Linux Notes

The Ableton problem:

• If you get another Thinkpad230 or Elitebook 2760p, you can slide that SSD in and go. There is less power and no touch screen unless you can find one.
• If you install WIn7 on an M2, you have to figure out how to do that, then you have to add drivers and disable all the spyware stuff, then install Ableton, and register it again, and add the add-ons. It will be faster, and you can use it on a touchscreen.

Notes on installing Ubuntu Studio

1. Create USB boot device (5 minutes)

• On an already-running computer, format USB with Disks
• Right-click the OS iso file you downloaded and pick "Open with Disk Image Writer" and it should work fine (this program doesn't work for Windows 7 though). If you don't have "Disk Image Writer" I used to use "Etcher." Dismount the drive properly in Thunar or whatever file manager.

2. Use USB boot device to install on a hard drive (5 minutes or 30 minutes or so)

• (NOTE: if it doesn't work, maybe you get an error message like "No Bootable Device." Last time it was the OS I had burned to the flash drive. I burned a different OS and it worked. That was detected but failed to install. I tried a third OS and it worked. Another solution might be re-downloading the OS.)
• Set BIOS to UEFI (It will not install on Legacy)
• During install, obvious things are obvious. I generally don't do the "install updates during installation" thing, so I don't need to connect to wifi during installation.
• Check Encryption and LVM (https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/39080/ubuntu-lvm-encryption)
• Set encryption password. Then you'll set ANOTHER password for Login. You can pick "log in automatically" for this one because otherwise you'll have to enter two passwords every time you boot up. Now you'll wait 5 minutes on a good system or 30 minutes on a weak one (processor) while it installs.

3. Now you have the OS and have to finish configuring it (several hours)

• Unplug USB and reboot into OS

• Now it will probably immediately say you don't have correct language support. IDK what this is.

• Remove snapd backdoor with

  sudo apt autoremove --purge snapd

• Remove VLC spyware with a few commands, because there's lots of related files:

  sudo apt-get autoremove vlc-nox ; sudo apt-get purge vlc ; sudo apt-get autoremove ; sudo apt-get purge vlc-data ; sudo apt-get autoremove --purge vlc ; sudo apt-get remove browser-plugin-vlc ; sudo apt-get autoremove

• Remove Audacity backdoor

sudo apt-get purge audacity ; sudo apt-get autoremove ; sudo apt-get autoclean ; shred -rf ~/.audacity-data/ ; rm -rf ~/.audacity-data/

• Now I sudo apt-get update. It will take 5 or 10 minutes. (And upgrade if you want - this might take a while, like 1 hour.)
• Move the panel to the bottom of the screen by right-clicking it, "Preferences," unlock the panel, and close the Preferences. Click on the dots thing on the far left and move it to the bottom.
• Go to "Language Support" and ignore the error message and add any extra languages. Add your extra languages, which might take 5 minutes to download. There will probably be no language selector icon though. After this is all updated, I had to right-click the language icon (which was a flag at first), then "Keyboard settings" > "Layout" > "Keyboard layout" section and add a language. Then I right-click "Properties" on it to get it to say EN instead of a flag. It worked with dual imput though.
• Go to "Power" and set things like how long / if you want system to sleep, what closing the lid does, etc.
• Copy any existing files over to the new OS. Do this before the next "Install programs" step because some programs are in the "Programs" folder already. Some programs are best done this way anyway because not all download locations are trusted and these are versions that have already been used without noticeable problems.
• Install programs (may as well do this before the next ("Launchers") step because most of these get put there: Kolourpaint, VC, Thunar, VM. Think about whether you want to install from existing files or if you want to try to install fresh from the internet. For example, last time VMs didn't work because there was no Guest Additions adjustment possible for 19.04 (Ubuntu in Ubuntu I mean; Windows7 in Ubuntu did work for a shared folder), so you want to try a new VM install. However, for VC finding a safe download source is less easy so you want to install from the file you already have. Kolourpaint and Bitwig have install files and don't install from Terminal anyway).
• Create "Launchers" by finding the program icons in the menu and dragging them beside the "Menu Button." Ones that are already on Studio: Task Manager, Screenshot, Firefox, Audacity (and set pavucontrol stuff cause you won't want to later). Others: Bitwig, Kolourpaint, Text Editor, VM, VC.
• Add to "Language Support" any extra languages (Do this after updating and upgrading, because it can be finicky). This takes a long time, like 30 minutes, although it might take less if you do it early, so it doesn't want to install language support for every program, which is unnecessary).
• Log in to TV
• Fonts: There is a program called "Font Manager" and you can load ttfs through this
• If the screen keeps shutting off after 5 minutes of inactivity, even though you try to set everything in Power, try turning it of in Screensaver.
• nethogs monitors internet activity. You will have to enable a component called 'universe'
• create a new Protonmail (initials as backup)

