Ubuntu: Questions and Answers (2014)
Xorg
Skip to questions, Wiki by user ringtail
The Xserver is capable of creating its own configuration file.
As root just run: X -configure. The Xserver will then load each driver module, probe for the driver and create a configuration file. The configuration file will be stored in the home directory of the user who started the Xserver (usually /root).
It's called xorg.conf.new so another config file that may exist in this directory will be overwritten.
Questions
Q: How do I disable middle mouse button click paste?
Tags: xorg (Next Q)
Is there a way to disable the middle mouse button paste behavior that is here by default on gnome?
I have a sensitive mouse wheel and whenever I scroll texts, sometimes it pastes stuff randomly into the text. I lose quite a lot of credibility when I send a file to someone else that has random text snippets pasted all over it.
I have seen a solution that goes by mapping the mouse's middle button to a non-existant mouse button, but that implies getting rid of the middle mouse button altogether (i.e. no tab-closing, opening links into a new tab automatically, etc.). I'd like to keep my middle mouse button active, just disable the pasting behavior.
This also happens when I scroll text with my touchpad (accidentally hit two-fingers without moving, bam.)
So the problem will not be fixed just by changing for a new mouse (in fact I believe it happens more often with my touchpad than with my mouse).
Tags: xorg (Next Q)
User: levesque
Answer by jelle-geerts
For a solution to the problem, please view this guide I wrote: http://www.assembla.com/spaces/slipstream/wiki/Disabling_GTK's_middle_mouse_button_functionality
Or, more directly, here's the patch to disable the 'middle mouse button paste' functionality in GTK: http://subversion.assembla.com/svn/slipstream/patches/gtk_disable_middle_mouse_button_paste.patch
Answer by marco-ceppi
This currently isn't possible - though, as you have mentioned, there are ways to disable the MOUSE 3 button - or remap it- none of those get at the source of the issue. The X11 Primary Selection.
While this isn't a solution, hopefully this explanation will make it clear WHY. In Ubuntu there are two clipboards at work. One, which everyone is familiar with, the freedesktop.org clipboard (captures Ctrl+C command) The second is a clipboard manager that has been at play since before Ubuntu even existed - X11. The X Server (X11) manages three other clipboards: Primary Selection, Secondary Selection, and Clipboard. When you select text with your pointer it gets copied to a buffer in the XServer, the Primary Selection, and awaits pasting by means of the Mouse 3 button. The other two were designed to be used by other applications in a means to share a common clipboard between applications. In this case the freedesktop.org clipboard manager in Ubuntu already does this for us.
Through the extent of my research I can not find a way to disable the X11 selection manager. There are no compilation flags, applications, or configuration values that can disable this. There are various ways around this on a per application basis (majority of these applications being command line ones) - but nothing on a global scale.
I realize this isn't an ideal solution - but seems to be the truth to the issue. The only relevant solution I could muster is actually a hack, create a script that executes an infinite while loop that just replaces the Primary Selection with a null value.
First install xsel (Tool for manipulation of the X selection) sudo apt-get install xsel
The code is as follows:
while(true)
do
echo -n | xsel -n -i
sleep 0.5
done
If you place this in a script and add it to your startup scripts this shouldn't be an issue.
Answer by jay-goldfarb
Jared Robinson gave a simple solution that works on my machine:
Run the following command:
xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 25 3 4 5 6 7 8 9"
To persist this behavior, edit ~/.Xmodmap and add
pointer = 1 25 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Tags: xorg (Next Q)
Q: Where is the X.org config file? How do I configure X there?
Tags: xorg (Next Q)
As Ubuntu 10.10 seems to neither detect my graphics card (Intel 82852/855GM) automatically nor use the corresponding Intel driver even after manually installing it, I am looking into manually configuring X (shouldn't I?). Where can I find the configuration files I need to edit?
Tags: xorg (Next Q)
User: ivan
Answer by nightwishfan
The xorg.conf does not exist by default any more. You CAN create one though.
