My wife was dissatisfied with the default file manager, GNOME Files, aka Nautilus, on her Ubuntu Linux desktop system. You can determine the default file manager from a terminal window by issuing the command xdg-mime query default inode/directory, which will show you what application opers directories.

$ xdg-mime query default inode/directory
org.gnome.Nautilus.desktop
$

You can also check on whether one of several common file managers, such as Nautilus, Thunar, Dolphin, or Nemo, which is a fork of Nautilus, is currently running with ps aux | grep -E 'nautilus|thunar|dolphin|nemo'. I saw that I had previously installed the Krusader file manager when I checked for file manager desktop entries with grep -l "inode/directory" /usr/share/applications/*.desktop.

$ grep -l "inode/directory" /usr/share/applications/*.desktop
/usr/share/applications/org.gnome.baobab.desktop
/usr/share/applications/org.gnome.Nautilus.desktop
/usr/share/applications/org.kde.krusader.desktop
$

But I didn't think the Krusader interface would appeal to her as she wanted a file manager that provided an interface more similar to the one for the Windows Fle Explorer that she had on her Windows 11 system, so I issued the command sudo apt update and then sudo apt install thunar, which installed thunar 4.20.7 — after installation, you can check the version of Thunar with thunar --version. I then made Thunar the default file manager with xdg-mime default thunar.desktop inode/directory. If you run the command xdg-mime query default inode/directory, you should see thunar listed when it has been made the default handler for directories.

$ xdg-mime default thunar.desktop inode/directory
$ xdg-mime query default inode/directory
thunar.desktop
$

I then unpinned the GNOME Files (Nautilus) app by right-clicking on the icon for it and selecting Unpin. I then pressed the Super key along with the "A" key, and typed thunar in the "Type to search" filed and then right-clicked on thunar when I saw it returned and selected "Pin to Dock" so she could open it the way she was opening GNOME Files.

To make the left pane of the Thunar window act like Explorer on Microsoft Windows operating systems, I configured it to expand a directory to show subdirectories if she clicked on it. To do so, I changed Thunar's sidebar style from the default "Shortcuts" to "Tree, which can be done by selecting View, then Side Pane and then selecting Tree, which changes the left pane to provide an expandable directory tree. As with the Windows File Explorer, you can toggle the display of hidden files. I turned that option on by pressing the Ctrl and H keys simultaneously — the option can be toggled off again by using the same key combination.

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I downloaded a YouTube video on a Ubuntu Linux with yt-dlp. When I tried to view the downloaded WebM file with the default video application, Videos, also known as Totem, which is an application for playing videos that is provided with Ubuntu, I saw the message below:

When I opened the video with VLC, which I had previously installed, I heard audio, but no video was displayed. I checked to see if the Nvidia driver was up-to-date since the system had an Nvidia graphics card, but they were up-to-date. You can check that by clicking on the Show Apps button at the lower-right-hand corner of the screen Ubuntu desktop. Then type Software Updates in the "Type to search" field. Click on Software & Updates and then click on the Additional Drivers.

To resolve the problem, I added the following line to the /etc/environment file with a text editor:

GDK_GL=gles

When I rebooted the system, I was then able to view the video with the default Videos application, though when I tried playing it in VLC I could hear audio, but did not see video.

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Then from the Behavior tab, I changed the setting from Follow System to Always, which resulted in the scrollbar appearing where it had been missing, but I could not scroll back any further than the text that had been appearing in the tab before I changed the settiing and that remained the same whenever I issued another command and text moved upwards, so that I could no longer see it or scroll back to see it, so I closed the tab.

When I opened another tab, the scrollbar was there and operated as expected.

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You can run the Big Fish Games Game Manager on an Ubuntu Linux system under Steam. You can install Steam as a Snap package from the Ubuntu App Center.

Steps:

1. Download the Big Fish Games App (Game Manager) for PC
2. In Steam on the Ubuntu system, click on Add a Game, which is at the lower, left-hand corner of the Steam window, then select Add a Non-Steam Game, then browse to where you downloaded the .exe installer for the game manager, click on it, and then click on Add Selected Programs.
3. You should then see the Big Fish Game Manager in the "Uncategorized" list of games at the left side of the Steam window, e.g., you may see bfginstaller32_s1_l1.exe listed. Right-click on it and then select Properties, then Compatibility, and then, from the drop-down list that becomes available, select Proton Experimental or the latest stable version — I selected Proton Experimental.
4. You can then close the Compatibility window by clicking on the "X" at the upper, right-hand corner.
5. Then with the Big Fish Game Manager selected in the Uncategorized list, click on the Play button to launch the Big Fish Game Manager Setup and agree to the License Agreement when you see it appear.

When I started the install process, the installation appeared to hang at "Execute: C:\Program Files (x86)\bfglient\epoch.exe". When I clicked on the title bar for the window, I saw "About Wine", so it appeared to be using Wine, which I had previously installed on the Ubuntu system. But I waited and eventually the installation succeeded, though I think it took over 15 minutes. I closed the window and then went back to the Steam window, I saw bfginstaller32_s1_l1.exe was still there. This time when I clicked on it, the Big Fish window where I could sign in to Big Fish Games opened fairly quickly.

Note: if the window goes blank or displays just a white background, minimize it by clicking on the "-" in the upper, right-hand corner of the Big Fish window and then switch to it again, which you can do with Alt+Tab — continue to press the Tab key while continuing to hold down the Alt key to cycle between open open windows until you get to the Big Fish window.

Initially, you will see "No games to play," but if you have already purchased games that you've played on another system, you can click on Purchase History and install them on the Linux system. When I installed the Big Fish Games Manager under Steam, I had my wife check one of her games, Aquascapes, and that ran fine. I then closed the Big Fish window and the Steam window and reopened it. Note: if you want to change the name that appears for Big Fish Games in the Uncategorized list, you can right-click on the entry, e.g., bfginstaller32_s1_l1.exe, and choose Properties and then change the "Shortcut" value to something you prefer, such as "Big Fish Games". When I reopened Steam and started Big Fish Games, I saw the Aquascapes game under "My Games".

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To access a directory that is shared from a Microsoft Windows system in a Windows domain, you can take the following steps on a Ubuntu Linux system. Note: you will need to have a package installed that provides Server Message Block (SMB) support. If the libsmclient0 package is installed, you should be able to use these steps. You can check if it is installed by opening a Terminal window and issuing the command dpkg -s libsmbclient0. If it is not installed, you can install it with sudo apt install libsmbclient0.

alice@Wonderland:~$ dpkg -s libsmbclient0
Package: libsmbclient0
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: libs
Installed-Size: 259
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>
Architecture: amd64
Multi-Arch: same
Source: samba
Version: 2:4.22.3+dfsg-4ubuntu2.2
Replaces: libsmbclient
Provides: libsmbclient (= 2:4.22.3+dfsg-4ubuntu2.2)
Depends: samba-libs (= 2:4.22.3+dfsg-4ubuntu2.2), libbsd0 (>= 0.0), libc6 (>= 2.38), libndr6 (>= 2:4.17.2), libtalloc2 (>= 2.0.4~git20101213), libtevent0t64 (>= 0.15.0)
Breaks: libsmbclient (<< 2:4.22.3+dfsg-4ubuntu2.2)
Description: shared library for communication with SMB/CIFS servers
 This package provides a shared library that enables client applications
 to talk to Microsoft Windows and Samba servers using the SMB/CIFS
 protocol.
Homepage: https://www.samba.org
Original-Maintainer: Debian Samba Maintainers <pkg-samba-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org>
alice@Wonderland:~$

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If you need to list all of the accounts on an Ubuntu Linux system, there are many commands that you can use.

