One of the best Windows 10 features is that you can use a PIN to log in faster than typing your password. Of course with Windows Hello you can log in even faster, but fingerprint scanning is often unreliable, and not many laptops have the IR camera required for the facial unlock feature. Wouldn't it be great if you could use a PIN to log in to your Linux desktop too?
Fixing the missing Viber indicator icon from the Cinnamon panel (and possibly other desktop environments)
The software center of Linux Mint 20.1 Cinnamon Edge offers Viber as a flatpak package. Installation is a breeze and the only downside is that it takes a lot more space than the .deb version from the official Viber homepage. I'm not sure if it is a common problem, but for me, the indicator icon was missing from the cinnamon taskbar.
Software selection for Linux in Q2 2021
With the release of Ubuntu 21.04, official support for fractional scaling was announced. I decided to do a fresh install on my desktop system to check out solely this feature. To speed up the post-install configuration phase and to score an easy blog post, I made a list of the software I use every day.
Enabling Numlock and tap to click on the login screen of Zorin OS (and Ubuntu)
I don't have too many pet peeves, but a disabled Numlock is annoying as hell, especially if you type numbers a lot. It is also infuriating if you physically have to click the trackpad instead of just tapping lightly once you got used to this feature in Windows. When I used a Macbook Pro for a few months this has baffled me but I didn't realize you can enable tap to click in system preferences.
Setting Flameshot as the default screenshot app in Ubuntu
There are a lot of great screenshot apps that you can use to convey information to others. The first one I really liked was Lightshot, which is available for Windows, Mac, or as a Chrome extension. As I am back to using Ubuntu-based Linux distros for work, I needed a similar tool.
Force Janitor to work with your upgraded Kodi installation
Janitor is an addon for Kodi that will automatically scan your library for watched movies, TV show episodes and music videos based on criteria such as age, rating or free disk space. I set it up to delete what we already saw after 2 days except if it is in a protected folder. It is a great tool to free up disk space on your device, but if you upgrade to a version of Kodi that is not supported, it will be disabled and you will have to delete stuff manually again.
How to fix Kodi black screen after upgrading to a new version
Just had this happen to me. I didn't really watch what I was doing and issued the "sudo apt-get dist-upgrade" command which for some weird reason removed Kodi from my system. After reinstalling it with "sudo apt-get install kodi" all I got was a black screen instead of the Kodi user interface.
Skipping YouTube ads in Chrome, Firefox, and Android
Ads are pretty annoying when you just want to look up something really quick on Youtube. Not as if they aren't annoying all the time, but when you are looking up instructions on CPR, you definitely don't need a long advertisement on hamburgers.
Using Barrier to control multiple computers regardless of operating system
I don't often use multiple monitors at once, but when I do, I'm using multiple computers too. I'm mainly doing this to test websites on multiple operating systems as my desktop machine runs Linux Mint and my work laptop has Windows 10 on it. Of course I could use Virtualbox to run any number of operating systems, but having a separate device makes things a bit more simple for me. What I despise is using the laptop keyboard and the trackpad. Wouldn't it be nice if I could use the desktop keyboard and mouse on the laptop too?
Revive an old laptop with Chrome OS
If you have been using computers for a few decades, there is a good chance that you too have a few old desktop and laptop computers collecting dust in your house. They are too old to use and have little value, so selling them is not a worthwile endevour. You can't even give them to family members as even they find them lacking in power. Have you tried to use a 10 year old laptop with Windows 10? Not fun... Wouldn't it be nice if you could magically make the old hardware more powerful?