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Category: Mint

Mint, Software

[Firefox] Freezes computer

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For the past few weeks, my computer was randomly freezing for about 30 seconds. After a quick search, it became clear that it was a memory issue, even though my computer has over 32 GB of RAM…

> journalctl -k -b -o short-precise

Sep 23 09:39:38.873173 myPC systemd-journald: Under memory pressure, flushing caches.
Sep 23 09:39:41.632171 myPC systemd-journald: Under memory pressure, flushing caches.
Sep 23 09:39:44.072486 myPC systemd-journald: Under memory pressure, flushing caches.
Sep 23 09:39:50.630124 myPC systemd-journald: Under memory pressure, flushing caches.
Sep 23 09:40:18.142581 myPC kernel: upowerd invoked oom-killer: gfp_mask=0x140cca(GFP_HIGHUSER_MOVABLE|__GFP_COMP), order=0, oom_score_adj=0

> journalctl -k -b --since "2026-09-23 09:39:30" --until "2026-09-23 09:41:30" \
  | grep -iE 'oom|killed process|kill process|out of memory|memory cgroup'

Sep 23 09:40:18 myPC kernel: oom-kill:constraint=CONSTRAINT_NONE,nodemask=(null),cpuset=/,mems_allowed=0,global_oom,task_memcg=/user.slice/user-1000.slice/session-c2.scope,task=Isolated Web Co,pid=2666576,uid=1000
Sep 23 09:40:18 myPC kernel: Out of memory: Killed process 2666576 (Isolated Web Co) total-vm:10469216kB, anon-rss:7162184kB, file-rss:196kB, shmem-rss:1752kB, UID:1000 pgtables:54092kB oom_score_adj:200

As it turned out, the problem was caused by Firefox (Killed process Isolated Web Co). Fortunately, the solution was quite simple. I enabled the unloadOnLowMemory setting:

about:config → browser.tabs.unloadOnLowMemory →true

Since then, everything is running normal again. I also tried to identify a specific extension or website, which needed too much memory via

about:processes

about:memory

but it was nothing out of the ordinary. I guess I just had too many Firefox windows and tabs open…

GNU/Linux, Mint

[Hardware] ASUS TUF GAMING B550M-PLUS (WIFI) – Bluetooth broken

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Somehow the onboard Bluetooth of my Motherboard stopped working, but the Wi-Fi was still working fine. This confused me because both are provided by the Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 card. The blueman-manager simply could not find the Bluetooth device anymore. Also, when running the command rfkill, it was just listing the Wi-Fi device. The second entry was missing (I took the screenshot, after Bluetooth was working again).

Since I had recently upgraded to a new kernel, I assumed this must be the problem. After testing many different kernels, it still didn’t work. Even on a kernel where it definitely worked before.

Then I stumbled across this thread Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 Bluetooth Stopped Working Yet Wifi is still fine. The last commenter solved his issue by unplugging the Intel Wi-Fi Card from his Motherboard and plugging it back in. To be honest, I’m not even sure if this is possible on my motherboard, as it is some onboard thing directly on the board. But this post leads me to reconnect the external antenna, which is connected with two cables on the back of the PC. Since Wi-Fi was still working all along, I did not expect anything from it, but after turning the PC back on, suddenly Bluetooth was working again. WTF! No idea how this is possible, as I have used Bluetooth and WI-FI for many months without the external antenna. Fortunately, however, it works again.

Mint

[Linux Mint] Start Applications minimized (start in tray)

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The fact that some applications do not start minimized (in tray) at system startup has been annoying me for quite some time. I find it even more annoying that you can’t simply set this directly via a checkbox in the Startup Applications for each application. The problem seems to be that each application has a different parameter for this, and therefore it cannot be done generally by the operating system (at least that’s my guess). I have therefore researched the necessary parameters for the applications I use. Simply add the parameter at the end of the Startup Applications command. For some applications, you can also activate it directly in the specific settings.

