This project aim at making Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora easy to use. Improvements will keep adding to the repo, wish you enjoy it.

Don't hesitate to suggest if you have any good ideas.

This is just the models that I tested/verify my changes, but not limited to any machines with the same system.

• Dell Precision M3800/XPS 15 9530
• Dell XPS 13 9350/9360
• HP Elite c1030 (Chromebook with coreboot)
• Asus Chromebox 3 (with coreboot)
• Asus x205ta
• Asus VivoBook E12 E203NAS
• Raspberry Pi 3 (rev. B) & Raspberry Pi 4
• Lenovo ThinkStation P520 (ProxmoxVE 9.x)
• Kindle Paperwhite 3-5, Scribe
• openwrt: tp-link Archer C7, netgear RBR50 & RBS50
• proxomox virtual environment (pve 9.x): thinkstation p520, AMD x570rog + R9 3900x + asus chromebox cn65. https://community-scripts.github.io/ProxmoxVE/scripts?id=post-pve-install to remove non-subscription.

• VSCode for code editing.
• To download youtube video with best video quality (e.g. 1080p) + best audio, use yt-dlp for a given video: yt-dlp -f "bv+ba/b" <video-link>
• Eternal Terminal et -c 'tmux -CC' pi@<addr>
• Firefox
• gnome-sushi: a quick previewer for Nautilus use space bar
• gnome-weather: sudo apt install gnome-weather
• Cherrytree
• Netease music
• GoldenDict
• Youdao dict
• Clang
• IntelliJ IDEA
• WPS
• DiffMerge
• Pinta
• vlmcsd
• Lantern
• Gummi
• Encryption KeePassXC for Linux, macOS and Windows
  • Use KeePassDX for Android
  • Use KeePassium for iOS
• netdata
• Excalidraw drawing diagram
• hyper
• FileZilla
• btop a htop/top alternative
• Zed
• ibus-rime and rime-ice
• fcitx5-rime-ice Please refer to the fcitx5-rime section for installation and configuration
• gnome extension manager: sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-manager
• git

sudo apt-get install git

• deepin scrot/screenshot

sudo apt-get install python-xlib

• Change tty font style Though Ubuntu gave me a beautiful UI, I still want my console font classic and clean, that's why I choose VGA font in this case. Change step will be the following:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

Font for the console->VGA or Do not change the boot/kernel font

• extfat support

sudo apt install exfat-fuse exfat-utils

• Use neovim to replace default vi/vim

sudo apt install neovim

Fonts is important and worth a section for discussing it. I used Gnome Tweaks to change system fonts, here are the settings:

• Interface Text and Document Text: PingFang Regular 10
• Legacy Window Titles: PingFang Bold 11
• Monospace Text: SF Mono Regular 10
• DM Mono is great for website code block Note: I used this PingFang. As for latin, it is recommended to use SF Pro from apple. Math font (mainly for Chrome), mac use STIX Math font, however, the latex font seems more nice, which is ComputerModern. Here's a starter discussion https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/5w48xx/which_text_fonts_should_i_use_for_math/, this one https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1390/latin-modern-vs-cm-super further discuss the modernized and vectorized Latin Modern.

LatIn (refers macOS):

• Proportional: Serif, Size: 16
• Serif: Times
• Sans-serif: Helvetica
• Monospace: Menlo, Size: 13

Chinese(refers to macOS):

• Proportional: Sans Serif, Size: 16
• Serif: Times New Roman
• Sans-serif: Arial
• Monospace: Menlo, Size: 16

• Sans-serif font: Helvetica

• Mathematical font: STIX Two Math link

• Change system fonts gconftool-2 has been superseeded by gsettings on Ubuntu 16.04+ and in other GNOME based systems.

Nowadays you can simply run the following in a terminal to change/reset all your desktop font settings:

# change windows title
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences titlebar-font 'Microsoft YaHei UI 11'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface document-font-name 'Microsoft YaHei UI 11'
# default font
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface font-name 'Microsoft YaHei 11 UI'
# monospace-font
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface monospace-font-name 'SF Mono Extra-Condensed 12'
gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.desktop font '' # default font '', leave blank

SF Mono is more preferrable from macOS: /System/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app/Contents/Resources/Fonts In macOS: open Fonts within /System/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app/Contents/Resources/Fonts then install it. SF Mono - Medium is my new favour.

To reset above setting, just simply type in

gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.interface font-name
gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.interface document-font-name
gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.interface monospace-font-name
gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences titlebar-font
gsettings reset org.gnome.nautilus.desktop font
gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.interface text-scaling-factor

This is a very smooth integration and experience as iterm support tmux integration and feels natively. The setup is as following:

1. Install et on both server and client side
2. On client side(macOS), iTerm > Settings > tmux > Attaching: When attaching, restore windows as: > Tabs in the attaching window, this will give you a persistent, and all tabs within one window.
3. On client side, use this to achieve the connection dev='et -c '\''tmux -CC new-session -A -s dev'\'' devvm' -p<et-port-number>

4. If you want to have alias for connection, you can configure this in ~/.ssh/config:

Host devvm
    HostName  <your-remote-hostname>
    Port      <connection-port>
    User      <username>
    IdentityFile <your-key-file-path>
    LocalForward 8081 localhost:8081

then you can use ssh devvm to connect. Note, et usually use 2022 port after the ssh connection. Configured this in fast-reverse-proxy.

