Linux Mint 20.1 Xfce and VNC

 Since I closed my computer business in 2007 and started spending all my time concentrating on learning how to live with recovering from all the injuries, then two lots of open heart surgery and a couple of brain injures, so much has happened.  Now that I reached retirement age, I have other challenges.

Cyclone Ului in 2010 and Cyclone Debbie in 2017 destroyed my yachts in Shute Harbour, and with them, the part time live aboard lifestyle i was enjoying.  Changes in my personal life as well as Australian Government legislation changes, followed by the 2017 medical emergency and surgery meant my retirement plan, to live on the resort I helped set up in the Philippines, is no longer viable.  

Now I'm relegated to living in what used to be my computer workshop and classroom.  While I have always had computers (since the 1970s) I have rarely been interested in them as anything more than a work tool.
Now I am beginning to 'enjoy' aspects of computing that I previously only bothered with for 'work'.

This blog is testament to my keeping computers around, and to my still experimenting with different aspects of the things.  However over the last week I have done something I never bothered to do when I was working.  
I set up a Home Network.  Not only that, instead of having several computers on one desk, each with its own dedicated tasks and its own monitor, I have three computers connected to one monitor (a 55 inch TV) by a different HDMI port each.

I didn't bother with a network, because as before, I didn;t need one.  I could do everything from one computer.  The m93 has become my everyday computer because the i5 processor is a little more powerful and responsive than the Brix' Celeron.  The Raspberry Pi was just there because, well, it's a Raspberry Pi.

Last week, the Realtek sound chip in the m93p lost a channel.  I liesten to music a lot.  Like, 'all the time'.  I have several mp3 devices, some hooked up to dedicated speaker systems.  But having the m93 unable to play music or show a video irked me.

Obviously I could play music on the BRIX or the Pi, but then I had to switch HDMI ports every time I wanted to adjust the volume.  Something had to change.  

I remembered VNC.  If I set the BRIX up as a VNC Server, I could view and control it through a window in one of the Virtual Desktops (Workspaces) in the m93p.  That would allow me to control the volkume, and the playlist etc. from the m93p, without the hassle of grabbing the remote and swapping HDMI inputs to the screen, and grabbing another keyboard and mouse to drive the BRIX.

It should have been dead easy.

It wasn't.

Linux has plenty of VNC server programs available.  It also has a number of VNC viewers.  I installed several servers one at a time on the BRIX, and viewers, one at a time on the m93p to test each server.  The viewers on the m93p were not seeing any of the servers I installed on the BRIX,  

Then while I had the tigerVNC-scrapin-server  running on the BRIX, and I installed a remote viewer I had not noticed in the repositories, called    'vinagre'   on the m93p.

Immediately it recognised the IP address I typed in as the Host, as the BRIX, and opened a window to its Desktop.

I installed tigerVNC-scraping-server on the Pi as well, and that was also immediately found and opened.

In the next post, I'll try to lay out the steps I went through to set this up.

LIBRE OFFICE and that annoying Lock File problem

 For years now users on the Libre Office forums have been discussing a problem where some kind of lock file issue prevents LibreOffice saving, or in some cases even opening files.

This is not limited to a certain type of file, but I first came across it with LibreOffice .odt (text) files when I tried to save one and was told that LibreOffice could not get access to permissions to lock usage of ...   or some rubbish warning along those lines.

Later I got a similar warning when I tried to open an existing LibreOffice document.

Now, when this happened some years ago, i managed to clear the problem by finding and deleting the offending ~lock  file in my /home/Documents directory.  This year however, and perhaps it can be blamed on Covid, I could not clear the problem.  I tried every trick I know and then stalked the LibreOffice and other forums, only to find that there is no known solution. 
Basically, if it happens to you, you 'might' be able to clear it by finding and deleting the offending lock file, but otherwise, you're stuffed.

So I found a couple of work-arounds.  None are perfect, but one way or another they work.

All Linux distributions regardless of their Desktop Environment have a couple of programs for Text editing (Abiword) and Spreadsheeting (Gnumeric).  

The one that might be noticed though is LibreOffice Impress (Presentation Manager).  There are some options in the repositories, but one I have always had access to was Calligra Stage - part of the old KDE KOffice Suite.

