extremely clean, modern-looking Linux distribution based on Ubuntu. With the 4 different desktop layouts (with 4 more in the Pro version) it will be a familiar experience no matter if your last computer had Windows 7-10-11, macOS, ChromeOS. Version 16 based on Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS just arrived a few weeks ago and you should really give it a try... and if you do, read on for some tips on how to make an awesome distro even better.
Setting up PIN unlock for Ubuntu Linux
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?
Halfway there, still too far away (Weight loss journey 2021)
Back in February this year, I stepped on the scale and realized that I'm heavier than ever. I decided to make a plan to lose weight and to stick to it. To help with accountability I wrote a blog post to publicly announce this and even posted an update later on. It worked amazingly for two and a half months, but after going down from 108kg to almost 96kg something happened that stopped my progress...
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.
Analyzing a phishing email that targets cPanel users
I maintain a few websites where the hosting company uses cPanel to provide a graphical user interface (GUI) that allows me to easily manage all aspects of my sites. Today I got an email from cPanel that warned me about reaching the disk quota. This happened before, but something was fishy about the email, so I didn't click on the provided links to fix the problem immediately...
List all enabled products with no images in Magento 2 with this SQL query
Sometimes when you are working on a webstore, your client might ask you totally reasonable questions like how many products have no images uploaded. To answer this question is not so easy when there are 3000+ products in said shop. As the admin interface doesn't provide an easy way to check for thumbnail-less products, I had to turn to some SQL magic to answer the question.
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.
Update: 38 days into losing weight…
I set myself the task of losing 23 kgs (50 lbs) on the 16th of February. At that time I hit my record high weight at 108 kgs (238 lbs) and felt that it was a now or never situation to change my life. I thought about what and I wanted to do and wrote a blog post about my plans. Now, 38 days later I have some progress to report.