It is highly recommend to use tmux for both your dev server or local machine because of its multiplex feature.

sudo apt install tmux

Make the tmux launch for every terminal, append the following lines at the end of the .bashrc

if command -v tmux &> /dev/null && [ -n "$PS1" ] && [[ ! "$TERM" =~ screen ]] && [[ ! "$TERM" =~ tmux ]] && [ -z "$TMUX" ]; then
  exec tmux
fi

The above command is going to make sure that

 (1) tmux exists on the system
 (2) we're in an interactive shell
 (3) tmux doesn't try to run within itself

alias devvm="ssh ${cloudtop_address} -oCompression=yes -oCheckHostIP=no -oServerAliveInterval=60 -t -- '''tmx2 -CC new -A -s work''"

Reference:

• Using bash's command to check for existence of a command
• Why to use command instead of which to check for the existence of commands
• Using $PS1 to check for interactive shell
• Expected state of $TERM environment variable "for all programs running inside tmux"
• Start tmux on every shell login

Enable mouse scroll:

• echo 'set -g mouse on' >> ~/.tmux.conf
• To select or copy in tmux, press Fn key in Linux (macOS use Option)
• More settings can be referred to: https://github.com/gpakosz/.tmux

One may notice that copy is not as natural as default terminal - i.e. mouse select + copy shortcut. To fix this, you need to add install tpm and tmux-yank:

1. Install tmux plugin manager (tpm): https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tpm
2. Add set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tmux-yank' to ~/.tmux.conf
3. In tmux, invoke <prefix-key>+I to trigger the tmux-yank install

You can select-to-copy effienctly.

1. Install tmux plugin manager (tpm): https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tpm
2. Install tmux cpu and gpu stats: https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-cpu
3. Set the following config in tmux.conf

# cpu stats
set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tmux-cpu'
# in .tmux.conf
set -g status-right '#{cpu_bg_color} CPU:#{cpu_percentage} MEM:#{ram_percentage}'

This ultimately improve your productivity. Check here for installation

• To enable quick search: settings (on the top right of the box) - Extensions - WebSearch - Trigger. For example change gg to g for Google

For an enhancement of Ctrl+R refer here

An alternative shell magic history using Atuin. enter_accept is set to true by default, which means default enter to the selection will execute the command. To change the selected item, just hit tab instead of enter. Documents about more settings here.

For Ubuntu specific:

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/junegunn/fzf.git ~/.fzf
~/.fzf/install

Please refer to this: Solution 1:

sudo apt-get --with-new-pkgs upgrade <list of packages kept back>

Solution 2:

sudo apt-get install <list of packages kept back>

• Vi/Vim: :%!xxd to enter hex edit mode, :!xxd -r to quit
• Or use command line hex edit by apt install hexedit

Gnome actually supports the dynamic wallpaper around 10 years ago, and recently macOS Majove has bought this function to macOS. To enable this beautiful function that is built-in Gnome, we have to load a customize xml as desktop and lock screen background as following:

mkdir -p ~/Pictures/Wallpapers/majove_dynamic
curl -o ~/Pictures/Wallpapers/majove_dynamic/majove.xml https://github.com/syscl/Ubuntu4Laptops/blob/master/dynamic_wallpapers/majove.xml

Open the ~/Pictures/Wallpapers/majove_dynamic/majove.xml , change the username from syscl to the user name you used, then unzip all the wallpapers from here to ~/Pictures/Wallpapaers/majove_dynamic

Set up the lock screen and desktop background by the following

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri 'file:///home/syscl/Pictures/Wallpapers/mojave_dynamic/mojave.xml'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver picture-uri 'file:///home/syscl/Pictures/Wallpapers/mojave_dynamic/mojave.xml'

Note Change the syscl to the user name you used on the above command line.

Jump right into the /usr/share/applications directory in the terminal, and remove/hide the icons you want. For example, remove the deprecated reboot, shut down and logout button when updating from Unity to Gnome

cd /usr/share/applications
sudo rm -rf reboot.desktop shutdown.desktop logout.desktop

Install compiled binaries to /usr/local/bin/vlmcsd, then execute vlmcsd then vlmcs to start the server. Then on Windows client, open cmd as Administration, run the following:

slmgr -ipk <GLVKs Key>
slmgr -skms <vlmcsd server address>
slmgr -ato
slmgr -dlv

• Installing External Deps on Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install git pkg-config build-essential qt4-qmake \
     libvorbis-dev zlib1g-dev libhunspell-dev x11proto-record-dev \
     libqt4-dev libqtwebkit-dev libxtst-dev liblzo2-dev libbz2-dev \
     libao-dev libavutil-dev libavformat-dev libtiff5-dev libeb16-dev

• Download the latest GoldenDict

git clone git://github.com/goldendict/goldendict.git

• Build it by the following

cd goldendict && qmake-qt4 && make

Note: to compile with libhunspell older than 1.5, use the following command to build instead

cd goldendict && qmake-qt4 "CONFIG+=old_hunspell" && make

• Install the binary to /usr/share/local by

make install
# sudo mv /usr/local/share/applications/goldendict.desktop ~/.local/share/applications # correct the *.desktop path