ApplicationSetting / Command
Bitwarden (Flatpack)File ⇾ Settings ⇾ App Settings ⇾ Start to tray icon
Netxcloud–background
SignalFile ⇾ Preferences ⇾ General ⇾ System ⇾ Start minimized to system tray
Steam-silent
Syncthing GTK–background
Telegram-autostart -startintray
Transmission remote GUI-hidden

Helpful discussion: https://askubuntu.com/questions/663187/how-can-i-run-a-program-on-startup-minimized

Mint

[Linux Mint] Transmission Remote GUI: download directory path is not absolute

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Every few months, I run into this issue when adding a torrent to transgui:

Although there is a 5-year-old closed issue on this bug, which also led to a code adjustment, this bug still seems to exist: https://github.com/transmission-remote-gui/transgui/issues/1270
The user Kethsar has probably already found the right cause and gives some hints on how to solve it. At least it helped me to find a workaround:

  • close transgui if it’s running, otherwise your changes will get overwritten again
  • nano ~/.config/Transmission\ Remote\ GUI/transgui.ini
  • search for the [AddTorrent.transmission]section
  • remove some entries which a related, e.g. 
Folder1=/my/path/1
FolHit1=1
FolExt1=
LastDt1=18.02.2024

Folder2=/my/path/2
FolHit2=3
FolExt2=
LastDt2=18.02.2024

...
  • save & quit nano
  • start trangui again and try to add a torrent again

It seems like the issues occurs, when the [AddTorrent.transmission] section reaches Folder50.

Mint

[Linux Mint] Wemos D1 Mini (ESP8266) not recognized

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I had a few D1 Minis lying around that I wanted to flash WLED onto. But when plugging into my main PC running Linux Mint 21, no device got recognized. The D1 Mini was just flashing its blue LED light 2 times and that was all. I had already checked before, whether the USB cable is also a Data Link cable, because now and then you accidentally grab a USB cable which is charging only.

Since I was pretty sure it wasn’t a hardware problem, I checked dmesg for any suspicious messages. I’m using an alias named klog to beautify the output.

sudo dmesg -t -L=never -l emerg,alert,crit,err,warn --human --nopager

And indeed there were some messages regarding USB.

usbfs: interface 0 claimed by ch341 while 'brltty' sets config #1

Since brltty is software for people with visual impairment, I don’t need it and therefore uninstalled it.

sudo apt remove brltty
sudo apt autoclean && sudo apt autoremove

And after removing brltty, my D1 Mini got recognized immediately. Fortunately, the solution was very simple. 🙂

Update 19.01.2024: If you receive Cannot open /dev/ttyUSB0: Permission denied errors, when writing to the esp, you have to add your user to the dialout group and re-login. (*)

sudo usermod -a -G dialout $USER
Mint

[Linux Mint] Sharkoon PureWriter Keyboard not recognized after suspend

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In January 2020 I bought a Sharkoon PureWriter Keyboard and since then I had the problem that the keyboard got not recognized after my PC (which runs on Linux Mint) was coming back from suspend mode. Back then I couldn’t find a solution and was just hoping that a newer kernel release will fix this problem in the future. But it did not. So today I was searching again and stumbled again across this post, but now I noticed the new answer from April this year. And it finally solved it!

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1044988/usb-ports-not-working-after-resume-from-sleep-on-ubuntu-18-04

First check with usbreset for the device name and then create the script under the following path:

sudo nano /lib/systemd/system-sleep/reset-keyboard 

#!/bin/sh

case $1 in
  post)
    usbreset "USB-HID Keyboard"
    ;;
esac

And as a last step we make it executable:

sudo chmod +x /lib/systemd/system-sleep/reset-keyboard

Mint, Software, Terminal

[Linux Mint] Install PyWal on Linux Mint 20.1 Cinnamon

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“Pywal is a tool that generates a color palette from the dominant colors in an image. It then applies the colors system-wide and on-the-fly in all of your favorite programs.”

https://github.com/dylanaraps/pywal/wiki/Installation

pip3 install pywal

I’m using Variety to change my wallpaper every day automatically. To always get the right colors in my terminal I added some lines in my .zshrc that will always grab the current wallpaper and pass it to PyWal. I’m sure a bash pro would do this in just one line… 🙂

#---PyWal---#
# load previous theme
(cat ~/.cache/wal/sequences &)
# get picture path
picturepath=$(gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri) 
# remove prefix & suffix
prefix="'file://" 
suffix="'"
picturepath=${picturepath#"$prefix"} 
picturepath=${picturepath%"$suffix"}
# set colors
wal -n -q -i "$picturepath"
#---PyWal End---#

There are many plugins/tools you can combine with PyWal:

https://github.com/frewacom/pywalfox

https://github.com/khanhas/Spicetify

https://github.com/themix-project/oomox