How to add / edit characters in the "Press and hold" character picker in OS X Monterey

I'd like to add some additional characters to the "Press and hold" popup that shows up if I long press a a letter on the keyboard. I also need to change the position of some of the additional characters. The keyboard layout that I use is English, so I'll modify the press&hold options for this layout.

What I have for "s" now:

What I need:

 

Step 1. Copy the PressAndHold.app from the system folder into the user folder

(Since OS X Monterey won't let you easily modify any file that is under the system folder).

Open Finder
Press "shift + command + G"
Enter "/System/Library/Input Methods"
Find and copy the "PressAndHold.app"

Press "shift + command + G"
Enter "/Library/Input Methods"
Paste the "PressAndHold.app"

Step 2. Open and edit the file with additional characters in your user folder

Open Finder
Press "shift + command + G"
Enter "Library/Input Methods/PressAndHold.app/Contents/PlugIns/PAH_Extension.appex/Contents/Resources"

Locate the file "Keyboard-en.plist"
Make a backup of the file just in case (there is always a read-only version under the system folder anyway, though)
Edit the file to your liking (change the order of additional characters, add a new character or whole new section for a key, etc.)
Save the changes

Step 3. Log out and log back in for the changes to take effect

The updated PressAndHold character picker should now work per your changes.

Note. Most probably this would only work for your user, but not other users on the same machine. But updating the PressAndHold menu in the System folder would require too much hassle with permissions, write access to the driver, etc.

How to successfully install MSKLC on Windows 10

So you downloaded the (quiet dated) Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator from the official website
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=22339. And then you try to install it on Windows 10, and the installer says there are some unsatisfied dependencies and tells you to download .Net 2.0.5 (which is very outdated and has reached its end of life and unsupported). You click on the link, go to the Microsoft website and start downloading different .Net stuff, install it and the MSKLC installer keeps stopping at the same step where you have to download the .Net framework O_o. All dependencies should now be satisfied but the installer still doesn't work. At least this is what happened to me.

So here is how to solve this -- it turns out the older .Net frameworks are already included into Windows 10. All we have to do is to enable them. Phew, everything seems way easier:

1. press the window key and start typing -- "Turn Windows Features on and off"
2. launch that applet
3. check the .NET Framework 3.5 (includes .NET 2.0 and 3.0) option
4. follow the instruction and let the system download the missing files
5. when downloading is done, launch the MSKLC installer again -- bingo! It now installs successfully.

Gnome Shell - disable tracker

There is a very handy package that allows disabling Gnome Shell Tracker:

tracker-preferences

Install it, launch it and see the options it has. I uncheck anything that tells Tracker to index my files (which - indexing on - in my case makes my computer hang up badly).

Flash plugin in Chromium

The only real reason that made me install Google Chrome on Linux was that it came with flash plugin. And Chromium has no flash by default.

To have Flash plugin on Chromium it's sufficient to install pepperflashplugin-nonfree from the distro's repos (in my case it's sudo apt-get install pepperflashplugin-nonfree). That's it. No need for Chrome anymore.

XFCE / Xubuntu - how take a screenshot of a screen area

By default the XFCE that is shipped in Xubuntu (as of Xubuntu 15.04) allows you to press the PrintScreen button and capture the whole screen and press alt + PrintScreen to capture the window in focus. Well, this is obviously not enough. People do need to be able to capture just a portion of the screen, it's an as frequent use case as capturing the whole screen (in my particular case it's even the most frequent use case).

But thanks to the developers of the default screenshot program in XFCE (whatever it is), there is a possibility to make screenshots of a selected screen region - we'll just have to quickly set-up a shortcut for it:

Menu => Settings => Keyboard => Application shortcut => Add => type the command:

xfce4-screenshooter -r

=> press the keys you want to be the shortcut for this action (for me it Shift + PrintScreen) => done.

(Or one could simply run the command xfce4-screenshooter -r by pressing alt + F2 to take a screenshot of an area, but it's obviously faster to create a shortcut).

How to launch 2 Skype instances on Linux

Here is how to launch several Skype instances on Linux (I currently run Skype 4.3 for Linux):

Alt+F2
skype --secondary

Pretty easy and really convenient =)

How to disable window animations on Gnome Shell 3.14 and higher

Launch dconf-editor

Go to the following sections of it:
org => gnome => desktop => interface => uncheck enable-animations

However on my system the windows started moving so briskly with the effects disabled that I actually had to enable them back.

Google Chrome or Chromium didn't shut down correctly on a system with Gnome Shell

On Ubuntu Gnome 14.10 and Sabayon with Gnome Shell I encountered the following situation when launching Google Chrome or Chromium after computer boot - the browsers would say:

"Google Chrome didn't shut down correctly"
"Chromium didn't shut down correctly"

and would offer to restore the previous tabs. Of course, the browsers had been shut down correctly before powering off the system.

Well, the cause of the error turned out to be simpler than I thought:

To stop getting the error uncheck "Continue running background apps when Chromim (Chrome) is closed".

In case you need to allow running background apps in the browsers, well, browse their respective bug-trackers for a relevant bug report and see if there are other solutions, workarounds, etc.

Skype notifications pause Rhythmbox playback

When I run both Skype and Rhythmbox, Rhythmbox is paused every time a Skype notification arrives (on receiving a new incoming message, new file transfer request, incoming call,  etc.). I find it quite annoying.

There are at least 2 ways to resolve the problem I've come across:

1) turn off all Skype notifications - and Rhythmbox is never paused. However it's not a good solution at all :)

2) edit the default.pa file in /etc/pulse/

sudo gedit /etc/pulse/default.pa

find line:

load-module module-role-cork

and comment it:

# load-module module-role-cork

save file.

Log out. Login. Voila.

P.S. The OS used was Sabayon, I've also noticed the solution applies to Fedora as well.

How to install Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu 14.04 from repos

Learning Ruby on Rails programming and looking for how to install it on Ubuntu? You must have come across different tutorials showing how install RoR on Ubuntu using various ways and particularly through RVM.

However things are much easier. Ruby and RoR are available as packages in the repos.

Install Ruby on Ubuntu 14.04 - actually it comes preinstalled. To check your Ruby version type in terminal:

ruby -v

On my machine it's outputs: "ruby 1.9.3p484 (2013-11-22 revision 43786) [x86_64-linux]"

Install Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install ruby-railties-4.0 // this will install RoR 4.0

sudo apt-get install ruby-railties-3.2 // this will install an earlier version of RoR

Skype mouse theme on Kubuntu 14.04 64 bit

After installing Skype on a 64 bit Kubuntu 14.04 system you notice Skype uses a different mouse theme, not the default one defined in KDE's system settings.

There was another post about what causes that, some things have changed, so here is an actual and short how to make Skype use the default mouse theme on Kubuntu 64 bit:

sudo apt-get install libxcursor1:i386

That's it.

How to change MDM cursor theme on Linux Mint KDE

After you install Linux Mint KDE which uses the MDM login screen by default, you may notice at the login screen the DMZ-White cursor theme is used. Here is how to make MDM use the cursor theme you want (in my case, I'd like it to use the Oxygen White cursor theme which is default in KDE and I like it most). Since the GUI way is easier for, here is what I did the GUI way:

kdesu dolphin

Go to

/etc/alternatives/

Find file / link

x-cursor-theme

Right click on it, edit the path in the link's Properties to point to your theme:

/usr/share/icons/oxy-white/cursor.theme

Go to

/usr/share/icons/oxy-white/

Create a file named cursor.theme

Open it and put the following:

[Icon Theme]
Inherits=oxy-white

Save. Logout. Voila.

How to change cursor theme for QT apps on Gnome Shell Opensuse 131

After you install Opensuse 13.1 Gnome Shell, you may notice the default cursor theme is Adwaita or DMZ-AA / DMZ Black, while QT apps use another theme - DMZ (white).

