Running Linux on T450s T495s T14, Thinkpads and Others

I used a couple of moments to figure out if I wanted to stay on Kubuntu 14.04 LTS (Long Term Support), but then I decided to go with the new version 15.10. I want the new KDEnLive, so I can create more bad videos no one watches on my Youtube Channel PlantSugar.

Initial Setup

Update 2022-12-22: Optimized and started to strike through old not needed info when using Windows 11 and Kubuntu 22.10 end of 2022.

Get the bootloader working with Windows 10

sudo aptitude install efibootmgr and tried to install grub-efi-amd64 (http://superuser.com/questions/376470/how-to-reinstall-grub2-efi) - (both did not work).

I used boot-repair to get my installation from legacy to uefi (efi), boot. I did not manage to purge Grub before reloading grub into the standard Windows efi partition (on my computer sdb2). The efi partion is bootable and fat32 and the recommended size is above 200MB. More info about efi. Remember to disable secure boot in your bios.

At some point you might need to disable "fast startup" in Windows 10, because your (K)Ubuntu might not want to boot. I acutally thought the graphics driver had changed, so it could not boot, but found that the fast startup in Windows 10 was the culprit. Here is what I was seeing: 

[    2.932200]Error parsing PCC subspaces from PCCT
[    3.245398]nouveau ![  DEVICE][0000:06:00.0] unknown Maxwell chipset
[    3.245406]nouveau E[  DEVICE][0000:06:00.0] unknown chipset, 0x118010a2
[    3.245410]nouveau E[     DRM] failed to create 0x00000080, -22
welcome to emergency mode!

Use kisak mesa drivers: https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2021/07/install-latest-mesa-ubuntu…
Check installed mesa drivers to downgrade from intel.com mesa-git drivers: apt-cache policy mesa-va-drivers
You might need to do: aptitude purge mesa-va-drivers

Disable touchpad: system settings -> input devices -> Touchpad -> disable touchpad when mouse is plugged in -> remove trackpoint from the ignore list. 

Remove KDE wallet: System settings -> Account Details.

Desktop settings: Layout = Folder view.

Settings -> Window Management -> Task Switcher -> Deselect "Show selected window" -> select "Compact" instead of "Breeze".

Settings -> Input Devices -> Mouse -> Double click to open

Settings -> Shortcuts -> Custom Shortcuts -> Enable Examples
Run Konsole: I use this Action: nice -n 19 konsole (the shortcut is ctrl + t - t for terminal)
Show Desktop Folder with Konqueror: Create new global shortcut | Trigger = ctrl + alt + h (h for home) | action = konqueror --profile filemanagement ~/Desktop
qmmp play ctrl + a: qmmp -p
qmmp stop ctrl + s: qmmp -s
Kcalc: ctrl + l: kcalc
Print Screen with shutter (screen capture  - screenshot): shutter -s ; install shutter kubuntu 20.04: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:shutter/ppa;sudo apt install shutter

Settings: Remove all effects to make things go faster without bling bling: Desktop Behavior -> Desktop Effects  (via desktop effects).
Screen Locking: change "Lock screen automatically after 5 min" to 60 minutes or something.

Settings: Window Behavior - Window activation policy: "Click to focus"
Focus stealing preention: Medium
Window Actions: modifier key: alt

disable chrome hardware acceleration: settings -> system (https://superuser.com/questions/1064768/chromes-hardware-gpumemorybuffe…).
Skype-for-linux high cpu consumption fix: https://grn.dk/skype-linux-fix-high-cpu-consumption

Update And Installation

sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=i386,amd64] https://deb.opera.com/opera-stable/ stable non-free"

 wget https://repo.skype.com/latest/skypeforlinux-64.deb ; sudo dpkg -i skypeforlinux-64.deb

apt-key deprecated:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1286545/what-commands-exactly-should-re…
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/68992799/warning-apt-key-is-depreca…

wget -q -O - https://dl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add - ;

/etc/apt/sources.list is reviewed, so as many cool sources are used. Chrome and Opera repositories are added.

#Google Chrome
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable main
#Opera
deb http://deb.opera.com/opera-stable/ stable non-free
#GetDeb
deb http://archive.getdeb.net/ubuntu wily-getdeb apps
#Skype for linux
deb [arch=amd64] https://repo.skype.com/deb stable main

Add the Google Chrome public key:

wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add -

And the Opera public key:

wget -qO- http://deb.opera.com/archive.key | sudo apt-key add - 

And the GetDeb public key: 

wget -q -O- http://archive.getdeb.net/getdeb-archive.key | sudo apt-key add -

Skype for Linux public key:

wget  -q -O- https://repo.skype.com/data/SKYPE-GPG-KEY | sudo apt-key add -

Kdenlive

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kdenlive/kdenlive-stable

Vivaldi

curl -fSsL https://repo.vivaldi.com/archive/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/vivaldi.gpg > /dev/null
echo deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/vivaldi.gpg] https://repo.vivaldi.com/archive/deb/ stable main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vivaldi.list

Brave

wget https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg ; sudo mv brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg /etc/apt/trusted.gpg

sudo curl -fsSLo /usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg arch=amd64] https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/ stable main"|sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list

qmmp, really great for playing music and it is the good winamp clone.

konqueror, my preferred file browser compared to Dolphin. Remember to set your default viewing properties: View -> Adjust View Properties...

