GNOME search not working

After upgrading to Ubuntu 26.04, my gnome search often stopped working.  After Googling the issue, I found that this may be caused by a bad extension.

 

 

 

I then inspected the extensions available.  Instead of disabling all of them, I decided to first disable the ones I could do without.  I identified these three:

• snapd-prompting@canonical.com
• snapd-search-provider@canonical.com
• web-search-provider@ubuntu.com

To disable an extension, use the following command like below:

gnome-extensions disable snapd-prompting@canonical.com 

I has been a while since I disabled them, and the GNOME problem has not happened again.  I guess I found my culprits.

Disable USB charging

I bought a laptop recently.  It has nothing to write home about.  However, its battery is acting bit funny.  It keeps draining even when it is disconnected from the main.  It turns out this is normal for new laptops.  New laptops have a "useful" feature called "Power-off USB charging",  which allows devices like phones to use the laptops's battery as a powerbank.  To do this, the laptop is essentially "always on", which slowly drains the battery.

I don't know about others, but I personally dislike this feature.  With this feature enabled, if I don't use my laptop for a a day or two while it is discconected from the main, the battery goes flat. This was not the case with my old laptop.  Although its battery would still go flat eventually, it happens at a much, much slower rate.

Luckily, this feature can be turned off, though you may need to do a bit of "hunting"/research as I did.  My laptop is an Acer.  Firstly, some geniuses over at Acer decided this feature should be hidden in BIOS.  To reveal the hidden options, you need to press the CTRL+S when you are in the bios.  Then, look for a very obvious option called "TBT Wake from S4 Support", and turned it off.  It is so obvious, isn't it?

 

 

 

As a final step, launch "Quick Access" as an admin, and then disable "Power-off USB charging" from there.

 

 

My laptop battery now behaves like it should be. 

While we are on the topic of hidden options.  The reason I found the hidden menu was that I had reset my laptop BIOS, after which Windows could no longer find my NVMe drive.  It turned out that the reset had reset re-eabled the Intel VMD feature. With this enabled, Windows requires a special driver to "see" the drive.  Once I found the option, and turned it back off, Windows booted perfectly.

  

Slow RTL8188FTV in Debian/Ubuntu

Since the RTL8188FTV usb WiFi chipset is natively supported by Ubuntu/Debian, I got few for my Ubunut machinies.  The WiFi dongle is indeed detected and works straight away, however it is very slow.

A quick search on Google shows this may be caused by its aggressive power management.  After applying the below to disable its power management feature, its connection/speed is noticeable better.

sudo mkdir -p /etc/modprobe.d/

echo "options rtl8188fu rtw_power_mgnt=0 rtw_enusbss=0" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/rtl8188fu.conf

Useful tools for Windows Laptops

It is my second time that comes across a Windows laptop that only has WiFi.  It is fine if you don't ever need to re-install Windows.  If you do, you may have a problem especially if you are dealing with the Home Edition.  With the Home Edition, you have to have Internet connection to complete the installation.  If you are like me, whose laptop comes with an unsupported WiFi card then you may be stuck at the installation.  Luckily, I have an old WiFi dongle and a USB Gbps NIC that are natively supported by Windows.  They allow me to get pass the "connection" stage and let me successfully re-install Windows.

With laptops that only come with WiFi is becoming a norm, it may be worth to add some natively supported USB WiFi/ NIC to your toolbox in case you are running into a similar situation like mine.

The WiFi dongle I was using is a RTL8188 based dongle.  I believe the RTL8153 based USB Ethernet NIC works too.

Windows VM notes.

 Despite how much you dislike Windows, especially Windows 11, there are still times which you can't escape from it.  Like many people, I have a virtualbox VM for it, and here are few things I would do to make it "better".

 1) Debloating.  It is not a secret Windows 11 is not lean even with a fresh installed.  Especially if you are unfrotunately having the joy of using its Home edition.  So, the first thing you may want to do is to trim it down.  Win11Debloat may be a good start.

 https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat

 

 

 

 

2) Compact the VDI image. There are times you either just want to keep the VDI file size in control or you want to export the VM as OVA for backup. For both instance, you may want o compact your VDI first. Here are steps I would take.

a) run Windows' Cleaner tool to delete any obsolete/residue files left from Windows updates.

b) run sdelete to "zero" the empty spaces after the deletion in (a)

sdelete c: /z

sdelete is a power toy tool that can be obtained at: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/sdelete

c) run the Windows defrag tool to defragment the drive, so all empty spaces are in continuous blockss.

d) optional. I often run the (b) again, to zero the empty space once more before the compacting.

e) shutdown the VM, and run the below command on the host machine to the VDI file to compact the file.

 vboxmanage modifyhd <your vdi file> --compact 

 If you get the erorr below, try switch to cmd and try again.

  

 

How to get my public IP in Linux with cmd?

There are times when you are on a cmd only set up and you want to know your current public IP. This little command may help you.

curl ifconfig.co

 If you specifically want IPv4 address, you add -4 switch to the command as below.

 curl -4 ifconfig.co

 

Debian 13 Installation notes

Recently, I have started to use Debian instead of Ubuntu for my computers.  There are a lot to like in Ubuntu, the cleaner default install is more favourable for virtual machines.

Here are few notes that I took while I was setting up my Debian.  They are reminders to myself, but they may also be useful to others.

1) Use the Advanced Graphical Install option found under Advanced Options instead.  Most Debian derived distributions disable the root user by default, but Debian does NOT do this with its default option, "Graphical Install".  However, if you use the advanced options, you can choose to disable the root user during the installation time.

 

 

2) Make ext4 more SSD friendly by add mount options: "discard,noatime,nodiratime".  

sudo findmnt --verify --verbose

 Since it is a pain to fix the fstab if a mistake was made.  Use the below to verify your changes!

sudo findmnt --verify --verbose

 

 

3) Reduce swappiness.  By default, Linux can be a bit too aggressive in using your hard drive for virtual memory.  By reducing its aggressiveness can make your system performs better as well as prolonging the life of your hard drive.  This achieves by adding a conf file to /etc/sysctl.d with the content below.  I named mine 99-swappiness.conf.

 vm.swappiness=1

 

 4) Improve system responsiveness during USB drive writing.  It is a bit beyond my capabilities to explain this in details.  If you want to know more, you can try this link, https://forum.manjaro.org/t/the-pernicious-usb-stick-stall-problem/52297 and https://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/comments/1p9h136/copyingmoving_files_to_usb_media_weirdness/

With the default installation, if you are copying a large file to your pen drive, you are likely to end up with a very sluggish if not irresponsive system.  This issue can be mitigated by adding another conf file to /etc/sysctl.d/ with the lines below.  I named mine 99-usb-drive.conf

vm.dirty_ratio = 3
vm.dirty_background_ratio = 3
vm.dirty_expire_centisecs=3000
vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs=1500
vm.min_free_kbytes=59030

 

You can use "sudo sysctl --system" to apply the change without a reboot.

 

Here is what Google AI said about the ratio. 

   

 

4) Add NetBIOS supports.  By default, if you are trying to referencing another machine in your network by its name, you are likely to get an error.  This is because the default set up does not understand NetBIOS.  To make your new install aware other Windows machines in your network better, you need to add the winbind support by:

apt install libnss-winbind winbind

Then, update your /etc/nsswitch to inlcude wins, i.e.

5) Add fonts support to CKJ and Thai characters.

apt install fonts-noto* fonts-thai-tlwg*

6) Add "Open in Terminal" to the context menu.

 sudo apt install caja-open-terminal

 

 

That is it.  I hope you found this useful.