Boot into recovery mode and select Root Shell. Then run:
X -configure
Then:
cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Reboot and you can edit the new Xorg.conf.
Answer by desgua
The configurations files are at /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d
They are:
10-evdev.conf
11-evdev-quirks.conf
50-vmmouse.conf
50-wacom.conf
51-synaptics-quirks.conf
Check the current manual.
If you create a xorg.conf file the configurations of this file will prevail.
Also check this answer.
Answer by wolfgang-silbermayr
Usually, you don't need the xorg.conf any more.
If you need to configure some devices anyway, you can do so by placing a file in the /usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d/ (Ubuntu 10.04) or /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/ (since Ubuntu 10.10). There are some files in this directory already.
You can find more information on xorg.conf.d (in german, but the configuration files are in english of course). What is important is that the filenames should start with a two-digit number greater than 10.
Another guide - in english - is on x org archive. It's still using /usr/lib but it's good.
Tags: xorg (Next Q)
Q: Why is Wayland better?
Tags: xorg (Next Q)
As recently announced by Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu will be moving towards using Wayland as its display manager.
What are biggest differences between X11 and Wayland? Why will Wayland make Ubuntu better?
Tags: xorg (Next Q)
User: medieval
Answer by oli
You can see the Wayland architecture page to see how it differs in design. It's supposed to simplify the whole graphics stack by forcing everything through a standard GEM/DRM stack straight into the kernel and managing compositing itself.
Compare that to the X stack where you have bits and bobs all over the place. Some of the X mess has been through flexible design, some have been growing pains. All the compositors (Compiz/Metacity/Mutter/KWin/etc) have been added as an afterthought. They are, at their core, hacks to do what X should probably be doing itself. If things carry on expanding outwards like they have been, we'll get to a point where the project become unmaintainable.
All in all, when hardware support is there, it should make the whole stack more efficient and less painful to use in standard setups.
However there are a couple of issues that I haven't seen remedies for so far:
· X is pretty network-aware. You can send windows to other computers, you can have multiple screens with remote logins and all sorts of funky things like that. This might seem fairly specialist but it's widely used technology. Wayland appears fairly local and static in comparison.
· There's also driver support. Closed-source drivers are yet to support the KMS/shared-GEM/shared-DRM technologies that Wayland thrives upon. A purist might be okay with Nouveau but somebody who pays 100-400 on a high performance 3D graphics card won't be happy with the flaky poor 3d performance they'd get with the current open driver.
Update: Nvidia have said they have no plans to support Wayland. Given supporting KMS/DRM/etc would be a major rewrite of their driver, something that would take years to get stable. If they're not even planning support, we (nvidia users) are probably at least five years away from using Wayland.
Either way, we're talking years (probably two to three IMO) before anything like this is ready for stable testing and even longer before you'd have to give up X (if Wayland was clearly better).
Answer by raof
There are lots of differences between X and Wayland. Probably the biggest one from the graphics side is that Wayland doesn't do any drawing.
X has two drawing APIs. One of these is a part of the core X11 protocol, which is ancient, useless, and nobody uses. The other is the XRender extension which provides modern composite operations, among other things such as gradients. This is what Cairo, for example, uses. X also has font drawing APIs.
Wayland has no drawing APIs. A Wayland client gets a DRM buffer handle, which is basically a pointer to some graphics memory; Wayland doesn't know or care how the client draws to that buffer. In X terms this means that all applications get direct rendering - drawing requests don't need to go through the server.
The only rendering Wayland does is to copy the client's buffers onto the screen.
In terms of benefits, Wayland is a lot less complex than X which should make it easier to maintain - although some of this simplicity comes from pushing the complexity (eg: how to actually draw onto that buffer, network transparency) to other layers of the stack. By making clients responsible for all of their rendering the clients can be smarter about things things like double-buffering.