System tray disappear on Ubuntu 18.04 (Gnome)

Install sni-qt libraries: apt install sni-qt

• Install translate-shell by apt install translate-shell

• Add the following to Edit->Dictionaries->Sources->Programs:

  1. Enabled, Typed=Plain Text, Name: [EN->ZH], Command Line: trans -e google -s en -t zh -show-original y -show-original-phonetics n -show-translation y -no-ansi -show-translation-phonetics n -show-prompt-message n -show-languages y -show-original-dictionary n -show-dictionary n -show-alternatives n "%GDWORD%"
  2. Enabled, Typed=Plain Text, Name: [ZH->EN], Command Line: trans -e google -s fr -t en -show-original y -show-original-phonetics n -show-translation y -no-ansi -show-translation-phonetics n -show-prompt-message n -show-languages y -show-original-dictionary n -show-dictionary n -show-alternatives n "%GDWORD%"
  • For extra dictionaries you can refer to software/GoldenDict/dictionary folder under this git repo
  • Changing the font and size for GoldenDict, use the following:

  echo 'body'  							  >~/.goldendict/article-style.css
  echo '{'    							 >>~/.goldendict/article-style.css\
  echo '    font-family: Microsoft YaHei;' >>~/.goldendict/article-style.css\
  echo '    font-size: 12px;'              >>~/.goldendict/article-style.css\
  echo '}'                                 >>~/.goldendict/article-style.css\

  More setting details please refer here.

sudo apt install subversion

This is a note for temporarily install Debian or Debian-like Distros on F2FS, tested on P520, E203 and raspberry pi (EFI + root partition). The basic idea is copying and updating initramfs:

• Install system as root on EXT4/EXT2
• Install f2fs-tools to the current system
• Add the following to the /etc/initramfs-tools/modules:

f2fs
fscrypto
crc32-pclmul
crc32c_generic
crc32c-intel
crc32_generic
libcrc32c

• Create F2FS partition by command mkfs.f2fs /dev/sd<diskNum><partNum> -f
• Mount F2FS partition to /mnt
• Sync the current partition content to a temp disk: sudo rsync -HPXax / /mnt
• Once sync has completed, prepare for chroot:

for type in dev sys proc run boot boot/efi sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/$type

• Noted down the f2fs partition's UUID sudo blkid|grep f2fs
• Change the root in /mnt/etc/fstab to the new UUID
• Change ext4 to f2fs and errors=remount-ro to noatime.
• Access the chroot environment to update its initramfs and get it set up in grub:

sudo chroot /mnt
update-initramfs
update-grub2
exit

• Cleanly unmount the target system's mounts

sudo unmount /mnt/boot/efi
sudo unmount /mnt/*
sudo unmount /mnt

• Reboot the system

Note:

• For one disk installation, you can created three partitions: 1) EFI 2) Large F2FS chunck 3) 10G EXT4 as initial root. Once you completed the installation, move EXT4 to F2FS and resize the partition (I haven't got resize.f2fs succeed yet)
• It's better to have two disks to finish the copy and swap procedure, this way you can fully maximize the F2FS on the disk

• Close the startup logo in /etc/libreoffice/sofficerc : Logo=1 --> Logo=0

• Notice in Libreoffice 5.3.x, there's no more sofficerc in /etc/libreoffice thus we need to search where the Logo= argument located in, here's the procedure

  grep -l -r -i 'Logo=' /opt/libreoffice*

This will give you the correct path of the configuration location, change Logo=1 to Logo=0

Since Netease Music under Linux is achieved through Qt5, most elements are drawn by WebKit by a forking of Chromium, so we can just simply pass an startup argument --force-device-scale-factor=2 for netease-cloud-music, simply touch the /usr/share/applications/netease-cloud-music.desktop, change Exec=netease-cloud-music %U to Exec=netease-cloud-music --force-device-scale-factor=2 %U

• Install program by

sudo ./FoxitReader.run

• Set installation folder as /opt/foxitreader instead of ~/opt/foxitreader

• Fixe files' permission

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /opt/foxitreader

• Correct the ~/.local/share/applications/FoxitReader.desktop Icon=<*> to /usr/share/icons/hicolor/64x64/apps/FoxitReader.png
• Optimize/remove FoxitReader cloud plugin (previous cause the system draining 100% of CPU resources)

sudo rm -r /opt/foxitreader/fxplugins

apt install aria2
mkdir ~/.aria2

Attach the below contents to ~/.aria2/aria.conf

dir=/home/pi/downloads
file-allocation=falloc
continue
log-level=error
max-connection-per-server=4
summary-interval=120
daemon=true
enable-rpc=true
rpc-listen-port=6800
rpc-listen-all=true
max-concurrent-downloads=1
disable-ipv6=true
disk-cache=25M
timeout=600
retry-wait=30
max-tries=50

This is a sample of the configuration, you can tune it as you like. Now create the launch init.d scirpt by the following script under ```/etc/init.d/aria2

#!/bin/sh
# /etc/init.d/aria2

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: aria2cRPC
# Required-Start: $network $local_fs $remote_fs
# Required-Stop: $network $local_fs $remote_fs
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Short-Description: aria2c RPC init script.
# Description: Starts and stops aria2 RPC services.
### END INIT INFO

