Problems with Plasma 6

In KDE Neon the upgrade to Plasma 6 has produced several problems:

  • No working power commands (logout, restart, shutdown): this could be a problem from espanso (a text expander for Wayland). Try to stop it (espanso stop) and, if so, create a logout script.
  • applications as root from menu don’t work: you can use a code like this (it’s an example):
[Desktop Entry]
Comment=Twin-Panel File Manager
Exec=pkexec env DISPLAY=$DISPLAY XAUTHORITY=$XAUTHORITY KDE_SESSION_VERSION=5 KDE_FULL_SESSION=true krusader
GenericName=File Manager
Icon=krusader_user
Name=Krusader-root
NoDisplay=false
Path=
StartupNotify=true
StartupWMClass=krusader
Terminal=false
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application
X-DocPath=krusader/index.html
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=root
  • reimage service menu (in Dolphin) could not work; to fix it try with this:
 sudo mv /usr/share/kservices5/ServiceMenus/reimage* /usr/share/kio/servicemenus/

Ugly icons in KDE Plasma 6

The simplest way to get the right icons is to choose breeze as main theme, and then go (as root, ui.g. with Krusader in root mode) to usr/share/icons and rename breeze/places to places.orig, and afterwards symlink places from Humanity Classic to breeze.
To get correctly Humanity Classic you have to install (via Synaptic) Adwaita icons, otherwise you could be forced to remove a lot of essential packages. Installing Adwaita will ask you a very small kind of change.

Replacing Autokey in Wayland

Many Linux distros are leaving xorg (x11) for Wayland, as display server protocol. Unfortunately not all the applications are ready for Wayland.

In particular Autokey, a very useful application to expand text and automatize typing operations, is not (yet) compatible with Wayland.

A quite good replacement of Autokey is Espanso. But there are also some limitations:

  • Espanso has big problems in LibreWriter (abbreviations are often expanded with errors). Similar problems there were also with Autokey in LibreWriter, but Autokey was able to provide some workarounds.
  • Espanso, unlike Autokey, can provide a very small range of hotkeys (such as ctrl + alt + d): Espanso can use only hotkeys with ctrl (not with alt or shift) and a few letters. I.g. “x01” means “ctrl + a”. You can find the whole range of possible combinations here.

However, as long as the main typing operations are in LibreWriter, or Kate, you can use that applications possibilities to expand text.

in LibreWriter there are at least two possibilities (to expand an abbreviation):

  • tools – > autocorrect
  • tools -> autotext

In Kate you can use snippets to create something similar to Autokey.

I.g. to create a snippet to wrap selected text with the tag <h1>, you can add this code as snippet code:

${rangeCommand("<h1>%%1</h1>", "title")}

Choose the title as you prefer (obviously without spaces), and a key combination, i.g. ctrl+1.

Don’t forget to add, in the javascript section (the tab scripts) this code

function rangeCommand(command, def) {
    if (view.selectedText().length > 0) {
        return command.replace("%%1", view.selectedText());
    } else {
        return command.replace("%%1", def);
    }
}

In this way, you will be able to add a title <h1> to your selected text.

missing gtk icons

Using KDE in a new installation you could don’t have all the gtk icons. If so, try with:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall adwaita-icon-theme-full

Install Kubuntu without EFI bootloader

If you have, i.g., another linux distro, such as KDE-Neon, and you want add Kubuntu as secondary SO, without changing your EFI, you do this way:

  • in Kubuntu (usb iso) menu -> try Kubuntu
  • in a terminal (once logged in): ubiquity -b
  • this will open the graphical installation tool letting you install Kubuntu without modifying existing EFI
  • don’t worry for the warnings (“the system could not start”)
  • after rebooting, in KDE-Neon do update-grub

If you get, with update-grub, an error such this:


Warning: os-prober will not be executed to detect other bootable partitions.
Systems on them will not be added to the GRUB boot configuration.

You can solve adding or uncommenting this line in /etc/default/grub

GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false


open links in Waterfox (from another app)

It could happen that you cannot open links in Waterfox from another application (such as Thunderbird): blank page and all other tabs crashed.

To solve this issue, you can try adding %u to te Waterfox.desktop file (in .local/share/applications), something like:

Exec=flatpak run net.waterfox.waterfox %u

if you have Waterfox with flatpak

slow boot

You can check what apps cause a slowing of your boot, in Linux, with this command:

systemd-analyze blame

You should see something like the following

systemd-analyze blame
3.115s NetworkManager-wait-online.service
1.980s fwupd-refresh.service
1.928s fwupd.service
[…]

To disable NetworkManager-wait-online.service, i.g., you can type: sudo systemctl disable NetworkManager-wait-online.service.

other possible causes

Check also if your UUID (of swap partitions, i.g.) are correct. This can be a cause of a severe slowing.


css :hover on a mobile device

There lots of java-scripts to allow an effect such as mouse over on a mobile device (that is without mouse), but there is also a very, very simple solution: to use :active instead of :hover, as in the following example:

@media screen and (max-width: 580px) {
  .tooltip:active .tooltiptext {
  visibility: visible;
  opacity: 1;
}
}

while in desktop screen you can keep
.tooltip:hover .tooltiptext {
  visibility: visible;
  opacity: 1;
}

Google speech-to-text

If you use Google speech-to-text one problem is to type signs such as ‘(‘ or ‘)’. In English you can say (in a low voice) open bracket or close bracket. In Italian apri parentesi tonda o chiudi parentesi tonda: indeed saying only apri parentesi Google will type “apri parentesi” and not “( “.