For that matter, Calligra Words and Calligra Sheets are also good replacements for LibreOffice, although they have a bit of a learning curve due to their unusual implementation of some common functions.
That said though, they are excellent.

So between AbiWord, Gnumeric, Calligra Words, calligra Sheets and Calligra Stage, I had all my requirements covered.

Then I remembered a program I use on my Android Tablets that I chose because it is almost identical to LibreOffice in looks and function.
That program is SoftMaker Office.  It can be downloaded from:

SoftMaker Office Home Page

The Download page is here:

DOWNLOAD SOFTMAKER OFFICE for Linux

The Current version (2021) is NOT Free.  It costs about $64 one time payment, but divided by a year that's about One Dollar a week.  That's pretty cheap for commercial software, and the charge includes appropriate on-going updates.  Instructions are on the site are provided to set the PPA for updates.

However, there are a couple of previous versions, with the latest of these the 2018 version available HERE:

The 2018 version has TextMaker (Writer equivalent) and PlanMaker (Calc equivalent) plus Presentations (the Presentation manager). 
This is Free to download and use, but requires a Product Key.  I cannot remember how I got the product key, but SoftMaker emailed one to me.

SoftMaker Office early versions Download

I'm going to hit PUBLISH, but I intend getting back to this to add some images and further comments.

There is one more useful link on the SoftMaker website:

Tips & tricks: Installing SoftMaker Office 2021 for Linux

My 2018 version of SoftMaker Office is Free to use, although it did require email registration.

If for some reason you cannot get SoftMaker Office to send you a registration Product Key, Calligra Stage works nicely as a Presentation Manager, and calligra Words with Calligra Sheets, teamed with Abiword and Gnumeric will get you out of trouble.

Desktop Publishing is covered nicely by Scribus !

GooGle changes mean BLOGGER is broken on MOBILES !

 GooGle changes mean BLOGGER is broken !

I have been using Google's Blogger for years.  One of the reasons I like it, was that no matter what device someone was reading a blog on, the screen conten always fitted, whether it was being viewed on a Computer, Tablet, Phone etc.

Recently Google announced that it was no longer supporting mobile devices!

This came as a complete shock to me.  Google Blogger has always been great at resizing content at its default settings.  I am getting too old to start rewriting all my blog pages now.  

I just checked Wordpress, and my blogs there still fit all devices on all browsers by default.  I don;t understand what caused Google to stop supporting Mobile Devices, but I think it is a fairly strange thing to do.

It looks like I might have to start redirecting or mirroring all my BLOGGER posts across to WordPress, including the Resort business content!

I apologise now for any inconvenience caused by this very strange GooGle action.

RossD 

Linux, Music and Cheap Stereo Equipment

 Linux Mint 20, Music and Cheap Stereo Equipment seems like a bit of a weird combination, but there's something exciting about getting results on a budget.

I like listening to music.  Over the years I have ripped almost all my CD and DVD collections to file so I can listen to them on modern devices like computers, phones, tablets and mp3 players.  I decided not to do what I did when cassette tapes became fossils.  I spent so much money before mp3 was a thing.

So, I have been using a set of Logitech X-230 speakers for years.  These things are quite old, have been in use for years, and can't handle much volume if the Bass is turned on anyway, so I was thinking about doing some surgery, either piggy backing a set of bigger car speakers to the little twin 2" speakers in each satellite.  I thought I might get some extra mid range without losing too much bass or treble.

Than my son mentioned he had a set of X-230 speakers that he was planning to sell on ebay.  He had to fly up for a visit, so he brought them along for the ride.  That way I could pick the best set to keep original and perform surgery on the others.

I forgot about them for a few days, then when I was looking through a box of 'stuff' I found a 6 inch male to female one into two splitter cable for 3.5mm audio, and an idea started to form.

The problem was distortion in the small speakers if I had the Bass turned up.  The Logitech X-230 set have a volume control on one of the satellites, and on the sub-woofer.

What if I connect both X-230 sets to the splitter, dial UP the Bass on one, and dial the corresponding satellite volume down until any distortion stops?

On the other set, I could try dialing the Bass DOWN on the sub-woofer and dial the volume on that satellite pair up.

So I tried it.  Then after an exciting day listening to a vastly improved stereo experience, I remembered Linux Mint uses PulseAudio, and I had installed PulseEffects!
So I started PulseEffects and tried some equalizer presets I had experimented with around Christmans.

