Sprayfly

After some tidying up of my Ubuntu desktop, I noticed that all the icons on the desktop were missing after a reboot… they had just disappeared completely leaving some blank wallpaper!

Thankfully, I googled around and found a very simple solution to this problem. It appears that in all my hastiness to clear up and delete files, I also deleted the Documents folder from my home directory. Whilst I didn’t keep anything in this folder and didn’t use it at all, apparently it is necessary for Nautilus to display icons on the desktop.

To set your desktop back on the rails, simply do the following command (first make sure that you have indeed deleted your Documents folder and that it is not something else that is causing this problem for you):

mkdir ~/Documents

You should not need root privileges to execute the above command.

Hope that worked for you too - now just log out and back in again and your desktop should once again be full of clutter!

On my Ubuntu Intrepid installation, I have recently been experiencing a bug with Firefox 3 that causes it to load in a weird full screen mode upon startup. This strange full-screen mode has no title bar (apparently its a compiz bug) and can be temporarily fixed by hitting the F11 key twice. However, doing so every time you start up Firefox can be a pain and so I searched around for a permanent fix.
Basically, when you have this problem, do the following:

1. Hit the F11 key twice - this should bring firefox back to a normal state where the title bar at the top is visible.
2. Double-click twice on the title bar (this should resize firefox - and may well make the window look a little strange or out of proportion due to the nature of this bug).
3. Now close firefox (Ctrl + Q).
4. Open Firefox again and double click on the title bar to maximise the window.

As strange as it may seem, this should solve the problem completely. Hopefully the developers will look into this and fix the bad code aswell - but at least you have a workaround for the moment.

This bug has been logged on Launchpad.

I’m running Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex 8.10 and after installing Adobe Flash and Adobe Air, I noticed that neither would display Chinese characters, instead just displaying those pesky little square boxes (囗囗囗囗）that all users of Chinese Ubuntu dread.

However, there is a fix for the problem - which seems to have something to do with this file:
/etc/fonts/conf.d/49-sansserif.conf

You simply need to change the below code:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<!--
If the font still has no generic name, add sans-serif
-->
<match target="pattern">
<test qual="all" name="family" compare="not_eq">
<string>sans-serif</string>
</test>
<test qual="all" name="family" compare="not_eq">
<string>serif</string>
</test>
<test qual="all" name="family" compare="not_eq">
<string>monospace</string>
</test>
<edit name="family" mode="append_last">
<string>sans-serif</string>
</edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>


To the following:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<!--
If the font still has no generic name, add sans-serif
-->
<match target="pattern">
<test qual="all" name="family" compare="not_eq">
<string>sans-serif</string>
</test>
<test qual="all" name="family" compare="not_eq">
<string>serif</string>
</test>
<test qual="all" name="family" compare="not_eq">
<string>monospace</string>
</test>
<edit name="family" mode="append_last">
<string>sans</string>
</edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>

Basically, you just change the “sans-serif” on one line to “sans”

Some users have suggested simply deleting the /etc/fonts/conf.d/49-sansserif.conf file (which is not actually a file but rather a symbolic link to /etc/fonts/conf.avail/49-sansserif.conf). This is not recommended as it is irreversible and furthermore for me it broke my logon screen - when I typed in my username and password I could only see some more boxes (even though I was typing in english).

Anyway, hope this is useful to somebody else out there. For more info, check this forum post.

It took me ages to find out which file defines the resume device for the suspend function in Ubuntu. Finally I find out it is at the location below:

/etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume