Elementary OS Freya, Resizing Windows, keyboard shortcuts and other annoying stuff

One of the most frustrating things about Elementary OS Freya is that it 'native' application windows cannot be easily resized by dragging on a side or corner. With most Linux distributions you can simply hover the mouse over an edge or a corner, click and drag to resize.  With Elementary OS there is just nothing there to grab.

Most windows have the traditional window border and the usual method works, but not the native Elementary programs.  And in certain other programs, like the GUI designer 'glade' shown below.  As it opens I cannot use the interface to add widgets etc to a GUI design.

It can be done however!   By holding down the 'Windows key' (the one between the left side CTRL and ALT keys) and holding down the right mouse button on the edge or corner of the window.

Freya has a lot of annoying little quirks.  But so far it has been the most stable, forgiving and almost crash proof 'modern' Linux distribution I have ever used.  But many of the functions we have come to expect to be easily available are hidden away and some only seem to be accessible as keyboard shortcuts.

Here is a list of common keyboard shortcuts in Elementary OS Freya.

⌘+Space	App Launcher
Alt+Tab	Window Switcher
⇧+Alt+Tab	Switch Windows Backwards
⌘+W	Window Overview
⌘+A	Window Overview (Across All Workspaces)
⌘+Left/Right	Switch Workspace
⌘+S	Workspace Overview
⌘+0	New Workspace
⇧+⌘+Left/Right	Move Window with Workspace
Ctrl+⌘+Left/Right	Snap Window to Half of Workspace
Ctrl+⌘+Up/Down	Maximize/Unmaximize Window
⌘+L	Lock Screen
⌘+Click+Drag	Move Window
⌘+Secondary (Right mouse button) click+Drag	Resize Window
⌘ = Super (Windows or Command key), ⇧ = Shift

Raspberry Humble Pi

In my previous post I wrote about my experience with the raspberry Pi 2B not playing the same HD and UHD videos as the old Pi model B.

A little experimenting with USB chargers (power supplies), three of them 2 Amp brand name (Samsung) and two generic 2 Amp, confirmed that the problem was definitely not in the power supply.  And the Pi was playing up with all of them.

On an impulse I acquired a Laser brand  USB charger/power supply with twin 2.4 Volt outputs.  The Pi 2B is at last playing most - but still not all of my very large file size, very high resolution videos.

My conclusion has to be that I received a slightly faulty raspberry Pi 2B.

Media Centre Raspberry Pi B - PcDuino 3B - Raspberry Pi 2, Raspberry Pi 3B - My experience.

Since the Christmas Season and the receiving of gifts, I've had the chance to compare the PCDuino v3b with the old Raspberry Pi B (the one with only 2 USB ports - not the B+) and also with the Raspberry Pi 2 B.  The results were interesting.

The PC Duino 3B played all HD mp4 Video, even 4k files of 3GB in size perferctly with the exception that the audio was almost always out of sync.  Which is not ideal in a multimedia centre for example.

When I was given the Raspberry Pi, the model B I had no intention of using it as a computer, so I installed OpenElec and checked it as a Multimedia Centre.  It worked perfectly!  Did everything I could want in multimedia without a glitch,

The Raspberry Pi 2B on the other hand was completely incapable of playing the same 3GB file in KODI,  So I tried installing SMplayer and VLC, which also failed.  Not only that, but they failed to allow Analogue Audio,  I installed OpenElec (the special Pi 2 version) and had similar problems.  The file would play for a while, then stop and start, then play a while and so on until after a while it simply locked solid. I was beginning to think the mp4 file might be corrupt, but I checked it on a couple of other devices and it was fine.

Back to the old model Raspberry Pi with the same video, and again it played perfectly.

So as a Media Centre, both the PCDuino 3B and the Raspberry Pi 2B have serious limits.
And as a Media Centre, the old Raspberry Pi B works beautifully.

I through the extra CPU power and memory of the PCDuino would make it great for the job, but it appears the lack of suitable media CODECS is its downfall.

And the QUAD core processor of the Raspberry Pi with double the RAM of the older Pi B should have put it head and shoulders above the rest - but it failed miserably.

So the Old Pi model B, which seems to be no longer available is back to performing my Media tasks.  There is however a Pi model B+ available that seems to have the same specs, but with the addition of an extra two USB ports.  With any luck the 4 port model should perform just as smoothly as the 2 port model.

EDIT !!
Somebody emailed a question about whether the SD cards were different and could be affecting the playback performance.
ALL the SD cards were Sandisk ULTRA microSD 16GB.  On the Pi B  the card was in the supplied standard size adapter.

All systems were initially tested with the OS and the players, including KODI or XBMC (on the PCDuino) at their standard settings with the exception that Audio was swapped to Analogue output.

Only the Pi B played the 3GB HD mp4 at standard settings.
Even tweaking settings including scripts for Mplayer failed to fix the other systems.

UPDATE !!

The Raspberry Pi 3B does everything the Pi 2 did, but a hell of a lot faster.  Benchmarks aside, real world programs are running on the Pi 3B at about the same speeds as my AMD E-350 Dual Core Compaq, and some things are actually happening faster in side by side speed tests.

I even used the Raspberry Pi 3B and OpenShot to add 3 mp3 files and some effects to an AVI video, then convert it to an mp4.  It took 12 minutes to process a 3.5 minute video.  Not much different from the AMD desktop.  However, with only 1GB RAM and no swap file, I can't see myself using the Pi for too many really big video editing jobs.  It was just interesting to time it compare with my 4yo desktop computer that I use for the same work.

We browsing is much faster on the Raspberry Pi 3 than on the Desktop computer, bu that is the result of using kweb as the browser on the Pi.  kweb also streams YouTube video smoothly, where the AMD desktop computer is always stopping and starting the video stream.

On the desktop I have to download a YouTube video and watch it in a media player.  On the Raspberry Pi I simply open YouTube in kweb, and watch it on a 50 inch TV.  The Raspberry Pi 3B has to be the cheapest way ever to get a really smart, smart TV!

SlimJet browser - Fit More Buttons beside Address bar

Sometimes it is nice to have a few toolbar buttons to make life easier by giving quick access to functions we need a lot.  But a few browsers now seem to think the Adrees bar has to take up almost the full width of the browser window,and some buttons get hidden behind a little arrow, making it necessary to open a drop down list to access them.

Luckily in Slimjet browser here's a simple way to let us set the Address bar to resize as we add more buttons.  Click the little black arrow to the right of your toolbar buttons and choose:

'Show toolbar buttons on left'

This puts all new buttons you might add using the customize menu, before the left end of the Address bar.
Like This:

Now the Tool Bar buttons are grouped to the left of the Address Bar, and the address bar will resize as we move more buttons into and out of the Toolbar.

Quick, Simple and Effective.

There are many posts on the web asking how to resize the Address bar to make room for buttons.  i have not yet seen a post on this method that I use in Slimjet, and I have no idea if it can be used in Chrome, Chromium or any other browser.

But if you have those little black arrows at the end of your Tool button bar, there's a good chance the option to move the buttons left or right will do the same thing on those browsers.

install Google Earth on Elementary OS Freya - Ross Devitt

Google Earth has changed from just being a popular diversion on Linux to becoming a handy and for some people, indispensable tool used by many.   There are several ways to install Google earth in Debian based Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Elementary OS.

If you are using the 32 bit Elementary OS system, the quickest and by far the simplest way to install Google earth at the time of writing this post (October 2015) is from the terminal.   Simply press Ctrl+Alt+T  keys and when the terminal opens, type the following commands.  Type each one as soon as the previous one is completed and you have the $ prompt again.  You will need to be connected to the Internet of course, and you will be asked for your root password after you enter the second command.

This first command will get the install package from google.

wget http://dl.google.com/dl/earth/client/current/google-earth-stable_current_i386.deb

This one will unpack the deb file and prepare it for installation.

sudo dpkg -i google-earth-stable*.deb

(you will now be asked for the [sudo] password.  this is your root password.

You may see a message that there are dependencey problems with lsb-core and that Errors were encountered while processing.  You should be able to ignore these, because lsb-core is probably already installed.

The final command which actually installs Google Earth is

sudo apt-get -f install

You might be asked to confirm you want to go ahead with the installation - just hit enter.  Once complete Google Earth will appear in your Applications Menu under the Internet section.

Here are the three commands one after the other.  Just copy each one (one at a time), paste and hit enter.

wget http://dl.google.com/dl/earth/client/current/google-earth-stable_current_i386.deb

sudo dpkg -i google-earth-stable*.deb

sudo apt-get -f install

NOTE!  This is for 32 bit systems.  64 Bit installation is a little more tricky.
For various reasons I run 32 bit OS on my 64 bit somputers.

Elementary OS and other distributions - ROOT low on space

This morning I again got a warning message the 'root' is low on space.  I've mentioned before that I'm used to the old days when Linux fitted nicely onto a single floppy.  And that a legacy of that is my tendency to only allocate about 15GB to the Linux root file system.

One major problem with root getting low is its impact on /tmp, particularly during operations like working with a HD video or something similar that uses /tmp a lot.  That is easily fixed in the short term by making /tmp a link to a tmp directory in my /home.

But even with that in place, I was warned that I knoy had around 500MB of free space in /root today.  So I set about discovering the culprit.  An analysis of my file scructure soon showed that I had almost 7GB in /usr, with much of it in /share.  One of the  surprising finds was around 2GB of icons that I never use.  Another was a huge stash of old Linux kernels and headers.

By deleting the folders for icons I never use from /usr/share/icons I managed to get about 1GB of free space.  it was after that I discovered all the kernels and headers.  But past experience reminded me that digging around these stripping one at a time was slow and tedious.  However deleting them all in one go is a big risk.

I used the uname -r command in a terminal to show me which kernel is being used, the rebnooted the system to confirm that this was the one used by GRUB.  I am aware of the importance of leaving at least one previous kernel and header in the system as a fallback in case the one being used fails.  In practice however, I have never managed to get a system to boot into one of the old kernels from GRUB.

So I opted for the riskier method of stripping the old kernels by purging all but the one currently in use.

Using the following in a terminal (acquired from:  https://ubuntugenius.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/ubuntu-cleanup-how-to-remove-all-unused-linux-kernel-headers-images-and-modules/)

dpkg -l 'linux-*' | sed '/^ii/!d;/'"$(uname -r | sed "s/\(.*\)-\([^0-9]\+\)/\1/")"'/d;s/^[^ ]* [^ ]* \([^ ]*\).*/\1/;/[0-9]/!d' | xargs sudo apt-get -y purge

Then waiting while it did its business then rebuilt GRUB brought my total free space on /root  to a little over 4GB.  Plenty to get me out of trouble until I decided some time to repartitions the hard drive and reinstall from scratch.

Before too long Elementary should complete another update with a replacement kernel and I should have a backup kernel and headers in place anyway.

For now, I have some room to move again!

Elementary OS FREYA Some keyboard shortcuts and a little surprise

Ok, this is probably no secret, but it is something I just noticed.  After using Elementary OS Freya for quite a while now it still provides little surprises from time to time.

I was about to put a hot key combination in a program and I pressed what used to be the 'Windows' key but is now more commonly called the 'SUPER' key.  (That's the one between Ctrl  and  Alt on most keyboards).   The plan was to use an easy to remember combination of Super and something else.  But I pressed the combination without opening the program.

And here's the result!

This is the menu as it first pops up - showing 'Places' on the computer.  Files, folders and stuff:

And here's what happens when I click on Graphics from that MENU:

A rather neat shortcut to a nice elegant desktop menu.

This is probably built into most Linux distributions, but because I'm so used to simply right clicking the desktop to bring up a Desktop Menu, I've never seen it.  it is probably also in Windows, but I haven't used that OS in more than a decade.

Almost 18 years now of using Linux and it still surprises me.  One thing about Freya's implementation of the desktop menu is that it is attractive.

The most common actions activated by the  'SUPER' key are.

SUPER and TAB will
cycle between desktops,
(just as Ctrl Alt Right Arrow - but with one less key to hold down)

SUPER and Home as well as SUPER and End -
will move forwards and backwards through workspaces
(just as Ctrl Alt Right or Left Arrow - but with one less key to hold down)

SUPER and W
toggles a view of all running programs in the current workspace

SUPER and A  on the other hand is quite useful.    It is similar to Supper W, but it
shows ALL programs currently running regardless of whatever workspace they are on.

SUPER and S
opens the normal Slingshot menu on the panel.

SUPER and L   -  
LOCKS the screen and requires your login password to get back in.

N O T E ! ! !

SUPER and P -  is   something to avoid.    It cycles between screen mirroring, swapping primary and secondary display settings and other stuff.  If you had 'Conky' clock running on your secondary display for example, it will rewrite it to appear on the primary display.
so SUPER and P is a SUPER P ain in the Arse.

Linux, Elementary and the problem with temp files

One legacy of more than fifteen years using Linux is complacency.  some of us are so used to Linux being pretty well bulletproof that we forget it has changed.  And it has grown.  I fall for this all the time.  A root file system of a grew hundred megabytes used to be plenty.  Later as Linux distributions grew I started making root about two, then four gigabytes.  Over the last few years I installed into root partitions of fourteen and twenty gigabytes.  Now I find my Elementary OS Freya is taking all but three and a half of the fourteen gigabytes allocated to root.

This was not much of an issue in the past, but with NBN in Australia we have significantly increased our ability to move data around.  And as someone who likes playing with operating systems and graphics, not to mention editing video, I end up with large files in my /tmp directory.  This creates fairly regular warnings that my hard disk is low on space.

As an example, just now I decided to pull in a 1.6GB iso.  It wants to transit /tmp on the way to its eventual destination.  And there is only about 2GB space in /root.  Next time there's a major release of Elementary I will probably reformat my hard drive and allocate about 30GB to root.  For now though the simplest option is to make more room in /tmp.

Luckily in Linux the problem is relatively easy to solve.  First I need to redirect all saves to /root/tmp to my home directory.   So first I make a new /tmp under /home/user.   Then I send all 'current' tmp stuff there.  This applies to operations after Linux has actually booted.  There will be some files still going to /root/tmp, but most of them will be zero bytes in size.

Opening my text editor as root I can edit the environment file.

$  sudo kate /etc/environment          And on a new line enter the following:

TEMP=/home/user/tmp

Then save the file and reboot the computer.   whatever text editor you use can be substituted for kate.  gedit, kwrite, vi, whatever is in use at the moment.

Something to be aware of though is that things like lock files for the word processor and other functions will also be redirected to this /home/user/tmp directory.  So it is easy to kill stuff that shouldn't be 'made dead'.   If that is a concern, make the tmp directory hidden by putting a dot in front of it.  But remember to make the environment path read    TEMP=/home/user/.tmp      so the system can find it.

SLIMJET - My Favourite Browser for Linux and other Operating Systems

 Ok, I've been a naughty blogger again and haven't written anything for a while.  One of the joys of bad health.  However, I have been plagued by the slow browser thing again.

 Over the years I have seen web browsers gain more and more features, while becoming slower and slower to use.  This can be blamed on many things. The Internet becoming overloaded is the main suggestion I hear, but with the massive improvements in delivery speed people are writing richer and more intense content.  This often means downloading much more 'stuff and then everything slows.

However it is more than that.  Firefox used to be fast.  Opera once blitzed almost every other mainstream browser.  Google Chrome was brilliant for a while, and recently I switched to Chromium to get away from some of the annoyances that Mr Google imposes on us.

Opera is still fast and nice but has serious limitations in a Linux Environment.  Quite simply it cannot cope with the demands of something more powerful and versatile than poor old Windows.

There's a light at the end of the tunnel though.  One of my annoyances with Google Chrome that has been inherited by Chromium is the lack of customization.  And of course one of the reasons may of us 'old timers' still love Linux and particularly Ubuntu is that we can customise 'stuff'.  We can make most things look and work almost exactly as we want to.

I save a lot of pages from the web.  Pages I have created for people that I want to experiment on in a live situation.  And in most browsers I can simply go to File > Save Page As  and save the page with its various 'bits' to a folder.  Now, it is easy enough to do this with a keyboard shortcut, but I'm an old man and I use so many keyboard shortcuts that sometimes it is easier to click the File menu and choose Save As than to remember the shortcut.

But Google Chrome no longer makes that available.  I can find it by opening the file dropdown and looking under More Tools.  And there I can see the shortcut.  But right next to the shortcut is the menu item anyway, so I can click that.  However it is not somewhere easy to find.

So I discovered Flashpeak Slimjet.  Now, Slimjet is built on Chromium.  But unlike Chromium it allows customization.  So I can have just about anything just about anywhere I want it.

Slimjet (http://www.slimjet.com/en/) claims to be the "Fastest web browser for Windows & Linux Powered by Blink engine".  But it doesn't stop there.

Let's have a look at the features offered by this browser.


Efficient Ad BlockerKill Annoying Ads with Ad Blocker

 
internet download managerTurbocharged Download Manager
  Fed up with all the annoying ads? Kill them all with the built-in ad blocker. Boost the performance of your browser by saving memory, CPU and bandwidth consumed by the ads. Boost file download speeds by up to 12 times by making multiple parallel connections to the server. Also allows you to resume download jobs between different sessions.
 
form filler and password managerQuickFill Intelligent Form Filler
 
Fast Download ManagerFully-customizable Toolbar
  Smarter and more convenient than the basic password manager in Chrome. Save page link and login data in a form file which lets you open your favorite online account with a single click later on. Slimjet let users customize the toolbar and add/remove additional buttons to quickly access more features and functionalities.
 
In-Browser Facebook IntegrationConvenient Facebook Integration
 
download videoYoutube Video Downloader
  In Slimjet, you can share the link you visited, a paragraph of text or an image easily on facebook with a single click on the facebook toolbar button. Download any youtube videos to local hard disk in various resolution and format for offline viewing. You can also extract mp3 file from the downloaded video file.
 
fast photo uploadingPhoto Enhancement & Photo Framing
 
photo shrinkingInstant Photo Upload
  Slimjet includes a Photo Salon in which you can apply different effects or add beautiful frames to the photos before they are uploaded. Automatically compress photos to web-optimized resolution so that photos are uploaded up to 20 times faster.
 
Integrated Weather ForecastWeather Condition & Weather Forecast
 
url aliasURL Alias Support in Omnibox
  Display currrent weather condition and weather forecast directly on the browser window. Slimjet lets you define short aliases for long URLs which are slow to type and hard to remember. After that, just type the aliases from the omnibox to open the corresponding page.
 
browser extensionExtensive Support for Plugins and Themes
 
quick-dial new tab pageCustomizable New Tab Page

  Slimjet is compatible with most plugins and extenions designed for Chrome, such as Adblock Plus, RoboForm, LastPass, Avast Online Security, etc. It is also compatible with all the chrome themes. You can customize the number of quick-dial buttons and the background image. Multiple search engines and voice input are supported on the search box in the New Tab page.
 
Built-in Web Page TranslationFlexible Web Page Translation
 
options and settingsFlexible Options and Settings
  Instead of automatically translating a full web page into the current UI language, Slimjet lets you translate a web page or a piece of text between any two specified languages. Slimjet provides many additional options and settings so that you can customize the browser to best suit your personal preference instead of being forced to take everything as it is without any choice.
 
I must admit that I have replaced Slimjet's speed dial with FVD 3D Speed Dial, and I will write about that another time,  But it is simply because I like the curved screen look of FVD 3D.  On the other hand, I do use the YouTube download part extensively and I can also vouch for the ridiculously fast download manager.

There are many more features and options that can be used in Slimjet, but I don't know how much it can be loaded up without slowing it down.  For now though I find it lives up to its promise of speed and flexibility perfectly.  Chrome keyboard shortcuts work of course and I had no problem importing bookmarks and stuff from both Chrome and Firefox.

 More Features and Options:


 Auto refresh web page
Auto refresh one or more web pages based on a preset period.

 Enhanced autofill from predefined identity information
Added support of login id and preferred password to the autofill feature available in Chrome.

 Bookmarks side panel
Get quick access to more bookmark links and folders with the bookmarks side panel.

 Quickly switch search engine
A drop down button is available at the right end of the omnibox which allows users to quickly switch between different search engines.

 Save webpage screenshot
Save screenshot of the entire page or selected region as an image file.

 Flexible Tab Behavior Control
Options to control automatic tab activation, automatic tab creation, tab insertion order and more.