W O W !!

I have the two 8 inch sub-woofer boxes stacked one on the other with a layer of foam between them. 
I have one pair of speakers each side of, and behind my 55 inch monitor (about 1.5 metres apart), with the Sub on the floor about 1.5 metres lower and dialed down to about 20%(ish).  
I have the other pair of satellite speakers a little further apart, about 200mm further to the front and about 200mm lower and that Sub is on top of the other and dialed to about 80%.

The volume of the satellites is simply adjusted separately until the desired richness and thump is coming out, and the mid range and treble sound crystal clear.

The whole thing is then tweaked depending on how the input of various mp3 files affects the sound over an afternoon of music, and the setup can be saved as a new preset in PulseEffects.

I had been planning to buy a new audio system for the computer, but this leaves everything I could imagine getting for dead at a total price of a couple of hundred dollars.

Providing the two speaker systems have a volume control on the sub, and another on one of the satellites, a similar system could be rigged cheaply using any couple of budget speaker sets.  Mixing brands or models would not be likely to affect the setup much, and the only unusual part is the 3.5mm - 1 male plug - 2 female sockets splitter, and they are available at any electronics hobby store for a couple of dollars.

For now, I am enjoying the richest sounding music experience I can remember since the 60s when we all discovered our first 'National Panasonic' affordable stereo systems  :D

Actually, this is more like when we discovered BOSE..

Mint 19.3 Xfce THEMING

I'm still playing around with Mint 19.3 and there's a new release due next month with some exciting features like a simple file transfer system that was tested a long time ago and is being revived.

I think I have ironed out most of the wrinkles in my move from KDE based Linux back to Xfce using Mint although I'm sure I have more stuff to work out, but the basic aims were:

1 - Move from KDE Plasma back to something that 'feels like' it has less overhead (even it doesn't really).

2 - Retain some of the playful stuff I like such as transparency in some apps and the ability to use Kvantum styling on as many of my qt apps (from KDE) as possible.

3 - Find a theme I like for the GTK stuff.  Preferable not one of the new modern 'flat' themes, and preferably a 'dark' theme to be easier on the eyes with the 55 inch monitor.

4 - Said theme must have big enough borders to grab easily with the mouse, because I am constantly resizing programs to make best use of the large screen.

While I was playing with the wider borders thing, which looked decidedly ugly, I discovered that drop shadows achieved the same thing.  The area of the shadow provides the exra pixel area to grab with the mouse cursor.  I might look weird and playful to have coloured drop shadows - bu tit tells me at a glance which windows are focused at the same time.

5 - I must be able to run xwinwrap for video.


6 - I would 'like to have' have the compositing features I had in KDE/Plasma.

For some reason kwin killed my Mint Xfce.  So I reinstalled Mint 19.3 Xfrce and played with Compiz, and after a few fails, I modified a Metacity theme to give me decent min/max and close buttons on the Title Bar.

Still Playing with Mint 19.3 Xfce and Compiz

Compiz is still throwing some challenges at me.  I was warned that it has a few 'quirks' and I'm finding some of them.
I've played with quite a few of the weird things it can do, and now the novelty is wearing off I am settling back into a combination of the things I actually like about what it can do, and the things I used to like about KDE.

Finding out just which underlying GTK themes from xfwm4 work well in conjunction with the Metacity themes in Compiz.  Some of my favourite themes look fine, then I find something broken.

Like the GT3 theme I was using.  It worked nicely and looked good, but interfered with Thunar's ability to select text in various operations like 'Rename' for example.

I think I sorted it out though.  In the mean time my Cube has eight faces, six sides plus a top and bottom, instead of being a cylinder.

A Compiz/Xfce/Mint 19.3 Update - 2020 May 04

I've been playing with Compiz and working out a few changes to make it more stable.

Compiz uses Metacity for theming and there some really annoying things that Compiz does when it is working with Mint 19.3 Xfce that are worse than simply annoying.
Other things that 'are simply annoying' are the result of the themes for Window decorations clashing with GTK themes for Xfce.  Things like tiny or otherwise unreadable control buttons on the Titiebars for example. 

In a couple of themes I do like a lot, Compiz does strange things. The DarkCold theme for example, looks nice and works well, until I try to use the mousewheel on the Titiebar to shade the window. If the window is not Maximised, it works perfectly.
If the window IS Maximised, and I scroll the mouswwheel on the Titiebar to shade the window - I lose all Titiebars on ALL windows!

 I managed to find a little script on the web that allows me to select a Metacity friendly theme (out of those installed in Xfce) to use with Compiz. Running the script brings up a Zenity Dialog that lets me select from available themes easily.

As you can see from the Titiebar in the image, while it is still pretty plain, it is easy to see and the Buttons on the right for Min, Max and Close in the 'Human' theme are clear and big enough to use. 
In some of the other themes the buttons are almost impossible to see or to find with the mouse.

Having this script makes it simple to test which Window Decoration themes look ok and 'work', and which ones don't.

I found the Theme Selector script at:
Metacity Theme Selector

The script for the Theme Selector is:
<code>
#!/bin/bash

SAVEIFS=$IFS
IFS=$(echo -en "\n\b")

if [ ! -f /usr/bin/metacity ]; then
  zenity --warning --text="<b>You do not appear to have Metacity installed.</b>\n\nThe Compiz GTK window decorator uses Metacity libraries to operate. The Metacity theme is what this tool adjusts.\n\nInstall the metacity package if you would like to use the Compiz GTK window decorator."
fi

main_window() {
  selection=$(
    zenity --height 450 --width 320 --list --ok-label="Apply" --cancel-label="Close" --title="Metacity themes" \
    --column="Current theme: $( if [ $(gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences theme) == "''" ]; then
        echo Default
      else
        gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences theme
      fi)" \
    "Compiz GWD default" \
    $(
      for d in /usr/share/themes/*/metacity-1; do
        echo $d | sed 's:/usr/share/themes/::' | sed 's:/metacity-1::'
      done
    )
  )
}

while [ $? = 0 ]; do
if [ "$selection" == "Compiz GWD default" ]; then
  gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences theme ""
elif [ "$selection" != "" ]; then
  gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences theme "$selection"
fi
main_window
done

IFS=$SAVEIFS

</code>

Ok, here's the Desktop Sphere in Compiz. It's the Cube plus 'Cube Reflection and Deformation' in Compiz Configuraton Settings Menu. The YouTube video will take up the fill width of the page on a computer. Not sure what it will do on a phone. I had to make it 800x600 to get decent resolution. Video Linked: This is still only the little i5-4590T, which is more or less a medium laptop processor, and onboard i915 graphics.

Video of Mint 19.3 Xfce with Compiz, plus Video Wallpaper and Transparency

I Managed to sort out my Mint 19.3 Xfce at last.
I have most of the stuff I liked about KDE/Plasma, but saved most of the speed of Xfce on the little Lenovo m93p Tiny.

The m93p only has an intel i5 4590T processor and 8GB RAM, with an i915




Click the BIG RED DOT to Play Video...

Compiz is managing to display the Full Screen Video Wallpaper on all Viewports, and still keeps it playing as I rotate, flip and tumble the cube.
That rather surprised me !
HOWEVER:-
I have the 3D Windows effect enabled.  What that effect does, is to make the windows appear as if they are floating above the faces of the cube.
Because I told my cube to pretend to be a cylinder, it floats the 3D windows as a cylinder, but keeps the desktops as a cube.
And it makes the top and bottom face into disks.

Turning 3D windows OFF makes everything work properly.
Also, if 3D Windows effeect is turned Off, the 'sphere' deformation works, although with modern screen aspects, it is an elipsoid.

I'll do a desktop capture of that soon, but for now, here's a photo:

System Info is:
System:
  Host: ross-ThinkCentre-M93p Kernel: 5.3.0-46-generic x86_64 bits: 64
  Desktop: Xfce 4.14.1 Distro: Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia
Machine:
  Type: Desktop System: LENOVO product: 10AB0039AU v: ThinkCentre M93p
  serial: <root required>
  Mobo: LENOVO model: SHARKBAY v: SDK0E50510 WIN serial: <root required>
  BIOS: LENOVO v: FBKTB4AUS date: 07/01/2015
CPU:
  Topology: Quad Core model: Intel Core i5-4590T bits: 64 type: MCP
  L2 cache: 6144 KiB
  Speed: 1374 MHz min/max: 800/3000 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1568 2: 1450
  3: 1723 4: 1421
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics
  driver: i915 v: kernel
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.5 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa
  resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Haswell Desktop v: 4.5 Mesa 19.2.8

Mint Linux Dolphin File Manager Transparency - Ubuntu

What began as a simple interest in getting some of the Transparency theming across from my old KDE/Plasma desktops, to Mint has got a little bit out of hand.  That's obvious in the last post, but it has given my more insight into what can be done with Mint Xfce.

