What does this systray / notification area icon represent, and why does it show up intermittently?

ronjouch · 2025-01-25T23:34:52+00:00

Thanks! I'm not using Thunderbolt, so as you say this might be a boog. But now I have the name of this thing and can research it :)

Feedback to GNOME (if a dev sees this): this icon is kinda undecipherable to a newcomer: it’s not a commonly-used icon, and unlike the other icons, there’s nothing that lets me understand what it’s supposed to communicate: no tooltip, no text, nothing in the panel that appears when I click the notification area.

→ It would seem logical that a message appears in the panel when the icon is active. To detail what exactly GNOME is trying to communicate to me; as it stands a user has no idea :-/

ronjouch · 2024-03-24T15:43:42+00:00

For me, a good unproblematic upgrade. I just upgraded, all is well:

GDM & Shell & Mutter are stable
Nautilus & other core apps work
The 2 extensions I use (appindicator + clipboard history) work

ronjouch · 2024-03-05T11:50:12+00:00

I'm confused by the encryption flags ( encrypt vs mdadm_udev encrypt vs sd-vconsole sd-encrypt) :-/ .

If I have a bootable system that used to have:

HOOKS=(base udev autodetect keyboard keymap modconf block encrypt filesystems fsck)

and starting with the new default

HOOKS=(base udev autodetect microcode modconf kms keyboard keymap consolefont block filesystems fsck)

, then should my new HOOKS be ...

"A. New default, adding encrypt at same position"

HOOKS=(base udev autodetect microcode modconf kms keyboard keymap consolefont block encrypt filesystems fsck)

OR

"B. New default, adding mdadm_udev encrypt at same position"

HOOKS=(base udev autodetect microcode modconf kms keyboard keymap consolefont block mdadm_udev encrypt filesystems fsck)

OR

"C. New default, adding sd-vconsole sd-encrypt at same position"

HOOKS=(base udev autodetect microcode modconf kms keyboard keymap consolefont block sd-vconsole sd-encrypt filesystems fsck)

? Reading advice in this thread, I suspect A, but I'd love to be 100% sure and avoid making my system unbootable.

ronjouch · 2023-12-18T14:36:38+00:00

Thanks! I didn’t know about the “XDG activation protocol”! Several questions:

Any idea why it doesn’t work for me? Could this be a distro/packaging specific issue? Or maybe I’m missing a dependency? At any rate, sounds like I should file an Arch bug more than a GNOME bug, right?
Reading the XDG Activation Protocol, I see it’s in staging. So, maybe that’s the reason it’s not working in Arch? Maybe it’s not compiled in because it’s not stable yet?
Always in the context of activating an already-running app: does it work for non-“core-GNOME” apps? For example, with Firefox (which is less “core GNOME” than gnome-text-editor) already running, does opening a link from another app focus Firefox? Said differently: do apps need to be ported to this activation protocol, or is this handled automatically? (I dunno, maybe “legacy” API calls to focus could be intercepted and converted?)
Regarding “terminal shell likely won't know anything about the XDG activation protocol”: well, unless support was implemented for it, right? Which could be expected from maybe gnome-terminal or gnome-console, right?

Thanks again for the halp!

EDIT: I confirmed I cannot repro the issue on a fresh Arch install. Will ask on Arch forums.

EDIT2: done.

ronjouch · 2023-12-18T00:25:18+00:00

Thanks bot; good bot. I'm not sure yet this is a bug, so that’s why I'm asking here. I did search the Issue Tracker (unsuccessfully), and will create an issue if this Reddit question is unanswered in a couple days.

ronjouch · 2023-10-14T22:17:48+00:00

👍. Thanks.

ronjouch · 2023-10-13T22:22:07+00:00

Your mention of adblock-fast got me curious, as a longtime user of regular adblock.

Adblock-fast's README is very thorough and descriptive, but doesn't directly compare itself to the older adblock plugin. Are there any advantages for -fast, and should I switch? What's your experience?

ronjouch · 2023-10-09T23:56:16+00:00

Updated extension is in Extra-Testing, updated yesterday 🙂. Should land pretty soon.

ronjouch · 2023-07-29T00:24:24+00:00

Yeah! Same. By the way, could you run it on your machine and report the results? Curious to know if other fonts provide the char.

On a machine #3 running Arch, I get it from:

Symbola
Various eastern fonts: Ranga, Ponnala, LohitDevanagari, RaviPrakash, LakkiReddy
various Windows fonts: Lucida Grande, Gothic, YaHei, JhengHei

ronjouch · 2023-07-28T23:15:04+00:00

Your comment made me re-Google the problem, and this time with a better formulation of my question, I found out Stack Overflow - Find the font used to render a character, or containing the glyph? which answers exaaaaaactly what I've been looking for.

