5 Hardware and Network Tips for Linux - TUXEDO Computers

Königsbrunn (Germany), 16th of July 2019. Hardware support is an ongoing issue in Linux. Either you're looking for drivers for old devices or you don't have full support for new hardware. But for everything there are different solutions:

Where's my USB memory drive?

Probably every user knows this situation: You have data on the USB memory stick, plug it into the corresponding port but the stick is simply not recognized. This is an annoying situation but it doesn't mean that the USB stick has to be broken.

Sometimes an invalid file system or participation table or an unused USB port causes problems. Usually you unplug the USB stick again and then plug it in again. Then you type

dmesg | grep usband displays the latest system messages for the USB media in reverse order - the latest entry first. Here you can see possible error messages.

If dmesg does not give any information, you can use the mount command:

fdisk -1 /dev/sddFor example, the /dev/sdd1 partition exists - so you can mount it for testing purposes:

sudo mount -v /dev/sdd1 /mntThe command then displays other messages that contribute to the error analysis.

Set up printer profiles

For some manufacturers there are drivers in the package sources of the respective Linux distributions. It is well known that users can also find drivers on the manufacturers' websites, but we have explained why this is not always a good idea.

With the drivers in the package sources, however, often only the best typeface is delivered in black and white. Drivers for color printing are also provided in additional functions. Therefore it makes sense to set up different profiles for one printer with different drivers each: The printing system Cups allows the multiple setup of the same printer with different drivers. After the installation of the printer drivers one calls the dialog for the configuration of the printer in the respective desktop environment over settings. Here you click on "Add" or "Add Printer" and start with the setup of the printer with the respective drivers. It is important to choose a unique name for the printer, e.g. Brother-XX-black-white or similar. Then you can fine-tune the default settings of the profile via " Settings - Printer options".

Mouse wheel - scroll speed

If you are not satisfied with the speed of your mouse wheel to scroll because it is either too slow or too fast, a few desktop environments have the possibility to make changes here. In KDE, for example, this is easily possible via "Input device" - "Mouse" - "Extension" - "Mouse wheel creates scroll".

In Debian, Ubuntu, LinuxMint you need the tool Imwheel additionally. This must first be installed with

sudo apt-get install imwheelThe instructions are recorded in the ".imwheelrc" configuration file in the home directory - at best, changes are made in an editor file.

The following settings are made for acceleration:

„ .* “

None, Up, Up, 3

None, Down, Down, 3

The number indicates the speed - the higher the value, the higher the speed.

The selection imwheel in the terminal window activates the new configuration. To ensure that imwheel is always active when the graphical user interface is started, it must be entered in the desktop environment as an auto-start program.

Broken SSH connection

Here's an elegant and smooth version of how to end the SSH session without just closing the terminal window. To end the SSH session, enter the return key followed by the characters "~." (without quotation marks!) and the session is closed, but the terminal remains. These control characters influence the actual SSH client - so it is unimportant whether the SSH server is still responding and reachable.

Enter any characters using the keyboard

If a key on the keyboard is broken, you don't have to throw away all the hardware: The required character can also be entered in this way - manually using numeric character codes, for example. By the way, this method is also suitable for characters that cannot be found on the keyboard.

In a Linux console the decimal Ascii character code is necessary. An overview can be found here: www.asciitable.com.

In the respective desktop environment there are different possibilities: In GTK applications like Gnome, Unity or Xfce you press the keys "Ctrl" - "Shift" - "U", whereupon an underlined "u" is displayed and enter the number code of the character immediately. This then appears. The codes can be found here: www.unicode.org/charts.

In KDE with Qt programs there is the character table kchartselect for character selection, which can be called with "Alt" - "F2".