RETVAL=0
case “$1” in
start)
echo -n “Starting aria2c daemon ”
umask 0000
aria2c –daemon=true –enable-rpc –rpc-listen-all -D –conf-path=/home/pi/.aria2/aria2.conf
RETVAL=$?
echo
;;
stop)
echo -n “Shutting down aria2c daemon ”
/usr/bin/killall aria2c
RETVAL=$?
echo
;;
restart)
stop
sleep 3
start
;;
*)
echo $”Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}”
RETVAL=1
esac
exit $RETVAL

Attach executable permission for the script just touched (chmod +x aria) then update rc script

sudo update-rc.d aria2 defaults

Now we turn to install the Aria2 WebUI

• Download the latest version of Aria2 WebUI from here, we actually want the build files under docs, copy the docs directory to /var/www/html as aria2 (so that we can access it directly).

Please refer to this link first, full document will be appended later on.

• Ubuntu dash to dock (modified version of dash to dock):

Reset transparent-mode to 'ADAPTIVE':

gsettings reset org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock transparency-mode

Reset min-alpha to default

gsettings reset org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock min-alpha

• Original dash to dock extension:

Recommend style set to Dots, and the rest are the same as Ubuntu dash-to-dock.

But if this is not enough to reset all settings, try to remove and reinstall the whole directories under /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions

• Please refer here

• Open terminal(Crtl+Alt+T)

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://archive.getdeb.net/ubuntu xenial-getdeb apps" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/getdeb.list'

• Install the GPG key so that apt package manager will trust the packages from that repository via command

wget -q -O- http://archive.getdeb.net/getdeb-archive.key | sudo apt-key add -

• Now it's time to install

sudo apt update && sudo apt install filezilla

The problem of using Unity Tweak Tool(a very powerful tool) is that Unity Tweak Tool can not change the cursor entirely. In login mode, we still can see the origin system default cursor. And sometimes, the black cursor will be reversed due to some system bug. Thus the permanent solution will be replace the whole white mouse cursor to a black one, here's the solution

mv -r /usr/share/icons/DMZ-White /usr/share/icons/DMZ-White-bak
cp -r /usr/share/icons/DMZ-Black /usr/share/icons/DMZ-White

Reboot, now you can enjoy a nice black mouse cursor.

For those who enjoy macOS cursor, here's a high quality macOS cursor under icons/cursor/macOS, you just place macOS/cursor under /usr/share/icons/DMZ-White . Reboot to enjoy the nice macOS(Sierra icons).

The icon and the name of the application is sometimes not as our expected, in other words, the icon is pretty ugly and the name is not straightforward... So to change the icon, the first step you need to do is copy the icon files to ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/<icon_pixelxicon_pixel>/apps(arugments decided by the icon pixel), then change the .desktop file under /usr/share/applications. For example, I want to change the Simplenotes icon and name to notes.png and Notes respectively, open simplenote.desktop and change the value to Icon=Icon=/home/<username>/.local/share/icons/hicolor/128x128/apps/notes.png and Name=Notes respectively.

Once I've switched to Ubuntu, I soon realized the function of the trackpad loses drag lock and palm rejection which make the trackpad almost unable to use. Thus I do some research about how to tune with it, here's the solution.

After applying the patch, you will soon enjoy the trackpad on Ubuntu.

• For 3 finger gestures for example: back a page:

synclient "TapButton3" "8"

This extensions makes Gnome into usable and nice state, otherwise it looks ugly.

Install it, configured it to show in the status bar. Enable/disable it by scroll mouse on the icon.

Before you install the latest LaTex, you should remove older version to avoid conflict just in case

sudo dpkg --purge --force-all texlive-xetex
sudo dpkg --purge --force-all texlive-math-extra

Then install LaTex now

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/texlive
sudo apt-get install texlive
sudo apt-get install texlive-fonts-recommended texlive-fonts-extra

Fix the loss of section numbering with the new update issue

sudo wget http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/titlesec/titlesec.sty -O /usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/latex/titlesec/titlesec.sty

apt-get install default-jdk

This is because the missing gnome-browser-connector. Install it to fix installing gnome extension issues.

Note: Bing Wallpaper is a nice extension for gnome

This is a tricky feature that Firefox support while chromium base browser missing. Enable it by adding this --enable-features=TouchpadOverscrollHistoryNavigation to the chrome executable. Another alternative I haven't tried yet is using multi gesture libraries.

Just download the package https://linux.weixin.qq.com/en for your system, and install it. As for emoji fonts, it Ubuntu use noto fonts, I tried with Apple Emoji, tweet emoji (https://github.com/13rac1/twemoji-color-font), not working well. So I switch back to noto but lastest here https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-emoji

To install extensions for Gnome 3.x, just search the add-ons in Software application, then tune it on through Extension Settings.

• NoAnnoyance removes the “Windows is ready” notification and puts the window into focus.
• Suspend Button adds back the sleep/suspend button

You can use

sudo apt-get install unrar # support RAR 3

For unrar protected files (note protected files supports much better than unrar-free unfortunately)

unrar x -p<password> <archive_name>

I recommend to install only one of these (unrar in my case). Then use archive manager:

sudo apt-get install file-roller

Since my major desktop environment is Gnome, I will mainly focus on ibus-rime, for KDE/LXQT environments, please refer to fcitx5-rime section. People may ask why I want to use different input method, as using fcitx5 across all platforms is more consistent and easier to manage. The answer is simpler than you think, fcitx5 cannot be actived when I type search in gnome overview window, that say ibus-rime is better integrated with GTK so I created this section for the installation.

Noted, I only tested this on Ubuntu 24.04.3 lts.

1. Install ibus-rime sudo apt-get install ibus-rime. Log out or reboot to let the changes take effect.
2. Settings > Keyboard > Add Input Sources > Add > ibus-rime, also you can remove English input as rime support English input by just hit shift Key
3. Install a good dictionary for the input engine, as ibus-rime default to traditional chinese. In my case, I use rime-ice. To use it follow the following steps:
4. Install rime's config management tool: plum: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rime/plum/master/rime-install | bash
5. Go to ~/plum and run bash rime-install iDvel/rime-ice:others/recipes/full to install rime-ice
6. Make a few configurations, for example, change it from veritcal to horizontal, candidates 8, rime-ice by two config files. Note this is werid, but on Ubuntu 24.04.3 we need to have two config to make this takes effect. First, change style to horizontal, schema to rime_ice in ~/.config/ibus/rime/ibus_rime.custom.yaml

patch:
  schema_list:
    - schema: rime_ice
  style:
    horizontal: true

Now to change words candidates, create ~/.config/ibus/rime/default.custom.yaml:

patch:
  menu:
    page_size: 8

• Default to English on every system login : ~/.config/ibus/rime/rime_ice.custom.yaml:

patch:
  switches:
    - name: ascii_mode
      states: [中, Ａ]
      reset: 1
    - name: ascii_punct # 中英标点
      states: [¥, $]
      reset: 1

The reset value is the actul index of the states, in this case we default to "A"(ascii_mode).

All the pinyin, e.g. sogou and baidu is shit, we want a modern and effienct reliable input source, that is rime-ice run on top of fcitx5. To use it this is the following steps:

1. Install fcitx5-rime (this will includes all deps)

sudo apt-get install fcitx5-rime

2. Remove ibus by sudo apt-get remove ibus -y && sudo apt-get autoremove -y
3. Download and install plum first: cd ~ && git clone https://github.com/rime/plum.git plum
4. Install rime using plum: cd ~/plum && bash plum/rime-install iDvel/rime-ice:others/recipes/full
5. Unlike macOS and Windows, you cannot use default.custom.yaml to configure theme on Linux, so you need to install theme to fcitx5, I use macOS theme for fcitx from https://github.com/thep0y/fcitx5-themes-candlelight.
6. Just copy the theme from https://github.com/thep0y/fcitx5-themes-candlelight to ~/.local/share/fcitx5/themes, then reload the fcitx5 fcitx5 -r.
7. Now go to fcitx5 configuration > Addons > Classic User Interface > Themes: macOS-light, Dark Theme: macOS-dark This is my linux custom/patch config for ~/.local/share/fcitx5/rime/default.custom.yaml:

patch:
  menu:
    page_size: 8

This is the same as macOS Tahoe input.

One may found chromium based or electron app blur when Gnome Wayland fractional scaling is enabled. To address it, you need to put --ozone-platform=wayland for app.

1. Append --ozone-platform=wayland option to Exec in /usr/share/applications/code.desktop (you can test run the option in terminal code --ozone-platform=wayland)
2. Change the title bar to custom (otherwise there's glitch between title bar and window decorator): Window: Title Bar Style > Custom.

Warning: change Preferred Ozone platform in chrome:flags may cause browser flicking and broken. So use command line or change option on /usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop will be much safer (since you can revert back without losing app data). Append the --ozone-platform=wayland to Exec or command line. Without setting the ozone platform, Chrome's hangs a lot for me, making is basically unusable. (Constantly freezes for half a second while scrolling.)

Using the command line parameter worked nicely.

If anyone is reluctant to delete their ~/.config/google-chrome folder, you can simply edit your config manually when Chrome is not running. The config is in a JSON file called "Local State". Search for "ozone" and remove the corresponding key under "browser". (I think it was something like "lab_experiments" that I zapped.)

sudo apt-get install p7zip-full

One may find ctrl+w not work on Linux the shortcut has been defined to other feature. To restore it, just go to the idea keybindings' setting > Extension Keyboard Shortcuts > search for ctrl+w > Remove Keybinding.

• Open terminal with CTRL+ALT+T Add Pinta stable PPA repository:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pinta-maintainers/pinta-stable

• Update system package lists:

sudo apt update

• Install pinta

sudo apt install pinta

• Shift + prt sc sysrq to capture select area

mv /usr/lib/evolution /usr/lib/evolution_DISABLE
for procname in $(ps aux | grep evolution | awk -F'/' '{print $NF}' | grep evolution | grep -v grep); do killall $procname; done

Failed to load kernel modules is actually not a kernel issue, but a bug in the default configuration of CUPS (the printing system), which tries to load the drivers for the ancient parallel port (which this computer obviously doesn't have). You can easily solve it by commenting out /etc/modules-load.d/cups-filters.conf, like so:

# Parallel printer driver modules loading for cups
# LOAD_LP_MODULE was 'yes' in /etc/default/cups
#lp
#ppdev
#parport_pc