Java the cool way: default-jre icedtea-plugin

Converting sound files in the command line and playing mp3 files in the command line interface for "system alerts" - do it with "play" (sox): libsox-fmt-mp3

Shutter: Fantastic for screenshots and fast editing afterwards. A similar alternative for Windows is GreenShot.

Grub (boot configuration): kde-config-grub2

If you need Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP), you can look into this overview, but it might be a bit outdated: LAMP.

Garmin Connect in Linux.

Nvidia

Latest Nvidia drivers. When using Prime to switch from Nvidia Graphics to Intel Graphics through the "Nvidia X Server Settings", the curren max intel resolution is xrandr | grep '*' = 1360x768. I am not sure how to change this permanently, but I found that if i run: xrandr --newmode "1920x1080_60.00"  173.00  1920 2048 2248 2576  1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync then it will work. You might need to run xrandr --addmode eDP1 1920x1080_60.00 too (my output is eDP1 - run xrandr to find which output is connected). To find the mode option run cvt 1920 1080 if you have a different graphical resolution. I found that I get the flickering bug, when using the intel graphics. The primary reason to run the integrated intel graphics, is to reduce power consumption, to enable longer battery life time when traveling.
Change resolution: xrandr -s 1920x1080
Available resolutions: xrandr -q
Which proprietary drivers are installed: ubuntu-drivers list

Nvidia Troubleshooting

If you are having problems with your startup, you can purge all the nvidia drivers from the ubuntu-drivers list For example:  sudo apt-get autoremove --purge nvidia-*

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf and set section "ServerLayout" to screen 0 "intel"

This might also be a life saver (source):

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-nouveau

sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

sudo prime-select intel

sudo prime-select nvidia

prime-select query

Development tools

sudo aptitude install python3-pip postgresql-server-dev-12 libssl-dev xml2 curl libxml2-dev libcurlpp-dev libcurl-ocaml-dev python python3-psycopg2 android-tools-adb

All Packagesapt-transport-https

UPDATED 2022-12-27

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade -y

sudo apt-get install aptitude; sudo add-apt-repository ppa:shutter/ppa; sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kdenlive/kdenlive-stable; wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.d…; sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb; rm google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb; wget https://go.skype.com/skypeforlinux-64.deb; sudo apt install ./skypeforlinux-64.deb; rm skypeforlinux-64.deb;

sudo aptitude install gnome-keyring libatomic1 flac gimp gimp-gap gimp-data-extras vorbis-tools lame sox ffmpeg mjpegtools mplayer libdvdnav4 rar unrar k4dirstat p7zip-full lzma arj rpm p7zip lmms audacity wine-stable ssh gparted synaptic samba nfs-common ttf-mscorefonts-installer edubuntu-fonts ttf-xfree86-nonfree fonts-thai-tlwg-ttf vlc imagemagick mbmon ntfs-3g coreutils tidy txt2html kdenlive mesa-utils ubuntustudio-video checkinstall ubuntustudio-graphics ktorrent cmake gpsbabel google-chrome-stable qmmp default-jre libsox-fmt-mp3 filezilla cheese libreoffice tlp python3-pip git pavucontrol acpi-call-dkms tp-smapi-dkms kompare kubuntu-restricted-extras faac faad x264 xml2 gtkmorph apt-transport-https vivaldi-stable curl htop atop sensors smem printer-driver-gutenprint texlive-extra-utils gscan2pdf ncdu nmap net-tools mariadb-client cython3 -y

sudo nice -n 19 aptitude update;sudo nice -n 19 aptitude dist-upgrade; sudo nice -n 19 snap refresh; sudo apt-get autoremove

2021-07-18: removed outdated packages in my opinion and packages I rarely use anymore: opera maxima wxmaxima xmaxima dia aspell-pl myspell-pl flashplugin-installer

2020-05-23 Removed because of error or outdated:
libdvdread4 gmail-notify ntfs-config icedtea-plugin

2017-07-19 Removed because of error or outdated:

avidemux, php5-tidy, tidy-doc, kde-config-grub2