So, to make Skype, VLC (and all other QT apps) use the default Awaita theme (or the theme you want) on Opensuse Gnome, edit the following file and type the theme you want (in my case, I make all the apps use the black DMZ / Adwaita cursor theme):

# nano /etc/sysconfig/windowmanager

Find line

X_MOUSE_CURSOR="DMZ"

Change DMZ to DMZ-AA (or for the name of your theme of choice). Save changes.

Logout. Login. Now you see the cursor you want in Skype and other QT apps.

Skype doesn't work on Linux Mint 16 x86_64

Alright, it's time for Linux Mint to become less polished.

UPDATE: The solution applies for Ubuntu 14.10, too (respectively, the problem arises in Ubuntu 14.10 as well).

If you install Skype on Linux Mint 16 x86_64 (KDE) you, you may find out the app won't start. And if you run Skype from the terminal to see what the error is and what the matter is, you may see the following:

skype: error while loading shared libraries: libGL.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

If you this error, here's how to fix it:

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/mesa/libGL.so.1 /usr/lib/libGL.so.1

This creates a link to the not found file / library.

Then on running Skype from the terminal, you may see another error: 

skype: error while loading shared libraries: libGL.so.1: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64

Go on:

sudo nano /etc/ld.so.conf.d/skype.conf

and add the following line in it

/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/mesa/

save & exit
and lastly run

sudo ldconfig -v

Now Skype should start up and run normally.

Best distro for Gnome Shell - Sabayon

I decided to switch from KDE to Gnome Shell for a change and started considering the options I had.

The conclusion that was made was a bit of surprise for me - the best Gnome Shell distro is currently Sabayon.

I wanted a recent Gnome Shell release (not 2 versions behind the latest release), an easy to use distro and preferably polished enough. So I opened distrowatch, took a look at the top distros listed and here is how my logic worked as I went through most popular options:

- openSuSe 13.1 - latest Gnome Shell (3.10), reputable and robust distro; great, that must do. So I installed it... and was bitterly disappointed: no nVidia proprietary graphics drivers in the repos for the latest release!! Unbelievable! 32 bit KDE apps (well, at least skype) would use a different cursor theme (and too much to bother to find out a solution; libcursor 32 was installed); the login screen uses it's own cursor theme while the Shell when in session uses another theme set from Gnome settings; gnome terminal loses it's window borders and shows white text on white background from time to time. Damn, too bad for a distro which is considered polished. Won't do. (But still, the distro feels quick, really quick, I like it).

- Ubuntu Gnome - Gnome Shell 3.8, nah. Don't want to bother with PPAs and not sure what's with Nemo under Ubuntu.

- Debian - too old.

- Mageia - constantly delayed betas, not sure whether it has large repos and I don't feel excited about using repos like rpmbone and such. Last time I tried it, it also used different cursor themes for the login screen and in session, which is a minor thing but reflects the attitude and makes the distro fall into my eyes (well, this is very subjective, but it does determine my decision to ditch such a distro).

- Fedora - hmm, still in beta. I might have tried it if Fedora 20 stable was out. I remember it's as quick as Suse, but somehow gives a feeling of being buggy (I also remember some issues with gif images which wouldn't display animated, and somewhat too frequent alerts to file a bug report, but that was a couple of years ago, so things might have changed by now). Alas, no stable version, yet, and I never installed betas.

- PCLOS - they're periodically late to update stuff in the repos, even Chromium gets obsolete in their repos; but generally PCLOS is easy and pleasant to use. But they stick to Mate and there's no Gnome Shell version. Sad. I'd give PCLOS a go, nice distro overall as I remember from my previous experience.

- Arch - oh no, too much hassle to install. I just want the system to work and that's it.

- Mint - no Gnome Shell version + Ubuntu repos with Gnome Shell 3.8 probably.

So what's left? Basically, noting else. Except Sabayon.

- Sabayon - with Sabayon you get: latest Gnome; multimedia and proprietary drivers out of the box; relative stability; really easy installation. What's better than it for Gnome Shell right now? Well, in my opinion, nothing.

How to disable skype group chat notifications linux client

If you're part of a Skype group chat you're often annoyed by too many messages that are exchanged in the chat. Every message triggers a notification which may be really annoying. There are 2 ways of getting rid of them - to hide behind a "Do not disturb" status which will suppress the notifications (along with preventing some other people from whom you'd rather want to receive a message from writing to you) or to simply disable the group chat notifications for a particular chat. In the Windows and Mac Skype clients there is an option in GUI to disable chat notifications, and there is none for the Linux client.

However, the good news is that there is another way to disable chat notifications for any particular chat in Skype (it will actually work for any client regardless of the system):

in any chat window, be it a group chat or a personal chat, issue the following command: 

/alertsoff

That's it =) (Resembles IRC commands, doesn't it?)

Actually there are more commands - you can find them all in this article, for instance. The most useful one for me, though, is above =)

Screensaver rotates slowly after graphic drivers update, Sabayon KDE

After a new version of the graphics driver is installed in Sabayon (in my case, nVidia proprietory drivers), it may happen that openGL screensavers will start rotating more slowly.

Run the following command to fix it:

eselect opengl set nvidia 

(or ati or x11 instead of nvidia - depending on your card and choice)

Smooth Tasks - Icons too small

Smooth Tasks is a totally great alternative to the default Task Manager widget.

No, not because it copies the way open windows are organized on the taskbar on Windows 7, but because:

a) on notebooks with relatively small screens when too many windows are opened (and when one works hard quite often many windows are opened at the same time), it's impossible to see the titles of every opened window (this is what the XFCE panel suffers from and one of the reasons why I never install XFCE);

b) when the desktop theme is badly designed (e.g. on a dark theme after turning off all the effects on KDE, the font color of window titles on the taskbar are often dark which makes reading the titles almost impossible - try turning off the effects on the default theme on Sabayon, OpenSuse, Kubuntu) and you don't know how to modify the theme to change the font color, it's just easier to install the Smooth Tasks plasma widget.

So, if your distro doesn't come with Smooth Tasks by default (and most don't, except for PCLOS) you may see that the icons of the launched apps are unpleasantly small.

Here is how to make window icons on the Smooth Tasks widget larger:

Right click on the widget -> Smooth Tasks Settings -> Appearance -> Task Items -> Icon Scale -> set it to your liking. 

For me at 150% the icons look big enough on the panel.

Firefox freezes badly on Kubuntu 13.04

After installing a fresh copy of Kubuntu 13.04, I've noticed my favorite browser Firefox freezes after about 2 minutes of not being used. I had to terminate the process and to re-launch the app every time, than it'd freeze again after I switched to another application.

The issue was caused by the following add-ons that came installed and enabled by default:

Global menu bar integration
Ubuntu Firefox Modifications.

After disabling the add-ons Firefox started behaving as expected.

How to remove Linux Mint modified Google search from Chromium

As we know all browsers installed on Linux Mint come patched to use Linux Mint modified Google search if you search directly from the address bar. I prefer the original Google search interface to the Mint's customization of the page (Mint's variant won't show the current time, short info from Wikipedia on the right side, etc; after all I just dislike how the customized search results page looks).

If you use Chromium's / Chrome's synchronization option, then you have the Linux Mint Google search page across your machines on which you used Chromium / Chrome and signed in to the synchronization service. This is quite annoying (you would actually see the Linux Mint search on a Windows machine as well) if you don't like how the search results are presented on the customized page or if you don't use / like Mint.

So here is how to make Chromium use the default Google search for searches from the address bar:

Sign in to your Google account (if not already signed in) - open Chromium / Chrome settings - go to the Settings tab - section Search - Manage search engines (or just type chrome://settings/searchEngines in the Chromium's address bar to go directly to the step we need) - locate the string www.google.com/cse**** - remove it. Linux Mint's search results page is now gone.

Set the search engine you want.

This is the default Google search for me - {google:baseURL}search?q=%s&{google:RLZ}{google:acceptedSuggestion}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:assistedQueryStats}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:searchClient}{google:sourceId}{google:instantExtendedEnabledParameter}ie={inputEncoding}