{
   "workbench.colorTheme": "Xcode_default"
    "window.zoomLevel": 1,
   "editor.fontFamily": "'Menlo', 'Consolas', 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'monospace'",
}

To have a vertical line (vertical rulers) to control line length, set a ruler in settings.json as (in this case length is 80)

{
  "editor.rulers": [80]
}

For remote developing, install Remote - SSH and copy public key to dev server by

ssh-copy-id [username]@[ip]

"Visual Studio Code is unable to watch for file changes in this large workspace" (error ENOSPC)" Please refer to this, the limit can be increased by editing /etc/sysctl.conf

fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288
fs.inotify.max_user_instances=512

Check limits:

sysctl fs.inotify

Check current usage — instances per process:

cat /proc/*/fdinfo/* 2>/dev/null | grep -c inotify

Top consumers by watch count:

for pid in /proc/[0-9]*/fd; do
  count=$(ls "$pid" 2>/dev/null | xargs -I{} readlink "$pid/{}" 2>/dev/null | grep -c inotify)
  if [ "$count" -gt 0 ]; then
    ppid=$(echo "$pid" | cut -d/ -f3)
    echo "$count $(cat /proc/$ppid/comm 2>/dev/null) (pid=$ppid)"
  fi
done | sort -rn | head -20

Check open file descriptor limit:

ulimit -n                        # soft limit for current shell
ulimit -Hn                       # hard limit
cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max        # system-wide max
cat /proc/sys/fs/file-nr         # allocated / free / max (shows actual usage)

See open fd count per process (top offenders):

ls /proc/*/fd 2>/dev/null | awk -F/ '{print $3}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20 | \
  while read count pid; do echo "$count $pid $(cat /proc/$pid/comm 2>/dev/null)"; done

The quick mental model: sysctl fs.inotify shows your limits, file-nr shows open fd pressure system-wide, and the per-process loop pinpoints the culprit.

Markdown preview extension: Markdown all in one

open command in mac is really convenient and its alias is xdg-open. However the xdg-open is not as smart as open in mac. Due to the fact of this, I wrote a handy script(in bin/open) for you to deal with it. You can place it under /usr/local/bin manually or install it by executing deploy as well.

• Install Apache

sudo apt install apache2

• Touch an website directory by

mkdir ~/apache_service_root

• Change /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf and /etc/apache2/apache2.conf from DocumentRoot /var/www/index to DocumentRoot /home/syscl/apache_server_root and from <Directory /var/www/> to <Directory /home/syscl/apache_server_root/>

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

sudo apt upgrade

Netdata is a powerful monitor tool set for developer to keep tracking of its servers, to install it on Ubuntu 18.04+ simply type in

apt install netdata

• On CentOS, please refer here

• To allow ANYONE to access netdata, change the bind socket to IP = 127.0.0.1 to bind socket to IP = 0.0.0.0 in /etc/netdata/netdata.conf

• Start all the services by the following:

systemctl start netdata
ufw enable
ufw allow 19999/tcp
ufw reload

• Now access the netdata through http://your-server-ip:19999

• Install lm_sensors through apt install lm_sensors
• Uncomment # sensors=force in /etc/netdata/charts.d.conf
• cp /etc/netdata/conf.d/python.d/sensors /etc/netdata/conf.d
• Restart netdata by the following:

killall netdata
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable netdata
systemctl restart netdata

• as a side note, we can actually execute sensors after install lm_sensors to check CPU temperature

getconf LONG_BIT

Please refer here. And don't forget to change php70w-* to php-* for the installation commands.

• Enable pretty urls (get rid of index.php*) append the following two lines in your [nextcloud root]/config/config.php:

'overwrite.cli.url' => 'https://example.com/nextcloud',
'htaccess.RewriteBase' => '/nextcloud',

then execute sudo -u www-data php [nextcloud root]/occ maintenance:update:htaccess

• Add VirtualBox source by creating a file virtualbox.repo under /etc/yum.repos.d:

[virtualbox]
name=Oracle Linux / RHEL / CentOS-$releasever / $basearch - VirtualBox
baseurl=http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/rpm/el/$releasever/$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
repo_gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox.asc

• Install VirtualBox by yum install virtualbox
• Install VirtualBox extension pack by VBoxManage extpack install [extension-pack-path]
• Install phpVirtualBox
• Install subscript-manager
• Create a new file in /etc/default/virtualbox so that we can systemctl start vboxweb-service, the line we have to add is: VBOXWEB_USER=root notice here the user is "the user as which vboxwebsrv will run.", in this case root, more information can be referred to here
• Copy phpvirtualbox/config.php-example to phpvirtualbox/config.php and change the var $password = '*'; as the password you want.
• Add a new user vbox by useradd vbox and its password is the same as in phpvirtualbox/config.php's var $password = '*';
• Install epel repos
• Install php-soap, note if you have php 7.0 use yum install php70w-soap
• Disable selinux
• Find the path of soap through find -name soap.so, usually it will be located at /usr/lib64/php/modules/soap.so
• Insert in in /etc/php.ini by a new line: extension='/usr/lib64/php/modules/soap.so'
• Restart your httpd service by systemctl restart httpd

Unlike $lex require money everywhere, emby is an open source media server, like universal media server (ums on Sony PS4), the way to install is straightforward, but notice change the user and group as emby:emby for the folders you want to attach as libraries otherwise permission errors will occurs.

