70
votes
Accepted
How does a linux GUI work at the lowest level?
How it works (Gnu/Linux + X11)
Overview
It looks something like this (not draws to scale)
┌───────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ User │
│ ┌────...
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68
votes
Accepted
What is D-Bus practically useful for?
dbus does exactly what you said: it allows two-way communication between applications.
For your specific example you mentioned terminator. From terminator's man page, we see:
--new-tab
If this ...
- 16k
46
votes
What is D-Bus practically useful for?
There's already a great in-depth answer of D-Bus by @Stewart but I want to amend it with a high-level idea about the design of D-Bus.
The "traditional" way of Inter Process Communication (...
- 631
44
votes
How to resolve 'No protocol specified' for su user
In my case the new display server protocol wayland was the problem,
just do xhost + local: then other users (e.g. root) are allowed to run programs in your session, network connections however will ...
34
votes
How does a linux GUI work at the lowest level?
ctrl-alt-delor's answer gives you a good overview of the general architecture. For a more hands-on approach, I give you an answer regarding "nothing but the linux kernel and programming in C".
I like ...
- 6,914
26
votes
How to disable and enable GUI of debian 10
To disable the GUI:
sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target
sudo reboot
To re-enable the GUI:
sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target
sudo reboot
- 69.9k
20
votes
Accepted
How to increase Firefox scrollbar width?
In about:config, set widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size.override to the desired numeric value.
This will only have an effect if widget.non-native-theme.enabled is true (the default as of this ...
- 328
19
votes
Accepted
How can I remove all packages related to gui in Debian?
On Debian, to remove all GUI packages, you can remove the two libraries used to connect to display servers:
apt purge libx11-6 libwayland-client0
This will remove all packages depending on these ...
- 481k
16
votes
How to clearly indicate a device is not mounted
You kind of have it backwards.
If I saw an empty directory that was usually a mount point, I would assume it wasn't mounted.
If anything, you should put a file in your mounted filesystem to show that ...
- 10.9k
15
votes
What is D-Bus practically useful for?
In traditional Unix, there is usually little communication between running programs. Every program runs in a fully separate address space and only interacts with the kernel. This model is simple and ...
- 5,110
14
votes
GUI for GIT similar to SourceTree
I tried all git clients for Linux, and they all suck someway or the other. But because my IDE is Visual Studio Code, I ended up using VSCode. I installed the following extensions:
Git Lens
Git Graph
...
- 241
14
votes
Choose which browser to open link in
A simple solution with zenity
create /usr/bin/select-browser
#!/bin/sh
BROWSER=$(zenity --list --radiolist --text '' --column='check' --column=browser --title='select your browser' TRUE "chromium" ...
- 141
13
votes
Accepted
how to un-hide the Menubar in Okular
Ctrl+M is the default keyboard shortcut to hide/unhide the Menubar
- 1,739
12
votes
Accepted
Gnome shell VS Unity
GNOME Shell and Unity are both shells on top of the GNOME desktop environment. Neither is based on the other; you either use GNOME Shell, or Unity, and underneath that you’ll have GNOME.
- 481k
11
votes
Is there any (good) SQLite GUI for Linux?
A friend and I made Beekeeper Studio because we wanted a modern, easy to use SQL gui client. I'm a full time Linux desktop user, so we care about Linux.
It's 100% open source! Hope someone finds it as ...
- 281
11
votes
Accepted
bash script - request input via gui
Zenity is a good tool for that.
user_input=$(zenity --entry)
That assigns to variable user_input whatever the user types in the GUI window, unless the user presses cancel, in which case the exit code ...
- 19.4k
11
votes
Why does my Ubuntu Server boot a GUI?
You installed filezilla which is a graphical FTP client. That would have brought in the other GUI packages.
The other option is that you yourself installed ubuntu-standard, which is what seems to have ...
- 252k
10
votes
Accepted
Why does my Ubuntu Server boot a GUI?
All those gui application can also be displayed remotely, so having them installed should not be regarded as being wrong if you do not wish a running local gui.
If a local gui is running, then you ...
- 2,751
10
votes
How to clearly indicate a device is not mounted
Is it a good idea to add an empty file, say a file called NOT_MOUNTED, into mountpoint directory when the backup storage device is not mounted? Or will this be confusing?
No. Leave that directory ...
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9
votes
How do I change the number of available workspaces in Cinnamon?
You can also use the context menu on the Workspace switcher applet:
- 226
9
votes
How to display technical codec info for a FLAC file?
You can use the ffprobe CLI tool that's included with ffmpeg:
$ ffprobe -hide_banner 10\ Ivory\ Tower.flac
Input #0, flac, from '10 Ivory Tower.flac':
Metadata:
ARTIST : Van Morrison
...
slm♦
- 380k
9
votes
Is it possible to retrieve the active window process/title in Gnome?
I know the question is old, but I feel xprop also should be mentioned here. It's readily available under X. It can be either used in an interactive way:
type xprop and select the window you want using ...
- 241
8
votes
Ubuntu 16.04 - GUI freezes on login start page
To Simplify @Black's answer, run these as root:
apt-get update
apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-evdev
/etc/init.d/lightdm restart
No reboot required on this solution.
- 181
8
votes
Accepted
Mouse double-click isn't working in Gnome
Sometimes double-click can seem broken if the double-click speed is (somehow) set too fast. If the second click is too long after the first, the GUI will get two separate single clicks, not a double-...
- 7,393
8
votes
Choose which browser to open link in
I stumbled upon this question a few years ago and saw there is no ready-made solution. So I made one. It has some extra features, like showing Chrome profiles, Firefox profiles, Firefox containers. ...
- 231
8
votes
What is D-Bus practically useful for?
GNOME's accessibility API relies on it; see e.g. AT-SPI2 on FreeDesktop.org. Before D-BUS, i.e. before GNOME 3, the accessibility API relied on CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture), which ...
- 838
8
votes
Accepted
How to search for Debian CLI packages?
To find CLI packages in Debian, you can look for packages tagged as interface::command-line, either using the tag search engine, or on your system by installing debtags and running
debtags search ...
- 481k
7
votes
How to increase Firefox scrollbar width?
Ignom's answer is correct, but as of version 89 Firefox no longer honors GTK styling by default. The new setting in about:config widget.non-native-theme.enabled needs to be changed to false.
(I would ...
- 101
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible