linux_issues.md

• Having trouble with displays. In particular, getting the right setting on my external display, and having it work on its own, with the laptop's display off. Even better would be to use it with the laptop closed.

  The thing that seems to work: log in, select display settings (to have external display as single monitor), then close laptop (to suspend), then open laptop again

• Emoji fonts don't seem to work. For example, using them with autokey. Can paste them normally (though black-and-white) but they don't show up within autokey

• warnings etc from okular

  Icon theme "breeze" not found.
  Invalid Context= "stock" line for icon theme:  "/usr/share/icons/ubuntu-mono-dark/stock/16/"
  Invalid Context= "stock" line for icon theme:  "/usr/share/icons/ubuntu-mono-dark/stock/22/"
  Invalid Context= "stock" line for icon theme:  "/usr/share/icons/ubuntu-mono-dark/stock/24/"
  Invalid Context= "stock" line for icon theme:  "/usr/share/icons/ubuntu-mono-dark/stock/32/"
  Invalid Context= "stock" line for icon theme:  "/usr/share/icons/ubuntu-mono-dark/stock/48/"
  Invalid Context= "stock" line for icon theme:  "/usr/share/icons/ubuntu-mono-dark/stock/64/"
  Invalid Context= "stock" line for icon theme:  "/usr/share/icons/ubuntu-mono-dark/stock/128/"
  Icon theme "Mint-X" not found.
  Icon theme "elementary" not found.
  Illegal icon group:  7
  

• Apple bluetooth magic mouse and magic trackpad

Solved

• VPN not working with eduroam, though it does work with wired ethernet connection. Actually, a week later it seemed to work. Not sure why.

• Periodic troubles logging in, with a spinning circle and then a message "Authentication error" repeat some number of times. Sometimes it ends up logging in, sometimes repeats a ton of times so I eventually restart at which point all is fine.

  • System 76 suggested re-installing the login manager, gdm3

    sudo apt install --reinstall gdm3

  • Well, that didn't work, so following their second suggestion of purging and re-installing:

    sudo apt purge gdm3
    sudo apt install gdm3

    This didn't work, either.

  • this page suggests removing a bunch of stuff.

    sudo apt purge --auto-remove gdm3
    sudo apt purge --auto-remove gnome-shell
    sudo apt purge --auto-remove gnome-software
    sudo apt purge --auto-remove lightdm
    sudo apt purge --auto-remove gnome-session-bin
    sudo apt purge --auto-remove gnome-session-common
    sudo apt purge --auto-remove ubuntu-session
    sudo apt purge --auto-remove ubuntu-desktop

    In a couple of places, I was asked whether I want to use gdm3 or lightdm. I chose gmd3 in all cases.

    I then ran the following:

    sudo apt update
    sudo apt upgrade
    sudo apt install ubuntu-desktop

    I went ahead and tried installing all of the other stuff I'd removed, in reverse order of their removal, but it seems that when you install ubuntu-desktop, you install all of that stuff.

    This seems to have worked, but it means I'm now using the standard ubuntu desktop rather than the pop desktop.

    So I tried installing pop-desktop. It asked me to first install sessioninstaller, so I did:

    sudo apt install sessioninstaller
    sudo apt install pop-desktop

  • I ended up back at the same problem, so I tried removing ubuntu-desktop and then reinstalling it:

    sudo apt purge --auto-remove ubuntu-desktop
    sudo apt update
    sudo apt upgrade
    sudo apt install ubuntu-desktop
    sudo apt autoremove

    It did say "removing pop-desktop and sessioninstaller.

    Some amount of pop desktop styling still seems to be in place, and I'm having the same problem. So I'm going back to the more extensive purging followed by re-install of ubuntu-desktop.

  • It really seemed like ubuntu-desktop was going to solve the problem, but finally it resurfaced. The latest suggestion was to switch to lightdm (rather than gdm3).

    sudo apt install lightdm
    sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm

    Makes a sound at startup, which I don't like. Solution is to mute speaker on that page; this seems to persist between logins.

Linux issues

• Sometimes when restarting from having been suspended, the wifi connects but there's no actual internet connection.

  I tried the following, suggested here, but no luck.

  sudo service network-manager restart

  Re-starting does the trick, but it takes a while. This askubuntu Q&A has some further suggestions:

  ifconfig wlan0 down
  ifconfig wlan0 up

  nmcli networking off
  nmcli networking on

  iwconfig wlan0 txpower off
  iwconfig wlan0 txpower on

  rfkill block wifi
  rfkill unblock wifi

  systemctl restart NetworkManager

  sudo initctl restart network-manager

  What seemed to work was

  nmcli networking off
  nmcli networking on