• I still don't care about cookies to remove annoying cookie pops up

• Remove pcspkr kernel module

rmmod -v pcspkr

• Blacklist pcspkr in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist by adding the following line:

blacklist pcspkr

nmcli dev wifi hotspot ifname wlan0 ssid test password "test1234"

More details please refer here

mount -o remount,rw /

• Download this project by

git clone https://github.com/syscl/LinuxLand

• This will download the whole directory, the next step is to change the deploy permission so that it can be executed:

cd LinuxLand
chmod +x deploy

• Execute deploy by typing:

./deploy

https://starship.rs/ This is my starship config at ~/.config/starship.toml:

add_newline = false

format = """
$python\
$directory\
$git_branch\
$git_state\
$git_metrics\
$git_status\
$docker_context\
${custom.k8s}\
$terraform\
$helm\
$character
"""

# right_format = """
# $cmd_duration\
# $docker_context\
# $kubernetes\
# $terraform\
# $helm
# """

[directory]
style = "blue"

[character]
success_symbol = "[❯](green)"
error_symbol = "[❯](red)"
vimcmd_symbol = "[❮](green)"

[git_branch]
format = "[$branch]($style) "
style = "green"

[git_metrics]
format = "([+$added](green) [-$deleted](red) )"
added_style = "bold green"
deleted_style = "bold red"
disabled = false

[git_status]
style = "cyan"
format = "([$ahead_behind$staged$modified$untracked$renamed$deleted$conflicted$stashed]($style))"
ahead = "↑${count} "
behind = "↓${count} "
diverged = "↕ a:${ahead_count} b:${behind_count} "
stashed = "≡ "
staged = "!${count} "
modified = "!${count} "
untracked = "?${count} "
renamed = "✎${count} "
deleted = "✖${count} "
conflicted = "‼${count} "

[git_state]
format = '\([$state( $progress_current/$progress_total)]($style)\) '
style = "bright-black"

[cmd_duration]
format = "[$duration]($style) "
style = "yellow"

[python]
format = "[$virtualenv]($style) "
style = "cyan"

[custom.k8s]
# Use customize kubernetes to replace the [kubernetes] section
description = "Kubernetes context, only in deductive workspace with a fresh kubeconfig"
command = """
ctx=$(kubectl config current-context 2>/dev/null) || exit 1
echo "$ctx" | sed 's|.*:cluster/||; s|^|eks:|'
"""
when = """
[[ "$PWD" == *deductive* ]] \
  && [[ -n "$KUBECONFIG" ]] \
  && [[ -s "$KUBECONFIG" ]] \
  && (( $(date +%s) - $(date -r "$KUBECONFIG" +%s) < 3600 ))
"""
style = "cyan"
format = "[$output]($style) "

This is the config for ~/.blerc

# Change multiline execute to enter
ble-bind -m emacs -f RET accept-line
ble-bind -m emacs -f C-m accept-line

# Disable various of ble marks
# Removes [ble:exit]
bleopt exec_exit_mark=
bleopt exec_errexit_mark=
# Removes [ble: EOF]
bleopt prompt_eol_mark=

# Disable typing color rendering
bleopt highlight_syntax=
bleopt highlight_filename=
bleopt highlight_variable=

# disable typing ahead suggestions
bleopt complete_auto_complete=

Just place this line in .bashrc and .zshrc:

[ -s "$HOME/git/LinuxLand/.shell_common" ] && source "$HOME/git/LinuxLand/.shell_common"

• Switch default shell chsh -s $(which zsh)
• Install oh-my-zsh
• Enable autosuggestion in ~/.zshrc > plugins > zsh-autosuggestions:

plugins=(
        ...
        zsh-autosuggestions
)

• Install powerlevel10k, with patched Meslo Nerd Font.

On low memory machine, it will be benefit to enable memory compression (ZRAM is enabled by default on Fedora):

• Install zram: sudo apt install zram-config
• Enable zram:

systemctl enable zram-config
systemctl start zram-config

• Check the zram status by: zramctl. Also read some document about zswap.

Please refer to this link.

[antiX Linux] For pretty old hardware, antiX doing a great job, especially on iMac8,1(2008). I want to like puppy Linux, however it has screen flickering on iMac8,1.

See changelogs here

Excalidraw I cannot express how much I love the app, it is so simple to use (I was waiting for yeaers) just for this app, and it can be self hosted!

sudo sed -i 's/\(.*motd.*\)/#\1/g' /etc/pam.d/*

If I want existing user to have the ability to run docker, run the following:

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
newgrp docker

I mostly used Chrome Remote Desktop (CRD) for my headless server. It is easy to use, solid and robust than most of the remote desktop solution. However with the nvidia GPU installed on my server, I want it to be more powerful.

Here's the major benefit I obtain using rustdesk, with a few tunes or love, it is way much more powerful and fit my need:

• GPU acceleration than just CPU libvmpipe ( glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer" OpenGL renderer string: llvmpipe (LLVM 20.1.2, 256 bits))
• Chrome and many of the softwares can be run on GPU or leverage GPU than just CPU (offload CPU for compute intense task) Note CRD with its virtual session/display is one of the most security solutionbut because of GPU accleration I want to give rustdesk a try.

