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By: Victor Forberger

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Victor Forberger

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Basically, a corruption of the CUPS policy file stops CUPS from running until the corruption is removed.

My printing stopped working after a late November 2025 update. Basically, only Airprint drivers would appear in a print dialog, and those drivers could not connect to anything when selected (and so there was no printing at all).

I tracked the error down to CUPS not operating

$ sudo service cups status
[sudo] password for victor:
○ cups.service – CUPS Scheduler
Loaded:

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Continue Reading CUPS configuration error and fix

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Firefox 131 released in October 2024 gained the ability to link to a specific text fragment inside a web page by including #:~:text= followed by the text fragment to link to.

But, that feature is turned off by default. To turn on this feature, first go to your about:congfig page and click through the warning. Then search for fragment in the search box.

Firefox fragment search in about:config

To turn on this feature,

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Continue Reading Text fragments in Firefox

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Webex does not work on Ubuntu 24.04/Noble systems.

Thanks to Michael Heilmann, the error is related to a missing apparmor profile.

I did fix this bug by adding a apparmor profile for Webex into a new file here “/etc/apparmor.d/Webex”:

abi <abi/4.0>,
include <tunables/global>

profile Webex /opt/Webex/bin/CiscoCollabHost flags=(unconfined) {
userns,

# Site-specific additions and overrides. See local/README for details.
include if exists <local/Webex>
}

Afterwards you need to reload the profiles with

$ sudo systemctl reload

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Continue Reading Fix for using Webex on Linux

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Ubuntu handbook has instructions on how to get Airplay up and running on a Linux box.

With these instructions, here is what I did for my desktop.

$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC662 rev3 Analog [ALC662 rev3 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: HDMI [HDA ATI HDMI], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0:

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Continue Reading Setting up Airplay on Xubuntu

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I have upgraded my desktop but not my laptop.

neofetch results after upgrade to Xubuntu Noble, 24.04

Note: Xneo is an alias for neofetch –ascii_distro xubuntu.

In general, the switch to mostly snaps could be smoother, and I still need

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Continue Reading Upgrading to Xubuntu Noble — 24.04 from 22.02 — and a review

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Given the breadth of hardware and operating system wrinkles at play with Linux, it is all too common to see recurring and minor errors pop up about some setting or hardware snafu that really does not matter.

For my desktop computer, I was seeing log files of 2 to 4 gigs in size. Here is how I tracked this problem, discovered the cause, and found a solution (at least for the ballooning log

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Continue Reading Frequent and recurring errors in log files

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With the new speedometer 3.0 speed tests, I ran some tests with various browsers on my System76 2018 Galago Pro laptop.

Current specs are (via the inxi terminal command):

System:
Host: Hrothgar Kernel: 6.6.10-76060610-generic x86_64 bits: 64
Desktop: Xfce 4.16.0 Distro: Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: System76 product: Galago Pro v: galp3
serial: <superuser required>
Mobo: System76 model: Galago Pro v: galp3 serial: <superuser

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Continue Reading Browser speed tests

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Video acceleration in Firefox (all recent versions of the past year and more) has been a problem on my desktop computer with its radeon graphics card. See my setup. Various websites would have videos appear as glitches and even lead to the xfdesktop freezing/crashing and needing to be killed (xfdesktop will automatically restart after being killed).

Thanks to UbuntuHandbook for its advice at Enable Hardware Video Acceleration (VA-API) For Firefox in Ubuntu

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Continue Reading Video acceleration in Firefox for radeon graphics card

Note: Creepio, an AI, is a featured player among Auralnauts.

The current infatuation with Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially at the state bar which is pushing CLEs about how lawyers need to get on the AI bandwagon, is generally an un-serious infatuation with a marketing concept.

AI and LLM – language learning models, on which much of recent AI is based – has nothing to do with accuracy. So, for a legal practice or any kind of professional activity

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Continue Reading Limits of AI and LLM for Attorneys

With twitter deteriorating by the day, there is a need for social media options. And, one of those options is Mastodon and the Fediverse. Unlike other social media where a person signs up for an account at a central repository (think Facebook, twitter, or LinkedIn), there is no single repository or instance of Mastodon. Rather, Mastodon’s only real organization is set of communication protocols called ActivityPub so that posts from one instance can migrate to

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Continue Reading Explaining Mastodon for Wisconsin Lawyers

Artificial intelligence is all the rage nowadays, and Barton Gellman indicated how whisper.cpp presented fantastic accuracy.

So, I gave the app a run, and it is impressive. Unfortunately, directions for usage could be a bit better. Here are some helpful tips.

First, some directions for installing.

  • Clone the git repository.$ git clone https://github.com/ggerganov/whisper.cpp
  • Move into the newly created cloned whisper.$ cd whisper.cpp
  • Compile the software.$ make [My systems are pretty vanilla, and there were no hitches with the

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    Continue Reading Trying out whisper for transcribing audio

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    In recent versions of Vivaldi, the menu has started appearing on the right side of the window.

    Vivaldi in Xubuntu with menu on right side of screen

    I am a stickler for usability, and so I want a menu showing. I also follow the original human interface design guidelines of trying to have window controls on the upper-left corner of windows/screens.

    Any insights into how to fix this display bug in order to get the menu back on the left side of the window?

    This bug

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    Continue Reading Menu on wrong side of the screen in Vivaldi

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    With the ongoing unemployment crisis, I have not had much time at all to do anything computer-related in a while.

    But, Dedoimedo has a fabulous post about how to make FireFox more user-friendly in the current v91 user-interface. Here is what I managed to accomplish in 20-30 minutes.

    FireFox 91 with square, offset, colorized tabs

    Download the userChrome.css file I created yourself to save some copying and pasting, if you want.

    Continue Reading Adapting FireFox

    https-linuxatty-files-wordpress-com-2020-10-libreoffice_2020-10-15-png
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    Dedoimedo has an excellent commentary of the state of the Linux desktop.

    He notes that usability has plateaued in many ways. I agree. The basic functionality and speed I had with Xubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) was stellar. Now running Xubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) on both newer and faster desktop and laptop computers, I have had problems with graphics cards, samba networking is a bust that I work around, and connecting my iPhone for file transfers

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    Continue Reading Not all is hunky dory with Linux, but it is doing as well as others

    https-linuxatty-files-wordpress-com-2019-11-folderselected_2019-11-09_10-29-04-pngw529

    Insync has undergone a major re-write of the underlying sync frameworks from version 1.5.x to 3.0.x.
    Integration with file managers like thunar is a work-in-progress with this new version. More troubling is a major change in sync behavior with the series 3 version. While the new version has many more syncing options, there is a significant change that is NOT adequately explained.
    Previously, all files in the sync folder were synced across google drive and the computers connected…
    Continue Reading Issues with the new Insync3