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
Tag: ubuntu
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
HOI4 right-click border selection fix
On some of my (many) Ubuntu desktop installations, Hearts of Iron 4 has an annoying bug, in that right-clicking for partial border selection selects the entire border and borders can't be edited. It seems to be caused by a weird combination of Gnome session, Wayland/Xorg and using a touchpad. This command fixes the issue for … Continue reading HOI4 right-click border selection fix
Ubuntu video thumbnails in file manager
Gnome's file manager Nautilus doesn't display video thumbnails under Ubuntu 24.04. Thankfully this solution still works: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1034595/thumbnails-not-showing-in-video-in-ubuntu-18-04 sudo apt install ffmpegthumbnailer sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-libav rm -r ~/.cache/thumbnails/fail Reboot Done!
Trim on LUKS encrypted LVM root volumes
I noticed that fstrim wasn't working on my new Ubuntu 24.04 desktop installation, failing with "fstrim: /: the discard operation is not supported". In that setup, Ubuntu is installed into an LUKS encrypted LVM volume, so the ext4 file system, LVM and LUKS need to play nicely together for flash discard to work. That's how … Continue reading Trim on LUKS encrypted LVM root volumes


