Category: linux

VLC Flatpak won’t play videos from network shares

Suddenly the Flatpak version of VLC on Ubuntu stopped playing video files directly from a network fileshare (SMB/windows share) mounted via Nautilus. The error is about VLC not being able to play "smb://" files. That's annoying because Nautilus is supposed to hide the fact that this is a network share and create then illusion of … Continue reading VLC Flatpak won’t play videos from network shares →

Acer Nitro V15 battery charge level protection and Ubuntu

The Nitro V15 supports battery protection via min/max charge levels, but Ubuntu doesn't talk the hardware protocol out of the box. There's a kernel module which enables charge levels. I'm a bit in a hurry, so the TLD: the module is here https://github.com/frederik-h/acer-wmi-batterycheck it out and follow the installation instructions Tried & works under Ubuntu … Continue reading Acer Nitro V15 battery charge level protection and Ubuntu →

Adding an entry to Nautilus’ context menu

I'm missing, dearly, the "Play with VLC" context menu entry in Ubuntu 24.04. There's a cumbersome workaround(open -> with -> *scroll scroll scroll* -> VLC), but I want something faster. What started as a side quest for some convenience eventually taught me how to add arbitrary functionality to Ubuntu's file manager context menus. Step 1: … Continue reading Adding an entry to Nautilus’ context menu →

Minimising screen brightness in Ubuntu

I like working at night, but nearly every laptop I've tried with Ubuntu can't reduce screen brightness to comfortable levels. Thankfully there is a convenient workaround. Under Ubuntu 24.04 / Wayland find Accessibility -> Zoom -> Colour filters and adjust to your liking. You probably want to pin the magnification factor to 1.00, too. The … Continue reading Minimising screen brightness in Ubuntu →