  sudo add-apt-repository universe ; sudo add-apt-repository multiverse ; sudo apt update

• Go to Software and Updates and turn off all auto-downloads and auto-updates.

  ---

  sudo nethogs -v 3 

  for total ,

  sudo nethogs -a 

  for speed.

Things to do to a Linux machine. Notes for the next set up:

Virtualbox by Oracle

Note: sometimes when you install, VirtualBox will be broken. One note, the 'guest additions' number must be the same as the version of VirtualBox, according to some people. Just double check them if you have issues. Also, 6.0.8 tried to install 6.0.0's guest additions, and there's no way to tell it where to find the correct thing.

Note: 2020 tried installing from the deb file in my programs folder, but didn't work ('dependencies'). Downloaded again and same. I had to sudo update then it installed from sudo apt install virtualbox easily.

• https://askubuntu.com/questions/367248/how-to-install-virtualbox-from-command-line/713526#713526

• I tried this, but it didn't work (it said it has no installation candidate on the final step)

• So

• actually on Parrot it installed with sudo apt install virtualbox

• https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads

• Downloaded the latest one (although it's for 18.04)

• Then open with "Software Install" and install it. I got an error message about something stupid on the system but it didn't matter.

• Then you can click the plus button to add the existing VMs (as long as you copied them over already), and they should run as they did before.

• Resizing a VM is too hard, it requires first resizing the space through terminal, then resizing something else in the VM program. https://www.howtogeek.com/124622/how-to-enlarge-a-virtual-machines-disk-in-virtualbox-or-vmware/ I just created a new VM instead.

• Boot and go to "System Tools" > "Users and Groups" and turn off password on boot.

• Go to "Power Management" and turn off screen outs if there are any there

• Add Firefox to desktop

• Open Firefox and go to website.extension/en/download to download a VPN program if you use one, then install it using debi package installer (or whatever your OS suggests). Open the program and sign in to your account.

• https://www.linuxbabe.com/ubuntu/install-qbittorrent-ubuntu-18-04-desktop-server to install a torrent engine if you use one. It's a basic sudo apt install qbittorrent command.

• If you use gmail, sign in (m@gmail.com)

• If you can't open a VM on the new computer, but instead get an error message: 1) DVD image error: https://www.ostechnix.com/virtualbox-error-cannot-register-the-dvd-image-because-uuid-already-exists/

WINE

You don't need Wine for Veracrypt. It has a Linux app, see below.

https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu

If you need it, but it requires installing a few things, including i386 architecture.

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 

wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key

sudo apt-key add winehq.key

for an 18.04 system: sudo apt-add-repository 'deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ bionic main' 

sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-stable

To REMOVE Wine adn ass:
sudo apt-get remove --autoremove wine-*

but this wiki might not spell stuff correctly. Also, it might still not be added to the program launcher (when you right click and 'Open with other program') until you do this:

sudo cp /usr/share/doc/wine-stable/examples/wine.desktop /usr/share/applications/

sudo ln -s /usr/share/doc/wine-stable/examples/wine.desktop /usr/share/applications/

(as detailed here: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2392017)

FREECAD

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:freecad-maintainers/freecad-stable

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get install freecad

OBS

Loud hum. Apply an audio filter by clicking on the gearwheel beside the audio input meter and do 'settings' > + > Noise suppression, and drag it all the way down to -60fB.

