LibreOffice Writer Not Retaining the Last Cursor Position

For some time now there has been a bug in LibreOffice that results in Writer not opening large files at the last-used position. I noticed this behaviour on my maintenance log file which is over 150 pages of fairly dense text. Rather than re-opening the file at the end, where I last edited the text, Writer displays a page somewhere mid-document, e.g. at p. 116 in my most recent attempt. This behaviour has been reported as a bug since at least 2021 but has yet to be fixed. The following are two workarounds:

(1) For my purposes, I usually want to open a working document at the end of the file. This is readily achieved by opening the file and pressing Ctrl-End.

(2) A similar result may be achieved (see Comment 62 by elias.baalholm in Bugzilla Report No, 140147) for users wishing to return to the last used position in the open file by pressing Shift-F5.

While not ideal, these manual operations will at least allow users to process their word-processing files more efficiently until the bug in LibreOffice is fixed.

References:

Bug 140147 – Position of cursor not saved correctly
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=140147

Deploying a Qt 6 Program in Linux and Windows

Developing a C++ program with a graphical user interface can readily be achieved using the Qt Creator integrated development environment. In addition Qt Creator is cross-platform and is available for both Linux and Windows. However, once an application has been built on a given computer, deploying the software to another machine, even one running the same operating system, is not necessarily straightforward. Essentially this is because Qt Creator produces dynamically-linked software so the resulting executable file must be accompanied by a suite of dynamic-link library (DLL) files in order to be able to run.

Restoring the Home desktop icon in Mint 21.1

The next release of Linux Mint, Version 21.1 (Vera) will be generally available later this month. In the interim there is a beta version available or testing. One of the changes in the new distro is that the icons for “Computer” and “Home” have been removed from the desktop.

Installing Notepad++ in Linux Mint

I recently came across an article discussing free and open-source Linux replacements for the Windows text editor, Notepad++. I have been using Notepad++ when dual-booted into Windows as I find its ability to open multiple files in separate tabs to be extremely useful. My fallback in Linux has been to use Notepadqq which is essentially a Notepad++ clone. While the article included this package as one option, it also indicated that Notepad++ itself could be installed in Linux using snap and Wine.

Deprecation error for apt-key

I use Grub Customizer (see: Updating the GRUB2 boot menu) to simply the grub boot menu on my dual-boot system. The software installed and ran correctly on a new installation of Linux Mint 21 (Vanessa); however, subsequent running of Update Manager produced the message: “An error occurred… Key is stored in legacy trusted.gpg keyring (/etc/apt/trusted.gpg)”. The problem is effectively that the apt-key key manager has been deprecated and a further notation indicates to consult the documentation for apt-key(8) for details.

Multiple installed kernels in Linux Mint

I noticed that a recent update was taking a long time to complete so I looked the details and found multiple instances of items such as update intramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-92-generic being processed. These are evidently related to installed kernels but, since they are clearly old versions, why are they being processed and so stalling completion of the update process?

New Life for 32-bit Machines

Are you running a 32-bit computer? Do you have Linux Mint, perhaps Version 19.3 (Tricia), installed? Linux Mint Version 19.3 is a long-term support version; however, the package will reach end-of-life status in April, 2023.

Opening Local HTML Files in Opera under Android 11

I use a local HTML file to provide a menu of my most-used web sites as a multi-column table. The trick with Android is discovering how to open such a local file in the browser since the solution seems to be a moving target. Previously, Android 6 required having file permissions set appropriately. Now, for some uses in Android 11, the local file has to be located in a very specific folder.

Asus T100 Transformer – Back in (the Linux) Business!

It’s been more than six years since I gave up trying to run Linux on the T100 after bricking the computer (see Asus T100 Transformer – A Cautionary Tale). Since then the T100 has been using Windows, updated to Windows 10, exclusively. However, the recent announcement that most older computers will not be able to be upgraded to Windows 11 has me thinking of going completely Windows free. And, since the T100 is the only one of my machines that isn’t currently dual booted, I thought I would check the current state of the Linux nation for this device. Dual-booting the T100 would be the final, interim step in potentially moving my operations completely to Linux.

Happy 30th Birthday!

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the introduction of Linux by Linus Torvalds.

References:

Happy 30th Birthday, Linux!
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2021/08/happy-30th-birthday-linux