I started with the Dolphin File Manager simply because I already had it transparent in Plasma and I like having the desktop wallpaper showing through.
Then I discovered I could modify a few themes and have Wide Borders to grab with the mouse, plus some nice colourful big square buttons for Hide/Minimize-Maximize and Close.

The wide borders thing got taken to extremes in the last post.  So I went to work on changing another couple of themes I rather like that have borders smaller, but still bigger than the half a pixel that seem so popular these days - and are bloody near impossible to grab with a mouse.

So - With the exception of the first picture (Brave web browser) here are the most of the programs I have in Linux MINT 19.3 Xfce that have Transparency over large parts of their windows.

I still have only the bits of KDE that the individual applications require in order to function.
I have not installed KDE or Plasma Desktop.
The transparency and other changes are achieved using Compiz, some KDE Apps with some QT config tools, Kvantum theming engine, and some little mods to the window manager themes I'm using.

Theming XFCE - Plasma Apps and Transparency (Dolphin Background) etc

I'm still playing with Theming XFCE and using Plasma Apps and Transparent Dolphin Background

I was trying to get a much faster uniformly themed XFCE that gave me most of the things I missed when I made the move back from Plasma.  I've said often that my biggest gripe with Plasma was that it is so much slower across the board than even KDE4, and the difference is ridiculous between Plasma and XFCE.  But I loved some of the little things KDE and Plasma did with theming.

In the screenshot above I have Mint 19.3 XFCE, with VLC themed to match Kcalc and K partitionmanager.

I dislike the current craze of 'flat' themes.  I also don't mind when some programs themes don't actually match each other - even within qt programs, (all Plasma apps use qt widgets).

With that in mind, when I wanted Dolphin File Manager to have a completely translucent view pane, and opaque files and folders, I had to use a different version of the theme I used for VLC and the others, because I changed a setting and forgot what it is !

Ok, after a little thought I have Dolphin themed with the buttons to match the apps above and a 50^ transparency in the panes.

Transparent Dolphin File Manager Background

The next thing is what I want the rest of my XFCE desktop to look like.  I already like the modified Azenis-One theme I am using.  And it gives a nice patterned background to text input fields like this one on LibreOffice.

Included in that is a very distinct 3D curved effect on the buttons which, while it is very different from the KvCurves3D I use in my KDE Apps, follows the general 3D and curved idea.
Here's an example:

my LibreOffice Writer looks like this now, with lots of bumpy bits

I guess I was just so sick of something as customizable as Linux, starting to look the same on every distro.
And, I was missing the little things I had going in Plasma, but lost because I hated being able to take a shower while I waited for it to load or shut down.

Of course, in all this, I still have my video wallpaper happening, but this time I am restricted to using a oval viewport so I can access the icons on the Desktop.

I almost forgot - the Azenis-One theme also has a nice flashy Shutdown Dialog:

Dolphin File Manager scrolls too fast.  This is a bug that has been around for ages.  And I could not find a solution when I was using Plasma.  I searched forums and all I found was bug reports and confirmations that there is still a problem.  And lots of discussions about how the coding is too complex to fix it.  But if you have access to mouse configuration that lets you set the scroll speed, you can do something.  Unfortunately, I don;t seem to have that in XFCE.

Also it may have been fixed already in the latest Dolphin or Plasma, but it was still a problem using Dolphin in XFCE.  However, somewhere along the line I installed a couple of Qt configuration editors.  I accidentally found a fix after installing Qt5 Settings.

So if Dolphin scrolls too quickly.

Open Settings > Qt5 Settings
Open the Interface Tab
Look at the Bottom and change Mouse wheel scroll lines
From 3 To 1

It won;t give 'smooth scrolling', but one line at a time is a huge improvement !!

Mint 19.3 XFCE Current Desktop pics at 22/03/2020