1. cat /etc/passwd
2. grep -oE '^[^:]+' /etc/passwd - for just the account names
3. cut -d: -f1 /etc/passwd - for just the account names
4. awk -F: '{print $1}' /etc/passwd - for just the account names
5. lslogins
6. compgen -u - for just the accunt names
7. getent passwd

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If you need to determine the amount of memory in a system that is running the Ubuntu Linux operating system (OS), you can open a Terminal window from the App Center and then use the free command. If you use the command without any options, you will see the amount of memory displayed in bytes. To display the value in a more human-friendly format, you can add the argument -h or --human, e.g., to see the value in gigabytes.

alice@firefly:~$ free -h
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            14Gi       2.4Gi        10Gi       426Mi       2.3Gi        12Gi
Swap:          4.0Gi          0B       4.0Gi
alice@firefly:~$

Other options for the command are shown below:

jim@Serenity:~$ free --help

Usage:
 free [options]

Options:
 -b, --bytes         show output in bytes
     --kilo          show output in kilobytes
     --mega          show output in megabytes
     --giga          show output in gigabytes
     --tera          show output in terabytes
     --peta          show output in petabytes
 -k, --kibi          show output in kibibytes
 -m, --mebi          show output in mebibytes
 -g, --gibi          show output in gibibytes
     --tebi          show output in tebibytes
     --pebi          show output in pebibytes
 -h, --human         show human-readable output
     --si            use powers of 1000 not 1024
 -l, --lohi          show detailed low and high memory statistics
 -L, --line          show output on a single line
 -t, --total         show total for RAM + swap
 -v, --committed     show committed memory and commit limit
 -s N, --seconds N   repeat printing every N seconds
 -c N, --count N     repeat printing N times, then exit
 -w, --wide          wide output

     --help     display this help and exit
 -V, --version  output version information and exit

For more details see free(1).
jim@Serenity:~$ 

Note:The free command in Linux shows the total amount of installed physical memory in the total column, but this value is less than the actual hardware random-access memory (RAM) installed because the Linux kernel reserves a portion of memory for itself and for hardware devices (like video card buffers) at boot time. The total shown is the usable RAM available to the OS, not the absolute hardware total.

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On a Ubuntu Linux system, you can determine which users are allowed to use the sudo command by looking at the contents of the /etc/group file. If you grep for sudo you will see which accounts on the system can use the command.

jack@firefly:~$ grep sudo /etc/group
sudo:x:27:jack,jill@ad.example.com
jack@firefly:~$ 

The above output shows that the local jack account and a Windows domain account, jill@ad.example.com, can use the command. You can see what groups a particular user belongs to with the command groups username, where username is the user's account name.

jack@firefly:~$ groups jill@ad.example.com
jill@ad.example.com : domain users@ad.example.com ra_allowmediaaccess@ad.example
.com ra_allowcomputeraccess@ad.example.com ra_allowaddinaccess@ad.example.com ra
_allowshareaccess@ad.example.com ra_allowremoteaccess@ad.example.com wssusers@ad
.example.com ra_allowvpnaccess@ad.example.com ra_allowhomepagelinks@ad.example.c
om
jack@firefly:~$ groups jack
jack : jack adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev users lpadmin
jack@firefly:~$

You can also determine if a user has sudo privilege using groups username | grep -c sudo. If the result is 0, then the user does not have that privilege. If the result is 1, inciding that the grep command found username one in the output of the groups command, then the user has that privilege.

jack@firefly:~$ groups jill@ad.example.com | grep -c sudo
1
jack@firefly:~$

You can grant a user that privilege by issuing the command sudo usermod -aG sudo username from an account that already has the capability to run the sudo command.

jack@firefly:~$ sudo usermod -aG sudo mary
[sudo: authenticate] Password:
jack@firefly:~$

You can remove a user's account from the list of those allowed to run the command using the gpasswd command, which is part of the sysutils package by issuing the command sudo gpasswd -d username sudo.

jack@firefly:~$ sudo gpasswd -d mary sudo
Removing user mary from group sudo
jack@firefly:~$ groups mary | grep -c sudo
0
jack@firefly:~$

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You can check the health of a NVM Express (NVMe) drive on an Ubuntu Linux system using the nvme-cli command-line interface (CLI) application. The description for the package is as follows:

NVMe management command line interface

nvme-cli is a NVMe management command line interface. NVM Express™ (NVMe™) is a specification defining how host software communicates with non-volatile memory across a PCI Express® (PCIe®) bus. It is the industry standard for PCIe solid state drives (SSDs) in all form factors (U.2, M.2, AIC, EDSFF).

You can install nvme-cli throught the App Center on a Ubuntu Linux system.

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