(requires ffmpeg, which is free and opensource)

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:obsproject/obs-studio
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install obs-studio

https://obsproject.com/wiki/install-instructions#linux-install-directions

Old instructions:

• -Update
• Do those updates for VirtualBox (for Ubuntu after 19.04),
• then:
• Install VirtualBox
• Created Lubuntu_Nubes and resizing screen works.
• Create VM for Win7 and disable networking.
• Install Win7 REMEMBER TO PICK 64 BIT and HOME PREMIUM for 16gb RAM
• Windows7 also resizing works.
• Go to Computer in files in Windows, and there should be Devices and Removables and the Additions.iso there. Double click it and install everything. It will ask to reboot and then you should be able to drag and drop
• the 2 exe files that have to be installed for Ableton to run: vs_redist.x64.exe (both same name).
• Ableton into the VM (or maybe before the reboot).
• Ableton should now work, and you have to register it.
• HOW TO MAKE A SHARED FOLDER:
• Windows Guest, Ubuntu Host:
• Go to top menu > Devices > Shared Folders > Shared Folder Settings
• In "Machine Folders" pick a folder (or create one) - this is making one on your Ubuntu Host. Check 'Auto-mount' and 'Make Permanent' (I don't know which of these is required but I have both checked and its working).
• OK. Now in the Windows Guest "Computer" directory, you should see a Network Location with your folders name (the folder you selected or made on your Ubuntu host). This folder exists on your Ubuntu host where you put it.
• MONITOR - to make the monitor right (at least on my 12.5 inch x230:
• (make shure youve discarded any save state). Settings (from the Vbox program) > Display > VboxVGA. Then restart. Should have a nice stretched screen same size as the monitor

uninstalled virtualbox purged it, deleted urs/share/virtualbox

Teamviewer

• You might not need it if you put it or already have it in a VM and just use it that way

GEDIT simple text editor

(Note: you have to update first, so maybe sudo apt update && sudo apt install gedit)

• just sudo apt-get install gedit

Thunar file manager (although Studio comes with it)

• sudo apt-get install thunar

Photorec - Data recovery tool

• (Photorec and Testdisk (2 names, dont worry about it).)
• sudo apt-get install testdisk (or photorec I forget which one, but you just install one).
• make a folder you want all your recoverd files to go in
• then to do a scan, type
• photorec
• as explained here: https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec_Step_By_Step
• to delete your files later, open thunar as admin by going to terminal and typing sudo thunar

Disks (actually called udisks I guess)

• sudo apt-get install gnome-disk-utility

Kolourpaint

(Didn't work for me most recent time)

• https://kde.org/applications/graphics/org.kde.kolourpaint
• Go to website, click a button that launches Software Installer right from the website. It worked for me.

MIXXX dj program

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mixxx/mixxx
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mixxx

Veracrypt - install the GUI after the other one

• cd to directory

• tar jxf nameoffile.tar.bz2

• (NOTE: different letters for non-bz2 files)

• ./nameofthefilethatwasputhereafterlastcommand-x64

• Installation should begin.

• SOMETIMES it's located in a folder, and then inside the bin folder (like filezilla)

• For tar.gz:

• tar -xzf archive.tar.gz

• Ubuntu stops asking for password at boot.

• cd etc/lightdm

• sudo gedit lightdm.conf

• edit out the user line with a # at the start of it. save.

Libre Office

• Download it from the internet. its a tar.gz file. extract the tar.gz file in Downloads
• cd ~/Downloads/LibreOffice_6.4.x.x_Linux_x86-64_deb/DEBS
• sudo dpkg -i *.deb
• https://libre-software.net/how-to-install-libreoffice-on-ubuntu-linux-mint/

Bitwig

• installs when you double-click the file (about 250mb). It will ask for login when it boots up.

Ableton

installs (on Windows inside VM) when you double click it, of course, and you take the number from it when it boots up, give that to the audacity website in your account, download their file, and drag-and-drop that file into audacity.

