Ubuntu on Aamnah - Frontend Web Developer

Create desktop icon for AppImage files

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 17:45:46 +0300

Why? Because it gets difficult to differentiate between open apps when all have the same cog icon.

I will use FreeCAD as an example program here. On my system I have a folder at ~/Applications where i keep all the AppImage files. The icons for all the executable are kept in ~/Applications/icons.

Create a .desktop file under ~/.local/share/applications/ for user or ~/.local/share/applications/ for system
Download an icon (SVG/AVIF files work fine)
The Exec and Icon path values can be anywhere on the system, but you need to provide an absolute path
Exec path should be an executable file, i.e. chmod +x the file
Validate the file with desktop-file-validate ~/.local/share/applications/freecad.desktop
Update the database with update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications/

1touch ~/.local/share/applications/freecad.desktop

1[Desktop Entry]
2Type=Application
3Name=FreeCAD
4Comment=An open source parametric 3D CAD modeler
5Icon=/home/amna/Applications/icons/FreeCAD.svg
6Exec=/home/amna/Applications/FreeCAD.AppImage
7Categories=Graphics;Engineering

1# provide the path for .desktop file
2desktop-file-validate ~/.local/share/applications/freecad.desktop

1# provide the path for the entire directory, not the file
2update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications/

Reload /etc/fstab entries and mount drives

Fri, 23 Feb 2024 17:39:19 +0200

The basic and the most common command is:

1sudo mount -av

To make sure it reloads config for auto-mount drives as well, and when traditional mount is not working, use:

1sudo systemctl daemon-reload

if the above doesn’t work, try:

1sudo systemctl daemon-reload
2sudo systemctl restart remote-fs.target

to reload an entry to mount a local filesystem:

1sudo systemctl daemon-reload
2sudo systemctl restart local-fs.target

If you have removed entries from fstab and the above commands don’t work, try restarting the machine.

How to add an application launcher shortcut in Ubuntu Linux

Wed, 26 Jan 2022 14:23:32 +0500

Desktop entry files are used to add an application to the desktop menu. These files specify the name and icon of your application, the categories it belongs to, related search keywords and more. These files have the extension .desktop and follow the XDG Desktop Entry Specification version 1.1.

You do that by creating a .desktop file and saving it in ~/.local/share/applications/

Here’s a basic .desktop file

1# ~/.local/share/applications/obsidian.desktop
2[Desktop Entry]
3Type=Application
4Name=Obsidian
5Exec=/home/aamnah/Mounts/Files/Applications/Obsidian-0.13.19.AppImage
6Icon=/home/aamnah/Mounts/Files/Applications/obsidian.png

Tip: Look under `/var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/` for some inspiration

Each desktop entry must have a Type and a Name key and can optionally define its appearance in the application menu. In other words only Type and Name are required, rest are all optional
Apart from Type and Name, you will most likely add
- Exec to specify where the executable is (or a specific command to execute with arguments)
- Icon to specify which icon to show with the executable (this icon will show in the Launcher and in the Dock)
Keep paths in .desktop absolute to avoid troubleshooting headaches

Location for `.desktop` files

1# for applications installed system-wide
2/usr/share/applications/
3/usr/local/share/applications/
4
5# for user-specific applications
6~/.local/share/applications/

If you’re specifying an AppImage (or any other script) as value for Exec, make sure it is executable

Making the Logitech Unifying Receiver work on Ubuntu Linux with an MX Master 3 mouse

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 22:55:48 +0500

tl;dr: install Solaar

1sudo apt install -y solaar

I have been using a Logitech MX Master 3 for well over a year now. I had originally connected it to my Ubuntu system via Bluetooth after finding out that the Unifying Received is not officially supported for Linux.

Recently, i enabled hibernation for Ubuntu and one issue i come across every now and then is that when it comes back from hibernation, the bluetooth is turned off. And no amounts of running commands via Termnial seems to fix it.

Mount an NTFS partition on Ubuntu with specific owner, group and permissions

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 22:51:23 +0500

Mount an NTFS partition on Ubuntu with a specific owner and group. (Otherwise it’ll mount it as root, which makes sharing the fs on samba a bit difficult, you get permission errors when trying to connect from a mac)

NTFS doesn’t support Unix-style ‘owners’, so the Linux kernel is forced to assign an owner for the entire volume - normally, root. As an alternative to moving your entire home directory to EXT4, you could also give ownership of the entire partition to a specific user or group using the ‘uid’ or ‘gid’ options for mount (or in fstab).

Trying Awesome window manager on Ubuntu

Sun, 12 Dec 2021 19:56:38 +0500

1sudo apt install -y awesome
2
3# logout and login again, select 'awesome' on the login screen options

awesome is configured in Lua

UPDATE:

nevermind, i’ll never use it. Because:

i’m VERYYY used to hitting the Super (Windows logo) key to start an app on Ubuntu. On macOS i do it by hitting alt+space. On awesome, i have no idea what it is. I’m not clicking through application menus to open something.
i don’t think it’s for active GUI users, it felt more like what a sysadmin would use for passive screens, the ones you just display but don’t actively interact with
It’s not a tool or extension, it’s an entirely different display manager. what i really needed was something that could resize and tile windows (without me having to leave everything else i have already setup)
i had to Google how to logout

Change forgotten Ubuntu password inside WSL

Mon, 26 Jul 2021 12:07:13 +0500

Open cmd.exe and run ubuntu2004 config --default-user root
Now run Ubuntu 20.04 inside WSL and it’ll run it as the root user
Use passwd USERNAME to change the forgotten password while running Ubuntu as root

source

Troubleshooting HP Printer on Ubuntu 2104

Wed, 12 May 2021 18:19:18 +0500

A fresh install of latest Ubuntu usually gives me some sort of printer issues. This time it would spend some time Processing the job and then Stop. This is what i did this time:

Install drivers

1# install drivers
2sudo apt install hplip
3sudo apt install printer-driver-gutenprint

The hplip package (HP’s Linux Imaging and Printing software) is usually already installed on Ubuntu. I tried updating it by downloading and installing the latest from HP Support but it wouldn’t install as Ubuntu 21.04 wasn’t supported and the dependencies won’t install.

Reset password on Ubuntu

Mon, 25 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0500

Boot into recovery mode
Root – Drop to root shell prompt
Press Enter to get the prompt back
Run mount -rw -o remount / to remount the root partition with write access
Change password with passwd USERNAME

By default the root user on Ubuntu has no password, hence you being able to drop to root and changing the other user’s password. The root user is also supposed to be disabled by default, not sure why dropping down to it was so simple.

dconf and gsettings notes

Sun, 09 Aug 2020 12:17:45 +0500

As of version 3.7.0, gnome-terminal uses GSettings and DConf instead of GConf.

Syntax differences between dconf and gsettings

dconf write vs. gsettings set

1# dconf
2dconf write /org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/use-theme-colors "false"
3dconf write /org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/background-color "'rgb(0,43,54)'"
4dconf write /org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/foreground-color "'rgb(131,148,150)'"

1# gsettings
2gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ use-theme-colors false
3gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ background-color 'rgb(0,43,54)'
4gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ foreground-color 'rgb(131,148,150)'

dconf

View and backup all dconf settings

1dconf dump / > dconf_settings_backup.sh

If you save it as a .sh file, you’ll get syntax highlighting when you open it with a code editor

Change default screenshot save location for gnome-screenshot on Ubuntu

Sun, 09 Aug 2020 10:02:05 +0500

NOTE: Ubuntu 22.04 saves screenshots in ~/Pictures/Screenshots by default. The new interactive utility that let’s you specify the location when you save. If for some reason it is not saving in ~/Pictures/Screenshots when you use the keyboard shortcuts, try using the GUI interface and save a screenshot to your desired location (the keyboard shortcuts appear to use the last saved location)

tl;dr

1# sudo apt install gnome-screenshot
2gsettings set org.gnome.gnome-screenshot auto-save-directory "/home/aamnah/Pictures/Screenshots"

This will only work if you add a custom keyboard shortcut as well and use that to take the screenshots.

The Ultimate Guide to creating a Gnome Terminal theme

Sat, 08 Aug 2020 23:56:48 +0500

1sudo apt-get install dconf-cli uuid-runtime
2bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/denysdovhan/gnome-terminal-one/master/one-dark.sh)"

GConf, DConf and GSettings

Gnome Terminal color palette details originally used to be stored in ~/.gconf/apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/ and %gconf.xml had all palette related data. But on recent Ubuntu (20.04) you’ll find ~/.gconf to be completely empty even if you have multiple Terminal profiles saved.

That’s because of the transition from GConf (for storing user preferences) to the combination of the GSettings high-level configuration system and the DConf back end. Updating gsettings is preferred over directly writing to dconf