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Go fish?
by Evan Leibovitch 22 Aug '25

22 Aug '25

Wondering if anyone here has experience with the fish shell <https://fishshell.com/>, which I discovered as it is the default in Bazzite Linux. Non-POSIX-compliant by design, it appears to be far more advanced in tab-completion and inline syntax checking than bash. ("You'll never write esac again", they say...) Has anyone tried it? Is it anyone's daily driver? Thanks! - Evan

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Does anyone use this, Part 3: Hyprland
by Evan Leibovitch 21 Aug '25

21 Aug '25

I appreciate the feedback so far on the fish shell and Bazzite Linux. The latest curiosity that seems to be attracting attention is something called Hyprland. This is a window manager/compositor that's Wayland-only but apparently extremely resource-light and customizable. It's also increasingly showing up in Linux forums that I watch and has the now-typical small but very noisy following who say it's the Next Big Thing in open source. Having said that, Hyprland is not a full replacement for GNOME or KDE; no panels, utilities, widgets, GUI settings app. It needs these from other sources which could well come from the KDE or GNOME suites. But does that defeat the purpose? Is this the first software that finally lets Wayland shine? Or is it an open source Labubu, the hottest thing around but forgotten next year? -- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56

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Dollar store computer audio system...
by Colin McGregor 21 Aug '25

21 Aug '25

A feature of the original Raspberry Pi from the original on up to the Raspberry Pi 4 was a 3.5 mm audio jack for sound output. I am told by audiophiles that the Pi audio out ... wasn't very good, but to me it sounded fine. With the Raspberry Pi 5 that audio jack was dropped. The loss of that audio jack isn't an issue if you're connecting to a TV via HDMI (use the TV audio), or if you don't need audio, or you use a Bluetooth speaker. But what if you want things more-or-less the way they were before? A visit to Dollarama might be your answer. At Dollarama I ran across a USB-C to audio cable for use with the likes of mobile phones for a little less than $5. Of course the Raspberry Pi 5 uses USB A for its' USB input/output connectors, but again for a little less than $5 you can get a Dollarama USB A to USB C adapter. Connect the above together and the Raspberry PI will see this as an audio device and be able to pass audio out. Less than $10 (before tax) and you can be back almost to the way things were before (okay granted this way you are down one USB port :-( , still that isn't too bad in most situations). Going beyond the above, Dollarama does sell an audio speaker (available in white red or black) about the size of a beverage can with a 3.5 mm input jack for $5 (plus HST) that can (in my case) run off an old phone charger (I didn't try the Dollarama phone charger, but that could be an option). Add in a Dollarama audio cable and you are good. Now, I am not enough of an audiophile to be able to tell if all of the above is good, but it does sound fine to me. I thought that getting a complete, if VERY modest, computer audio system at a dollar store is a bit wild and worth sharing.

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What font are you using in LibreOffice
by William Park 18 Aug '25

18 Aug '25

I'm using "Noto Serif" in LibreOffice Writer. But, it looks a bit crowded. I prefer "Times Roman" style, at least for my resume and cover letter. What font are you using in LibreOffice Writer?

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trying this from a different angle
by CAREY SCHUG 15 Aug '25

15 Aug '25

One of my issues with snaps is that it is frozen in time, since it was first installed. Specifically, my snap of a browser is fixed with the default cursor definition I had when I installed the snap. Since then, I have made it larger and added mouse trails. But anything in a snap is stuck where it was. 1. I suppose I should request that Ubuntu (or snapcraft?) provide a command to copy all and/or popular subsets of system settings from the current live system to any given snap. 2. I have been trying to find where the cursor setting are stored. as an inexpert, every search I do tells me to look in a directory that I cannot find on my system. 3. can anybody suggest how to phrase a query to find this, or just tell me? 4. I presume if I copied such file(s) from my live home directory to the directory for that snap it would propagate my cursor settings there, right? Carey

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bash strict mode (set -e)? - not so fast unless you know these quirks
by Ron 14 Aug '25

14 Aug '25

Quick question: * how regularly do you put `set` in your bash scripts? * how often do you trap signals in your bash scripts? On to the video: > The Problem with Bash 'Strict Mode' > > - Why I Don’t Use `set -euo pipefail` More bash enlightenment by Dave @ YSAP on the topic of bash strict mode (set -e). There are some damned weird gotchas to beware of! I had no idea. His "contrived" example of how it can make your life much harder: $ ((i=0)) ; echo "i: ${i} exit code: $?" i: 0 exit code: 1 Longer form: $ ((i=-1)) ; echo $? 0 $ ((i=0)) ; echo $? 1 $ ((i=1)) ; echo $? 0 So, it's returning an "error" code of 1 that will cause `set -e` to bring your program to a grinding halt where it is inappropriate to do so. No errors were generated in that code. His second example is even more inscrutable. I really have been questioning bash a lot lately. He then covers `set -o pipefail` and again, weird behaviour. $ ( cat /usr/share/dict/canadian-english-insane |head -n 1) A $ (set -o pipefail cat /usr/share/dict/canadian-english-insane |head -n 1) Here, the "error" was that the pipe closed because `head` got its one line and `cat` had no where to send the rest of the file. Finally, he covers `set -u` for unbound variables. It's nice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Jo3Ml53kvc The comments are also good, possibly the best on any tech channel i.e. how to handle exit values > 128. He shouts out the shellcheck.net service (accessed via CLI!)

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Debian 13...
by Colin McGregor 14 Aug '25

14 Aug '25

I changed to Debian about 1999. I had been a Red Hat user before that, but... Red Hat with the split between Red Hat and Fedora was looking like a @#$% show. With Debian I saw a system that could get a bit more ...ideological... than I was happy with, but at least you always knew where they stood and why. I also knew that there wasn't a corporate owner that might suddenly pull the rug out from under you in order to make a few extra $$. So, last weekend starting with my laptop PC (which was designed for Windows 10, but has never successfully booted a MS Windows OS) I upgraded from Debian 12 to 13. Then this week I upgraded my daily driver desktop PC from Debian 12 to 13. VERY few issues and I am basically happy with what I am seeing. I look forward to seeing how all this will impact the Raspberry Pi boxes I own 🙂.

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Anyone have experience with Bazzite Linux?
by Evan Leibovitch 12 Aug '25

12 Aug '25

Fedora and KDE based. Immutable. Most installable apps are Flatpaks. Best tuned for AMD graphics. Apparently the best and easiest way to turn any PC into a SteamDeck, ie, gaming system. Has anyone here tried it? - Evan

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Reminder: Tonight General meeting is only Online tonight.
by Alan Heighway 12 Aug '25

12 Aug '25

*Lighting Talks* Thanks to all that contact me to do a talk. If anyone else wants to do one at the time of the meeting please let us know and we'll add you in. Description: *Short talks, 5-15 minutes, on various subjects around Linux and FOSS. If you have a talk, let us know and we'll add you to the list.* *Come ready to speak, listen, and engage. This is your platform.* Speaker: Moderator: Alan Heighway *Agenda*: 1. Business Meeting 2. Presentation 3. Discussion 4. Adjournment *Date / Time:* August 12th, 2025 19:30 EST *Location:* *Online using Nextcloud:* https://hub.gtalug.org/call/7m45sf9i *A*lan *H*eighway <http://heighway.ca/> heighway.ca 416-712-5247 VA3WAH / VA3YKZ [image: Please consider the environment before printing]

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Meeting Reminder - ONLINE ONLY this month
by Alan Heighway 11 Aug '25

11 Aug '25

Lighting Talks This month we will be meeting online only. I'm disappointed that only one person has come forward to speak. Remember this group only works if everyone participates! Needless to say, I'm Still looking for speakers! Description: Short talks, 5-15 minutes, on various subjects around Linux and FOSS. If you have a talk, let us know and we'll add you to the list. Come ready to speak, listen, and engage. This is your platform. Speaker: Moderator: Alan Heighway Agenda: 1. Business Meeting 2. Presentation 3. Discussion 4. Adjournment *Date / Time:* August 12th, 2025 19:30 EST *Location:* Online using Nextcloud: https://hub.gtalug.org/call/7m45sf9i *A*lan *H*eighway <http://heighway.ca/> heighway.ca 416-712-5247 VA3WAH / VA3YKZ [image: Please consider the environment before printing]

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