 Stop all gif animations
A simple switch can be flipped to stop all gif animations (most of them annoying ads) from playing.

 Allow mixed-mode http/https content
Option to allow mixed http/https content to run properly.

 Option to disable desktop notification
A simple switch to quickly disable all desktop notifications that many users find annoying in Chrome.

 Upload clipboard image
Upload image stored in clipboard quickly without having to manually saving it to a file first.

Elementary OS Freya - The DropBox problem.

Elementay OS has been one of those computing experiences that simply sneaks up on me.  What I mean is that I forget am using it, and forget to write about it.  That is a good thing in a way because it means I am not frustrated with it or challenged by it - it simply works.

There are still a few odd things that are still a bit strange.  Dropbox is one of them.  Sure, it can be installed form the Software Centre, but often that doesn't add the dropbox icon to the Wingpanel, which means you can't right click on the icon to check status and perform other actions.  If does however incorporate Dropbox into the default file manager, where right click actions are available.

Then you get people like me who have their Elementary OS Freya modified.  I don;t use the default file manager - I use a personally tweaked Dolphin.  And while my Dropbox folder shows up in Dolphin, there are no right click actions for Dropbox available.

So back to the Wingpanel icon.  Adding that gave me one click availability for Dropbox.

First, open Software Centre or Synapric (whichever you use) and REMOVE Dropbox.
Then close Software Centre or Synaptic.

Open a terminal and if you don;t already have it - install 'git'

sudo apt-get install git

Then 'git' the installer for Dropbox

git clone https://github.com/zant95/elementary-dropbox /tmp/elementary-dropbox

Then install Dropbox.

bash /tmp/elementary-dropbox/install.sh

I think from memory I got a message asking if I wanted to run Dropbox.  Accept, and it will ask for your login details.  Once that is done and you go through the initial guide stuff you should have the DropBox icon in Wingpanel.  If it is not there, try logging out and in again.  

If all went well it will be there.  In the screenshop Dropbox is the white icon on the left.

pcDuino v3B no audio from some programs - by Ross Devitt

After using sudo board-config.sh to update my pcDuino v3B various things stopped working and I have written about some of them in the previous posts.  One ting I did not check before the upgrade though, was whether I had sound in my browser and things like smplayer and vlc.  XBMC worked and for my original purpose that was all I was interested in.

But the more I got involved in this magic little computer, the more I wanted to try other things.  And during that process I discovered the ONLY thing that had sound was XBMC.  So I did a little snooping.  And found a simple solution - for me at least.

Now at the time i didn't write down everything I did.  It was after midnight and I was exhausted.  But I know I did: 

sudo apt-get install pavucontrol 

I can;t remember if that installed all the other pulse audio stuff or if i had to also do:

 sudo apt-get install pulseaudio

But if you have this problem, try the first.  If it still doesn;t allow you to set up audio, try the second as well.

After I did this i could adjust sound settings from the volume icon on the panel.  Then I had ausio output in everything inclusing YouTube videos!

Cheers,

RossD

PCDUINO v3B XBMC won;t play mpg and mpeg videos - by Ross Devitt

The longer I play with the PCDUINO v3B, the more things I find that are wrong with it.  but so far,with the exception of that problem creating a bootable, usable 32GB micro SD card, the other problems seem to have solutions.

One annoying thing that I discovered when I got my 1 Terror Bite portable USB 3.0 hard drives drives working in the pcDuino 3B was that while mp4 files played great, I have a heap of old mpg and mpeg videos that would not work.  Generally as XBMC was working through a playlist as soon as it encountered an mpeg or mpg extension, it simply shut down and dropped to the desktop.

I can't guarantee this solution this will fix it for everyone, but it worked for me.

Open a terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install mplayer2


Then hit enter and wait.  You might have to hit enter again if it asks you for a Y/n choice.

Next do:

sudo apt-get install libavcodec-extra-53 

And hit enter again.

It was that simple.  As soon as I opened XBMC again it played all my mp4 and mpg and mpeg videos.  I haven't checked to see if avi files are still playing.  I must admit i was so excited I forgot.

Anyway, just another tip for pcDuino v3B users.  Hope it helps.

Cheers,

RossD.