_I_manually_uninstall_Wubi.3F

Any other way: make an Ubuntu flash drive, boot it up with “try out Ubuntu”, then run these steps: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OS-Uninstaller

Post-installation

I got the GNOME Shell, but there were tons of problems getting everything to work thanks to some borked packages. I couldn’t access OneNote to document how I fixed everything (because it didn’t work from Firefox for some reason), so these are the only notes I have on what I did:

I had this error

adam@adam-inspiron:~$ sudo apt upgrade

[sudo] password for adam:

Reading package lists… Done

Building dependency tree

Reading state information… Done

Calculating upgrade… Done

0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

1 not fully installed or removed.

Need to get 0 B/54.1 kB of archives.

After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.

Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y

dpkg: error processing package libgupnp-dlna-2.0-3 (—configure):

package libgupnp-dlna-2.0-3 is not ready for configuration

cannot configure (current status ‘half-installed’)

Errors were encountered while processing:

libgupnp-dlna-2.0-3

E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

People online suggested reinstalling the failing package before trying to remove it entirely. That was doable via this command:

sudo apt install —reinstall libgupnp-dlna-2.0-3

Before that, even Chrome couldn’t be installed via Ubuntu’s installer. Other things I tried were to run the “Software Updater” and restart.

Emojis

Oh boy, this was a fun trip into the void. The end steps are pretty easy actually:

Follow the installation instructions here.
Restart ibus. I have an “EN” indicator in my system tray on KDE that I can use to do this.
Add the input method as mentioned at the instruction link (Input Method → Add → Other → uniemoji)
Add a keyboard shortcut in the General tab (this is NOT obvious)
1. Click the ellipsis next to “Keyboard Shortcuts” → “Next input method:“
2. Delete any shortcuts already showing if you want.
3. Click the ellipsis next to “Key code:“
4. Click “Disabled” to enter a mode where it listens for a shortcut.
5. Press the shortcut you want to set.
6. Click the “Add” button – without this, it won’t work.

Terminal

Quickly opening

Ctrl+alt+T will open a Terminal.

Configuring profiles

In the default Terminal, you can go to Edit —> Preferences to change a profile. I made a new profile, set up the colors and font size that I wanted, then made it so that all terminals open with that profile.

Basics

Searching for packages

apt-cache search PACKAGE_NAME

Example: apt-cache search hack | grep font

This helped me find the Hack font.

Paste buffer

[12:46] nerfprime: you can select text in any window and middle click somewhere else and it will paste it

Installing fonts (reference)

From a tiny bit of research, it sounds like you should prefer OpenType fonts over TrueType fonts.

Based on the reference, I just did “sudo apt install fonts-hack-otf” to get the font, then restart my Terminal since that’s where I wanted to use the font.

Sound quality

I connected some Bluetooth headphones and the sound quality was abysmal (it was like an old radio was playing everything). I opened the Sound settings by typing it into the search menu, then chose my Bluetooth headset and changed the profile to “High Fidelity Playback (A2DP Sink)“. That’s all I had to do to make it sound much more crisp.

Add applications to Launcher

[ignore this whole section for now; I never finished it]

I don’t know if this is the best way to do this, but here’s what I did:

Put a shortcut in /usr/bin
1. cd /usr/bin
2. sudo ln -s /home/adam/Downloads/Discord/Discord
Open Discord (which you can now do via alt+F2 and typing “Discord”)
There are more instructions here on creating a .desktop file: https://askubuntu.com/questions/224004/how-to-add-programs-to-the-launcher

Troubleshooting

Graphics issue when dual-booting

https://askubuntu.com/questions/162075/my-computer-boots-to-a-black-screen-what-options-do-i-have-to-fix-it

I.e. the machine seems to work, but everything looks so corrupted that you can’t actually use the computer.

Tap right shift a lot (like twice per second) booting up. I think you have to press it right after the screen flashes black, but before it’s solid purple. You’ll get to the GRUB loader. Run the instructions at the reference link to specify “nomodeset” instead of “quiet splash”.

GPG Error

W: GPG error: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/strycore/xUbuntu_18.04 ./ InRelease: The following signatures were invalid: EXPKEYSIG 2F7F0DA5FD5B64B9 home:strycore OBS Project <home:strycore @build.opensuse.org>

I looked online for a bunch of things that would fix this, but none of them seemed to work for me, so in the end, I used Software & Updates —> Other Software and unchecked the faulty entry.

Unable to acquire the dpkg frontend lock

From this reddit post, I just did:

sudo rm -rf /var/lib/dpkg/updates

sudo mkdir /var/lib/dpkg/updates

sudo apt install foo