• GNOME
• X11 (for remote login and such)
• dummy HDMI (to force nvidia to work than in low power P8 mode)
• Rust relay sever (optional)

The /etc/X11/xorg.conf I used:

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig:  version 590.48.01

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Unknown"
    Option         "DPMS"
    # Use your exact cvt output here
    Modeline "3440x1440_60.00"  419.50  3440 3696 4064 4688  1440 1443 1453 1493 -hsync +vsync
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BusID          "PCI:6:16:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration" "True"
    # Force NVIDIA to allow the custom Ultrawide and standard 4K modes
    Option         "ModeValidation" "NoMaxPClkCheck, AllowNonEdidModes, NoVesaModes"
    Option         "MetaModes" "3840x2160_60, 3440x1440_60.00"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Virtual     4096 4096
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

The reason of 3440 monitor is because I have one so I add this resolution. restart gdm/gdm3 to take effet

sudo systemctl restart gdm # or gdm3

check the nvidia-smi

~ ❯ nvidia-smi                                                                                                                           minikube
Mon Feb  9 22:57:30 2026
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 590.48.01              Driver Version: 590.48.01      CUDA Version: 13.1     |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                 Persistence-M | Bus-Id          Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |           Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                        |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 ...    Off |   00000000:06:10.0  On |                  N/A |
|  0%   54C    P2             40W /  235W |     760MiB /   8192MiB |      8%      Default |
|                                         |                        |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                              |
|  GPU   GI   CI              PID   Type   Process name                        GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                               Usage      |
|=========================================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A           65672      G   /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg                      172MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A           66278      G   /usr/bin/gnome-shell                     74MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A           66948      G   ...exec/xdg-desktop-portal-gnome          3MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A           67011      C   /usr/share/rustdesk/rustdesk            176MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A           67354      G   /usr/share/rustdesk/rustdesk             12MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A           70879    C+G   ...al/zed.app/libexec/zed-editor        200MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A           76802      G   ...rack-uuid=3190708988185955192         60MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

clearly shows the nvidia gpu being used nicely.

A few quirks to fix with scaling cause a big/mega mouse problem: resize the curosr size to small value from 24(default)

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-size 12

One may notice that scroll in the rustdesk client is too fast and even cause blur screen, this is some of the mac app e.g. Mos smooth scrolling also take effect of the mouse scroll, to fix it just disable (make the rustdesk as exception) in the Mos > Preferences > Exception > uncheck smooth scroll, that's it.

Even thought UI animation makes things nature, however in a headless remote desktop environment, disabling the Gnome animation makes the rustdesk rendering less likely to happens and more consistent and smooth. Here's how to achieve it (as Gnome Tweak remove the option for this):

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface enable-animations false

A more generic solution is to use Karabiner-Element, to remap the key from lower level for Complex Modifitaion

{
    "description": "Rustdesk: Left Command to Left Control",
    "manipulators": [
        {
            "conditions": [
                {
                    "bundle_identifiers": [
                        "^com\\.carriez\\.rustdesk$"
                    ],
                    "type": "frontmost_application_if"
                }
            ],
            "from": {
                "key_code": "left_command",
                "modifiers": { "optional": ["any"] }
            },
            "to": [{ "key_code": "left_control" }],
            "type": "basic"
        }
    ]
}

for Windows App/Remote Desktop:

{
    "description": "Windows App: Left Command to Left Control",
    "manipulators": [
        {
            "conditions": [
                {
                    "bundle_identifiers": [
                        "^com\\.microsoft\\.rdc\\.macos$"
                    ],
                    "type": "frontmost_application_if"
                }
            ],
            "from": {
                "key_code": "left_command",
                "modifiers": { "optional": ["any"] }
            },
            "to": [{ "key_code": "left_control" }],
            "type": "basic"
        }
    ]
}

• This is not working on Wayland, and need to manually run the xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap to achieve, so not recommended. This especially helpful if I use rustdesk with Ubuntu, and control machine is macOS. How to achieve this is by map super key (Win-key/Command Key) to just control key, I found this works best for my workflow. Here's the link I refer that creates the .Xmodmap config at $HOME:

remove mod4 = Super_L
keysym Super_L = Control_L
add Control = Control_L

and

xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap

refer: https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/could-not-acquire-name-on-session-bus/23060 By the way, the solution for me with the Chrome Remote Desktop issue was to add a config file in the home directory named .chrome-remote-desktop-session and containing the lines

unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
unset SESSION_MANAGER
mate-session

export XDG_SESSION_TYPE=x11
export ZED_ALLOW_EMULATED_GPU=1
exec /usr/bin/gnome-session --session=gnome

[Customize Zed Config]

{
  "ui_font_size": 14,
  "buffer_font_size": 13,
  "theme": {
    "mode": "system",
    "light": "One Light",
    "dark": "One Dark"
  },
  "ui_font_family": "JetBrains Mono",
  "buffer_font_family": "JetBrains Mono",
  "terminal": {
    "cursor_shape": "bar",
    "font_family": "Liga SFMono Nerd Font"
  }
}

Inspired by this: Settings > Privacy > Connectivity Checking