Record System Audio with Audacity

• Install pavucontrol if not already
• Install audacity
• Select pulse*
• Click Record Button
• Open PulseAudio Volume Control (Search For PulseAudio Volume Control in Dash)
• Select Recording Tab
• Now You Should see ALSA plug-in [audacity]. If you do not see ALSA plug-in [audacity], make sure you have clicked Record Button in audacity. You should be running recording in audacity while performing next step.
• Select "Monitor from and pick system audio
• It should now be recording system audio

Kdenlive

NOTE: Crashes when mixing images and videos. However, rendering just videos seems to be OK.

Installs with sudo apt install kdenlive.

WHAT IS SAVED ON THIS COMPUTER:

• Bitwig drums with volume levels I like
• Kdenlive settings for processing photos
• Some bookmarks and social media accounts logged in in Firefox on this machine and inside VMs
• Teamviewer logged in on VM

MIDI KEYBOARD (launch control worked when plugged in. Korg nanokey didnt because it doesn't work with Bitwig)

How to:

• sudo apt install a2jmidid

• Put a2jmidid -e & in Setup > Options > execute script after startup

• Go to connect on qjackctl

• MIDI tab

• start Hydrogen H2

• connect nanoPAD2 on left side to Hydrogen on right side

• USBs automount. Do disable this, instlal dconf-editor

• sudo apt-get install dconf-editor

• (not completed yet)

Notes on deleting hard drives and data

I have read that there has been no case of a drive being recovered after it has been overwritten with 0's.

How to dispose of an HDD - These can actually be securely overwritten. I use "Disks" and just format the drive again, using "Erase." It takes less than 1 hour per 100mb.

How to dispose of an SSD that has been encrypted - (I don't know yet)

How to dispose an SSD that has not been encrypted - Generally, this is impossible, according to people. Because SSD stores data in weird ways, you can't simply overwrite the data the way you can overwrite an HHD. For security, you have to destroy it physically, or if you don't need that level of security you can just run several passes of 0's over it and hope that works.

How to clean "empty" disk space on a drive you're still using - This is for when you want to wipe over the stuff you've already deleted, so you can still use the hard drive, but so the files you deleted won't be recoverable.

Remember: If you're going to do this, delete your "Trash" folder too, first.

https://superuser.com/questions/19326/how-to-wipe-free-disk-space-in-linux

sudo apt-get install secure-delete

Commands:

srm - securely delete an existing file
smem - securely delete traces of a file from ram
sfill - wipe all the space marked as empty on your hard drive
sswap - wipe all the data from you swap space.

Options

    -f  fast (and insecure mode): no /dev/urandom, no synchronize mode.
    -i  wipe only inodes in the directory specified
    -I  just wipe space, not inodes
    -l  lessens the security (use twice for total insecure mode).
    -v  is verbose mode.
    -z  last wipe writes zeros, not random data.

Example

sudo sfill -f /home

After that command, your Terminal will just look like it's timed out for a long time.

When I ran it, I think I had about 550gb free of a 1tb HDD. After about 6 or 7 hours I think, Ubuntu gave me a warning that there was 0 mb of free space remaining. It looked frozen like that for a while. It had created a file in the /home/ folder called "oooooooo.ooo" which was the size of the free space. You can watch this file grow in size as the program runs. You can also see how much free space you have left by the "df -h" command in Terminal.

When its as big as it will get (you can also see this is complete using "df -h" and seeing its now 0 disk space remaining, nothing will happen (except the warning from Ubuntu that you have 0 disk space remaining. What I do is restart now, and when I restart, that oooooooo.ooo file is gone, and you have your empty space again. You can probably also just delete the file if you don't want to restart.

How to clean .cache and other folders on linux:

sudo apt install secure-delete

shred a file with

srm -rfll filname.extension

or a folder with

srm -rfll foldername

rfll does one pass of 0s. You can use srm -r filename.extension to do 38 overwrites
ctrl-h toggles hidden folders
.cache starts wasting hd space. You can put all it's contents into a newly created folder and srm rfll or r newlyfolder.

to make it faster and less secure, you can do only 2 passes with -l. If you do srm regular 38 passes, I think it takes about overnight to do 1gb. -l does 1gb in like 30 minutes I think.

srm -rlvz *

or srm -rlvz /home/yourPCsname/directoriesyouwanttooverwrite

In this command,

• (*)means everything in the current folder
• r means recursive which means all subdirectories and their contents are affected
• l means simplified, so it does only 2 passes instead of 38. ll means just one pass
• v means verbose, so you can see the progress as it works
• z means zeroes, so the final wipe is with 0s.

You can do similar things with sfill, such as sudo sfill -lvz /home

which does 2 passes on everything in your home directory

If you want, you can stop thumbnailing with sudo apt-get install dconf-tools: https://askubuntu.com/questions/518889/how-to-disable-thumbnail-generation

In Windows, how they overwrite unused disk space is:

• Empty temp folder with:
• Windows button > run > %temp%
• and delete everything there (skip the files that Windows won't delete)
• To overwrite unused space:
• Windows button > run > 'cmd'
• cipher /w:C\ (or whatever drive letter you want to fill with a big random file)

HOW TO ROTATE PHOTOS (all files in a folder in this example):

terminal
go to folder:
cd /home/COMPUTERNAME/Pictures/Photography/rotate   (rotate is the name of the folder)
then:
mogrify -rotate 90 *png

Sometimes in Linux sound starts to only play with one side of your headphones:

Go to Volume Control and Output Devices tab and slide the volume to full. It worked.

Convert images or resize images

• https://imagemagick.org/script/mogrify.php
• https://imagemagick.org/script/command-line-processing.php
• https://legacy.imagemagick.org/Usage/basics/#mogrify
• sudo apt-get install imagemagick -y (update first if necessary)
• open Terminal in the folder (or just put all the pngs in a folder and:
• convert -resize 500x500 * (convert all images that have a side longer than 500 down to max dimension 500)
• convert -resize 50% * (reduce size by half)
• convert -format jog *.png (convert pngs to jpgs) (does this work?)

Convert all or pngs to jpgs

• convert ExistingName.png NewName.jpg (converts that one png to jpg with a new name)

• convert .png .jpg (converts all pngs to jpgs)

• convert .jpg (converts all files including jpegs to jpegs)

• (older linux use 'mogrify' instead of 'convert') mogrify -format jpg *.png (to convert them to jpgs)

How to use a Cameo Silouette plotter cutter with Linux:

Usually you use their software on Windows.

You can use Inkscape on Linux, but have to add an extension to Inskcape.

You have to add python-USB, but that might not be found even after updating, so you have to 'sudo add-apt-repository universe'

Then you can download the .deb file from here https://github.com/fablabnbg/inkscape-silhouette/releases

And you'll have10: https://libertyseeds.ca/2017/12/08/A-better-open-source-extension-for-Silhouette-Cameo-Inkscape-and-Ubuntu/

Export Firefox bookmarks to an HTML file to back up or transfer bookmarks

This article explains how to export your bookmarks to an HTML file, which can be used as a backup or for importing into another web browser.

For instructions specific to these other browsers, see Export bookmarks to Internet Explorer, Export bookmarks to Opera and Export bookmarks to Safari. 

Click the Library button 57 library icon on your toolbar. (If you don't see it there, click the menu button fx57menu then click Library.) Click Bookmarks and then click the Show All Bookmarks bar at the bottom.

From the toolbar on the Library window, click Import and Backup and choose Export Bookmarks to HTML....

Youtube-dl

https://www.tecmint.com/download-mp3-song-from-youtube-videos/

sudo apt-get install youtube-dl

but that didn't work so:

sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

then restart the Terminal otherwise it won't work

default folder for downloads is home folder

to download mp3, do:

youtube-dl -x --audio-format mp3 <http...>
youtube-dl -x --audio-format mp3 
youtube-dl -x --audio-format mp3 
youtube-dl -x --audio-format mp3 
youtube-dl -x --audio-format mp3 
youtube-dl -x --audio-format mp3 

PLAYLISTS:

youtube-dl --ignore-errors --format bestaudio --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 --audio-quality 160K --output "%(title)s.%(ext)s" --yes-playlist 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?stuffstuffstuff'

youtube-dl -x --audio-format mp3 --playlist-start 1 --playlist-end 5 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=xxx555xxx