In Ubuntu 14 and 16, there is not much to distinguish the active window visually. It can help to set a highly visible shadow around the active window, for instance, red.

1. Install CompizConfig settings manager.
2. Under Desktop, select Ubuntu Unity Plugin.
3. Select the Decorations tab.
4. Set Active window shadow color to red 255, Green 0, Blue 0, and Opacity 255.

This had nothing to do with Google Sheets itself, but rather an extension I use called Don’t Fuck with Paste. This extension disables copy and paste blocking.  The extension had a major upgrade a couple months ago that enabled the extension only for sites added to a blacklist.  The blacklist supports regular expressions to match URLs.  Unfortunately, a blank expression matches everything and somehow a blank RegEx was in the blacklist–I don’t know if this is the default for the extension or if I did it by mistake and I haven’t tried to find out.  You can tell if the extension is active for a site if the extension’s icon is blue rather than grey.  You can tell if a blank RegEx is in the list by clicking on the icon and looking if there’s a cancel button next to a blank line:

instead of this (the URL displayed will be the one displayed in the current browser tab, but the important thing is that there’s no X next to it):

Clicking the X removed the blank RegEx and turned the extension off for all sites by default, thus fixing Google Sheets.

On finding extension problems

When something goofy is broken, the first thing to do is to browse to the site with an Incognito window, which turns off all extensions.  If the site works in Incognito mode, the problem is due to an extension.  The next step is to figure out which extension is breaking things.  If you don’t have an idea of which extension might be the problem, a binary search is the fastest way:  Disable the first half of all extensions, reload the page and see if it works.  If not, re-enable the first half, then disable the second half.  Keep splitting the groups in half until you find the extension at fault.

Dot files are unix configuration files that contain your personalized settings for programs like Vim, Emacs, or tmux.  If you use more than one unix machine, keeping these file in sync is much easier if they’re stored in Git.  These instructions are how I do that.

Fork the GitHub repository

https://github.com/dotphiles/dotphiles

Set up for GitHub

If the machine hasn’t been set up with GitHib, follow these instructions
https://help.github.com/articles/set-up-git/
to install Git, set your commit name and email, and install GitHub credentials.

Clone the repository

git clone --recursive git@github.com:zymurgeek/dotphiles.git ~/.dotfiles
Do not leave off the recursive flag!

Manage dot files

See the instructions in ~/.dotfiles/README.md.

This procedure is for installing nightly or weekly updates to Lineage, not moving from CyanogenMod to Lineage.

1. Back up Tasker to internal storage (menu > data > backup)
2. Perform a Titanium backup to save new user+system apps and newer versions system data
3. Restore SwiftKey as keyboard in Settings > Languages & Inputs > Current Keyboard
4. Optional: Delete old back up from phone if space needed.
5. Back up current ROM with ROM Manager
6. Save the backup to NAS with sudo adb pull /sdcard/TWRP/BACKUPS/06c2deb6006b0cb2
7. Download Lineage update from Settings > About Phone > LineageOS updates and install.

This procedure is for major updates such as moving to Lineage from CyanogenMod.

1. Back up Tasker to internal storage (menu > data > backup)
2. Perform a Titanium backup to save new user+system apps and newer versions system data
3. Optional: Delete old back up from phone if space needed.
4. Back up current ROM with ROM Manager
5. Save back up in /sdcard/TWRP/BACKUPS/06c2deb6006b0cb2 to NAS
6. Download Lineage and OpenGapps TGZ files and push to /sdcard
7. Wipe all except internal storage
8. Restore from cloud (Google)
9. Sign in to all Google accounts
10. Check mail
11. Check Trello
12. Sign in to Google Voice with phone native number
13. Restore Tasker from Titanium backup

Notes:  Titanium backup failed because I started it before installing the supersu.zip (see Lineage OS root instructions). Fix is to install supersu, developer options > apps and adb, force stop titanium and restart titanium. Then Android asks if it should have root access.

First identify the Expert Mouse’s device ID using xinput:
$ xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Kensington Kensington Expert Mouse id=9 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Dell KB216 Wired Keyboard id=11 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ DELL Laser Mouse id=12 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Sleep Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Dell KB216 Wired Keyboard id=10 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Dell WMI hotkeys id=13 [slave keyboard (3)]

Next, get the ID of the button to change using “xinput test device_id”, e.g., this is the output from pressing the upper right button:
$ xinput test 9
button press 8
button release 8

Physical button positions:
1 = Lower left button
2 = Upper left button
3 = Lower right button
4 = Upper right button
5 = scroll ring

Button actions:
1 = left click
2 = middle click
3 = right click
8 = back

Normally the physical button positions are assigned the same button actions. The command to do this (in case you wanted to reset to default) is xinput --set-button-map 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 (again, where 9 is the device ID).

In my case, middle-click is assigned to the upper left button and back is assigned to the upper right. I wanted to swap them, so the command is:
xinput --set-button-map 9 1 8 3 4 5 6 7 2
where 9 is the device ID and “1 8 3 4 5 6 7 2” are the actions assigned to the first eight physical positions.

To persist these settings, add the xinput command to ~/.xsessionrc. For more details see How to configure the TrackPoint.