There are other benefits outside of graphics. It's much easier to sandbox applications, for example.
Answer by tgm
The major difference in my eyes is that Wayland is closer to the kernel than X-Server. With the move of graphics drivers from X to the kernel (known as kernel mode setting, KMS), Wayland plans to use this new functionality to replace X. You could expect to see the following...
Less of a footprint than X - because the display is handled by the kernel Wayland will not have to implement as much to become usable. This goes both ways as I suspect X forwarding (look at one screen on another PC) may go away with X.
KMS features: Being able to change screen resolution without restarting X server (though I believe this was fixed in X a while back, at least for nvidia), debug console on kernel panic for intel chipsets (moving to nouveau) if you're into that sort of thing.
Can anyone correct me on any of this if I'm wrong?
Tags: xorg (Next Q)
Q: How do I disable X at boot time so that the system boots in text mode?
Tags: xorg boot (Next Q)
Is it possible to disable X at boot time? I'm setting up a server so it would be nice if it wouldn't load the graphical interface every time I boot.
Tags: xorg boot (Next Q)
User: olivier-lalonde
Answer by bruno-pereira
For Ubuntu 11.10 and higher
Edit /etc/default/grub with your favorite editor,
sudo nano /etc/default/grub
Find out this line:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
Change it to:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text"
Update Grub:
sudo update-grub
No need to remove / disable lightdm upstart conf, it already does that for you.
lightdm.conf
# Check kernel command-line for inhibitors, unless we are being called
# manually
for ARG in $(cat /proc/cmdline); do
if [ "$ARG" = "text" ]; then
plymouth quit || :
stop
exit 0
fi
done
You will still be able to use X by typing startx after you logged in.
Answer by xiao-long-chen
Installing the GUI will probably cause it to start automatically, but it's very easy to boot to text mode in Ubuntu. Just open /etc/default/grub as root and add text to the
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=
line. Then run:
sudo update-grub
Your system will then always boot to text mode.
If you want to boot to the GUI, just press e in the boot menu and remove text from the kernel line.
If you want to start the GUI after boot, just run:
sudo /etc/init.d/lightdm start
Hope this helps :)
Answer by karthick87
For 11.04 and previous versions (and perhaps later)
If you want to boot into text mode:
Edit /etc/default/grub. For example:
sudo gedit /etc/default/grub
Find this line:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
Add text:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash text"
Then update Grub:
sudo update-grub
Note: Removing quiet splash (i.e. GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="") will show text during boot but then show a graphical login screen as usual. Replacing quiet splash with text will leave you at a login prompt; to start a GNOME session, use sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start or startx.
To disable GDM:
Install bum 
After installation it will be found under System>>Administration>>Bootup-Manager
Uncheck Gnome Display Manager 
Tags: xorg boot (Next Q)
Q: How do I disable middle mouse button click paste?
Q: Where is the X.org config file? How do I configure X there?
Q: Why is Wayland better?
Q: How do I disable X at boot time so that the system boots in text mode?
Q: How do I remap certain keys or devices?
Q: Higher screen resolution for VirtualBox?
Nautilus
Skip to questions, Wiki by user alvin-row
Nautilus
This tag is for Nautilus, the standard file manager for Ubuntu.
· Home page
· User Guide
· Screenshots
As the file manager, Nautilus provides file browser windows ("folder windows"), and also the folder-like functionality of the desktop (its ability to contain and manipulate files and icons that represent them).
Questions
Q: What is the difference between "Unmount", "Eject", "Safely Remove Drive" and the eject icon?
Tags: nautilus (Next Q)
When I right-click the desktop icon for my USB drive or SD card I have the choice to "Eject" or "Safely Remove Drive":
In the Tree side pane in Nautilus, I can either "Unmount" or "Eject":
The Places side pane in Nautilus has some kind of eject icon:
What do all of these do?
Specifics I've been wondering about include:
· What happens when a drive has multiple partitions mounted?