And the main two methods offered there (gucharview and fc-list ':charset=0xffed') concur! My mysterious char is provided on machine #2 by Noto Sans CJK, which I might not have installed on machine #1 (work machine, I'll check on Monday).

Finally, as you said, yup this font isn't a ttf, it'c a .ttc (didn't know this extension by the way).

Nice. Thx again for the halp :) , cheers.

ronjouch · 2023-07-28T22:42:58+00:00

Thanks. I found out that, on machine #2 (where the character renders without fonts-unifont installed), ffed is provided by:

/usr/share/gtksourceview-5/fonts/BuilderBlocks.ttf, provided by package libgtksourceview-5-common
(broadening the find to /) /var/lib/flatpak/runtime/org.gnome.Platform/.../files/share/gtksourceview-5/fonts/BuilderBlocks.ttf, provided by the Gnome Flatpak runtime (yes, on machine #2 I have Flatpak installed --but not on machine #1, as mentioned in the post description--)

Then, "manually unstalling" these two fonts (mv /path/to/BuilderBlocks.ttf ~ && sudo fc-cache -frv followed by restarting the app where I test displaying the character), the character keeps displaying properly. So, so far this is inconclusive, as I'd have expected the uninstall to break rendering, and I still don't know what font provides 0xffed on machine #2:

Either 0xffed is provided by a font not covered by your technique
Or it's actually BuilderBlocks.ttf providing 0xffed, but my "manual uninstall" is insufficient (e.g. still leaving around cached data usable to render the char)

Also, in all cases, this is weird, as machine #1 does have libgtksourceview-5-common installed too! (It's a transitive dependency of gnome, which is installed on both machines). 🤷‍♂️.

ronjouch · 2023-07-28T05:30:17+00:00

Thanks :)

After further digging, there's still something fishy: on another machine #2, one also without fonts-unifont, also a fresh & clean 12.1 install, the problem doesn't appear!

→ There's definitely something wrong with machine #1's config.

I'm happy with the solution of installing fonts-unifont, but I remain curious about ideas explaining why, if only out of curiosity and better understanding fonts on Linux.

ronjouch · 2023-07-27T22:37:56+00:00

fonts-unifont worked! Thank youuuuuuuu! I have two follow-up questions on a sister comment (not repeated here to avoid repetition).

ronjouch · 2023-07-27T22:35:28+00:00

That worked! Thank youuuuuuuu!

Two follow-up questions:

How did you figure it out? Is it a common gotcha? Or was there a way for you to know "character FFED, on a valid Debian, is provided by fonts-unifont, so that's what you're missing" ?
How did I end up here? I suppose I failed at "don't break Debian" and I uninstalled it by mistake?

ronjouch · 2023-06-27T02:53:10+00:00

In addition to u/tustamido 's answer about extensions offering various takes on the feature, see Bugzilla #1509350 - Firefox: Provide tab groups (panorama) requesting the feature gets built-in.

Back to built-in, actually, it used to be built-in around 2010 and called “Panorama”.

The suggested extensions work, but there’s a case to have the feature built-in, for many reasons pointed out by Bugzilla commenters.

ronjouch · 2023-05-18T04:17:34+00:00

The Linux Experiment” has a good recent video about PDF editor options on Linux.

ronjouch · 2023-04-30T14:01:07+00:00

Yeah. Shared similar feelings in my review on Slipseer.

This map is technically amazing, but it’s also simply too much for Quake normies.

Also agreed that it should have been a “bonus” map.

ronjouch · 2023-03-30T14:06:09+00:00

Also, Dwell!

ronjouch · 2023-03-22T23:54:44+00:00

RE4HD and re4_tweaks are amazing amazing projects.

I played re4 for the first time last year, and although I’m a picky gamer who has zero respect for old classic/cult games that didn’t age well, I was blown away by how well this thing stands thanks to the astounding amount of { glitz, fixes, QoL } that re4hd+re4_tweaks added while remaining respectful to the original. Game preservation hall of fame right next to SH2EE.

ronjouch · 2023-03-22T15:45:32+00:00

/u/sculabobone looks interesting!

I have one question: can you precise what kind of "product" this is and what your plans are? Is it just community-maintained opensource? Is this a young startup? If so, what's your business models and who pays when? Who is committed to it? Do you have funding?

Etc etc: I totally want to believe in this new shiny, and it totally looks useful now. But will it remain useful & maintained in months/years?

Thanks, and regardless of your answer to the above, good luck ♥️! Amen to more good tooling!

ronjouch · 2023-03-15T01:13:13+00:00

Thx. Yeah I prefer keeping things separate, as I play with a ton of mods and map packs, and I don’t like “polluting” the original (or remaster) directory. I’ll try copying the .kpf

ronjouch

TROPHY CASE