I’ve been using the nvidia-364 drivers for my Nvidia GTX 750 graphics card for the past few years.  These have to be reinstalled with each kernel upgrade.  A recent kernel upgrade led to the unfortunate finding that this driver is no longer available.  I went in search of what replaced it and found that the current version is nvidia-375.  The current instructions are as follows:

1. Log in to your account in the TTY
2. sudo apt-get purge nvidia-*
3. sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
4. sudo apt-get update
5. sudo apt-get install nvidia-375
6. Reboot

Two days ago our FiOS connection started crawling, with most web pages refusing to load at all. It’s a 15/5 Mbps connection that Google’s speed test reported as .2 Mbps. I called Verizon and a very patient and thorough tech ran diagnostics over the local fiber network, the ONT (Optical Network Terminal) and the router. He eventually concluded our router was the problem and arranged for a replacement to be shipped out. That should arrive later today, but in the mean time, there was no Internet in the house. I set up a local wireless hotspot (that does not go through FiOS) that lets most of the computers get back to work. However, I have a NAS that sits on my local LAN. If I connect to the hotspot, any of my Linux boxes that mount that NAS pause for about a minute while queries to the NAS time out. If I connect to the local ethernet connection, the NAS is fine, but there’s no functional Internet. What to do? The solution was rather simple. These instructions are for Ubuntu 16, but I haven’t tried them on earlier releases:

1. Launch Network Connections
2. Click on the Ethernet connection
3. Select Edit
4. Select the IPv4 Settings tab
5. Click Routes
6. Check “Use this connection only for resources on its network”

Source:  https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1499325

On Ubuntu 16.04:
sudo apt install libpam-fprintd
Optionally, also install fprintd-demo. You’ll have to run fprintd_demo as root for it to access the fingerprint scanning device.
To store your fingerprint and enable use of the fingerprint scanner:
fprintd-enroll
Note, run fprintd-enroll as your user account, not root.

That’s it. The log-in screen will ask you to swipe your finger rather than use a password, but you’ll still have to click “log in” after you do so. Sudo, both command line and graphical, will also ask to swipe, but you won’t have to do anything else.

Source: http://askubuntu.com/questions/511876/how-to-install-a-fingerprint-reader-on-lenovo-thinkpad

On Carmine, a Thinkpad T560

Back up Windows

See also http://www.everydaylinuxuser.com/2015/11/how-to-install-ubuntu-linux-alongside.html

1. Start Windows
2. Download Reflect http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
3. Run the installer and accept all the defaults
4. Insert USB drive and format with Windows Explorer
5. Start Reflect
6. At “Rescue Media” prompt, create USB with defaults
7. Reboot with recovery USB drive to test it
8. Reboot into Windows and start Reflect
9. Select Other Tasks > Edit Defaults > Network tab
10. Add \\ds411p2\home with NAS credentials
11. On the Disk Image tab and Create a backup tab, select Image this disk
12. Backup to \\ds411p2\home\{computer}-backup
13. Select Other Tasks > Add Recovery Boot Menu Option, select Windows PE 10.0 menu (64 Bit)
14. Reboot to make sure the boot menu comes up.
15. Select Windows 10

Install Ubuntu 16.04 with LVM

See also http://askubuntu.com/questions/470632/install-lvm-dual-boot-with-windows

1. Start Disk Management (called “Create and format hard disk partitions, Control panel” on the start menu)
2. Right-click on the Windows NTFS partition and select Shrink Volume.
   1. The maximum shrink is the default, though the volume will still be a lot larger than the space used by Windows. In this case, the Windows partition was 237 GB before and 121 GB after, even though Windows reports C: was using only 31 GB.
3. Boot into BIOS setup. On Config tab, select Keyboard/Mouse and change “F1-F12 as Primary Function” to Enabled
4. Boot from Ubuntu 16.04 USB
5. Start gparted.
   1. You can ignore a warning that “the driver descriptor says the physical block size is 2048 bytes but Linux says it is 512 bytes.”
6. Create a primary partition with the rest of the space, file system “lvm2 pv” named and labeled “lvm”
7. Apply settings.
   1. Note the lvm partition, e.g. /dev/sda5.
8. Open a terminal and set up the volume groups
   sudo pvcreate /dev/sda5
   sudo vgcreate volgroup1 /dev/sda5
   sudo lvcreate -n swap -L 16g volgroup1
   The size of the last command is equal to RAM
   sudo lvcreate -n ubuntu16.04 -l 33%FREE volgroup1
   The “-l” in the last command is a lower case L.
9. Check logical volumes with “sudo lvscan”:
   ACTIVE '/dev/volgroup1/swap' [16.00 GiB] inherit
   ACTIVE '/dev/volgroup1/ubuntu16.04' [31.83 GiB] inherit
10. Close the command prompt.
11. Start “Install Ubuntu 16.04 LTS” from the desktop icon.
12. Enable “Download updates while installing Ubuntu” and “Install third-party drivers” and “Turn off Secure Boot”.
13. Set the password and store it someplace.
14. At “Installation Type”, select “Something else”.
15. Click on volgroup1-swap and change the type to “swap”
16. Click on volgroup1-ubuntu16.04 and change the type to ext4, format and mount /.
17. Leave the boot loader device at /dev/sda.