· Under what conditions is a prompt to empty the trash displayed?
· Do any of these result in a state in which the drive cannot be mounted again without first being physically reconnected?
Tags: nautilus (Next Q)
User: ændrük
Answer by greyfade
When a drive is connected and its filesystem loaded, it is mounted, as if with the mount (or pmount) command, to a location on the root filesystem (usually somewhere inside /media). When the filesystem is no longer needed, it can be unmounted (as if with the umount or pumount commands), which flushes any pending writes to disk, so that you can remove the drive safely. If the drive is removed without doing this, some pending writes will be lost, and the drive can potentially be rendered unreadable or otherwise lose data.
"Safely Remove Drive" and "Eject" are basically equivalent and do two things: It first unmounts the filesystem (as if the umount command were used), then it issues a SCSI eject command (which is accepted by things like CD-ROM drives, and ignored by almost everything else). It works the same as the command-line command eject. Many USB devices seem to respond to the eject command by shutting down or de-registering themselves from the USB host.
For most devices, all of these commands are functionally equivalent. For CD-ROM, DVD, Blu ray, etc. devices, "Eject" additionally physically ejects the media.
Tags: nautilus (Next Q)
Q: How to restart nautilus without logging out?
Tags: nautilus (Next Q)
How do I just restart the nautilus after adding a nautilus script without having to log out.
Tags: nautilus (Next Q)
User: riyaz-mohammed-ibrahim
Answer by karthick87
To restart nautilus...
· First, type the following in your terminal to quit nautilus:
nautilus -q or killall nautilus
· Then, open nautilus via Unity menu (press the Super key) or using the run command (Alt+F2)
Tags: nautilus (Next Q)
Q: Traditional search-as-you-type on newer Nautilus versions
Tags: nautilus
Until now I was using a "traditional" version of Nautilus: that that comes with Ubuntu 10.10. Now I'm using 3.6.3, included with Ubuntu 13.04 (most likely any recent version is equivalent for the scope of my question, anyway).
One major difference between the two is the search-as-you-type behavior: in classic versions of Nautilus, when you typed an input, the file with the closest alphabetical match would become the selected one, the ellegible files/folders being restricted to the current directory.
The new behavior is to perform an optionally-global search instead.
Can one configure Nautilus to provide the previous functionality?
Tags: nautilus
User: vemv
Answer by fernando4870
Ubuntu 13.04 and 13.10
As far as I know the new Nautilus 3.6.X cuts many features from the 3.4 and older versions. Canonical decided to keep using nautilus 3.4.2 in Ubuntu 12.10 because if this even though Nautilus 3.6 was already released. I don't think it is possible to get the old search behaviour in 3.6 but what I did was to install the SolusOS patched Nautilus (also works for Ubuntu 13.04) which includes all the features from 3.4.2 (it really is Nautilus 3.4.2) while maintaining the Nautilus 3.6 skin. I've tested this particular package and it works fine in Ubuntu 12.10 and 13.04.
Alternatively you could install Nemo File Explorer which is a fork of Nautilus 3.4 that was made due to the Cinnamon dev team being disappointed with Nautilus 3.6, you can get the install instructions here.
Making it your default file browser is a bit more tricky, this blog post worked for me in Ubuntu 12.10 but some users reported the method not to work properly.
There are alternative methods however. See the following question:
· Make nemo as default file browser
Ubuntu 14.04 and up
With the upcoming new Ubuntu LTS release type-ahead-find will be the default behaviour in Nautilus again.
Tags: nautilus
Q: Nautilus Git integration
Q: What is the difference between "Unmount", "Eject", "Safely Remove Drive" and the eject icon?
Q: How to restart nautilus without logging out?
Q: Unable to mount Windows (NTFS) filesystem due to hibernation
Q: How to add "Open terminal here" to Nautilus' context menu?
Q: Traditional search-as-you-type on newer Nautilus versions