Xfce4 4.20 upgrade issue on font size
With the recent upgrade of Xfce4 4.20, I was facing the font size issue on my laptop. I am using icewm . And the upgrade causes my fonts become too small. But some applications are too big, like Brave and FreeFileSync. I spent some time to fix this. And this is my final solution,
Allow xfsettingsd at startup,
xfsettingsd --daemon -D
And use xfce4-appearance-settings, at the Fonts > DPI, enable Custom and set the value to 120 as in .Xresources . The effect is immediate. This solves the font size for all applications.
Android playing iOS MOV video
I am using an Android phone, specifically Vivo. I found that when I play the MOV video transferred from iOS, only sound is able to be played properly but the picture is not showing.
None of the solutions from the Internet helped me to solve my problem. After trial and error, I found that the MOV file can be converted to MP4 format using ffmpeg with some parameters. Eg,
fmpeg -i input.MOV -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -vf "scale=720:1280,fps=29" -ac 1 -x264opts "ref=0:cabac=0:b_pyramid=0:bframes=0" -profile:v baseline -pix_fmt yuv420p output.mp4
Based on my experience, the most crucial parameter is “-pix_fmt yuv420p”, so the MP4 video is 8-bit depth.
Switching from Openbox to IceWM
Bye-bye Openbox, welcome IceWM.
Due to the recent upgrade of glib2 on Arch Linux, it crashes my Openbox when I am running Wine or Proton. Downgrade to 2.74.6 is not a solution, because Nemo, Caja, Nautilus are using 2.76.0.
As a result, I have to find an alternative. From Wikipedia, I found that LXDE can be configured with other window manager rather than Openbox, eg Fluxbox, IceWM, or Xfwm.
I tried Xfwm, but it fails to run. Probably needs extra configuration, but I didn’t continue trying. I tried Fluxbox long time ago, can’t remember the feature. Then I found that, compare to Openbox, IceWM is still in development. Hence I decided to try IceWM.
Twitter interests deselection bookmarklet
I like to use Twitter, but the new Topics and Interests feature of Twitter is damn annoying. It keep showing something I am not interested of.
I looked for the solution from Internet, and finally I come out with this bookmarklet, which can be used in Settings > Privacy and Safety > Content You See > Interests.
javascript:(async()=>{const sleep=ms=>new Promise(r=>setTimeout(r,ms));const inputs=document.querySelectorAll('section[aria-label="Section details"] input:checked');for(let i=0;i<inputs.length;i+=1){const rand=Math.floor(Math.random()*2e3);await sleep(9e3+rand);const input=inputs[i];input.click()}})();
After trigger the bookmarklet, just leave the page there, it will slowly deselect one by one.
Not able to boot
Recently, I failed to boot into my laptop. I was shocked.
home contains a file system with errors, check forced.
home: Inode 12976129 seems to contain garbage.
home: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY.
(i.e., without -a or -p options)
fsck failed with exit status 4.
Then not able to mount the home partition, I was prompted to login as root. However, I was too nervous, I forgot what is my root password.
Reviving Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (GT-P7500)
I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 many many years ago. But recently, I am trying to revive it so that, it will be a possible solution to allow my son to watch cartoon on an old tablet, in future.
Reviving this Galaxy Tab (P7500) takes me so much time to try out those custom ROMs and the apps. But it is an interesting experience.
I tried several ROMs, flashed with TWRP.
Solution on Evernote login issue
I faced the login issue with Evernote since around two weeks ago. It leads me to a blank page, with the HTTP status code 418. There is similar issue reported here. I made the bug report, but the issue not yet solved. Looks like it happened in Malaysia and Vietnam according to the forum. Suggested solution in the forum was to use VPN.
This is how I solved the issue as a temporary solution to login.
Microsoft To Do
In my previous post, I mentioned I migrated Wunderlist to Microsoft To Do.
However, there are two annoying things. Firstly, do not expect there will be Chrome App version of Microsoft To Do similar to Wunderlist and Google Keep, because Chrome Apps is going to be discontinued.
Secondly, I frequently experienced To Do web page doesn’t load properly, either stuck at the loading page, or the tasks not showing or showing partially.
LightDM background image
Recently my old laptop, due to some unknown configuration, it shows a background image in the LightDM login. It is annoying, and it is user specific. Meaning, if I choose another user, the background image will be changed to black background.
Searched for the solution on Internet, most of links are about gsettings, or edit the image in /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf. But none of the related to my issue.
Finally, I found the solution. The problem is not LightDM itself, but related to AccountsService.
Dell Vostro 5459 hibernation
In the previous post (1 year ago), I mentioned the hibernation issue. I believed that it was related to the NVidia graphic card. Related forum can be found here.
But these few days, I notice that whenever I shut down the laptop, it will show the systemd messages. Previously, if I did suspend my laptop, then resume, then shut down will show only black blank screen, until the power off. I believe that the graphic card issue is being fixed with the recent update.