Settings on a desktop system running Windows 10

Alternatively, you can see the current screen timeout power off settings from a command-line interface (CLI) using the command powercfg /query SCHEME_CURRENT SUB_VIDEO VIDEOIDLE from a PowerShell or command prompt window.

C:\>powercfg /query SCHEME_CURRENT SUB_VIDEO VIDEOIDLE
Power Scheme GUID: 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e  (Balanced)
  GUID Alias: SCHEME_BALANCED
  Subgroup GUID: 7516b95f-f776-4464-8c53-06167f40cc99  (Display)
    GUID Alias: SUB_VIDEO
    Power Setting GUID: 3c0bc021-c8a8-4e07-a973-6b14cbcb2b7e  (Turn off display after)
      GUID Alias: VIDEOIDLE
      Minimum Possible Setting: 0x00000000
      Maximum Possible Setting: 0xffffffff
      Possible Settings increment: 0x00000001
      Possible Settings units: Seconds
    Current AC Power Setting Index: 0x00000258
    Current DC Power Setting Index: 0x0000012c


C:\>

[ More Info ]

[/os/windows/win10] permanent link

My preferred text editor is gVim, which is available for Linux, macOS, MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows systems as well as other operating systems. It is free and open-source software. I've been using personal computers since the early days of MS-DOS and have used the vi text editor on which it is based for decades, so I've learned many of the keyboard shortcuts which make it a powerful text editor and which make it easier for me to modify text files more quickly than I could navigating through menu entries in a graphical user interface (GUI). So I usually install it on Microsoft Windows systems that I will be using regularly. You can download an installation file from the website of the developer, Bram Moolenaar or on Windows 10 or later versions of Windows, you can use Microsoft's package manager utility, winget. To install the application using winget, you can open a command prompt window or PowerShell window and issue the command winget install vim.vim. Note: on a Windows 10 system (version 22H2), I found that the command was not available from a command prompt or PowerShell window with administrator privileges, only from windows opened with standard account privileges.

C:\>winget install vim
Multiple packages found matching input criteria. Please refine the input.
Name            Id              Source
---------------------------------------
Vim             vim.vim.nightly winget
Vim             vim.vim         winget
Vim Cheat Sheet 9WZDNCRDMCWR    msstore

C:\>winget install vim.vim
Found Vim [vim.vim] Version 9.2.0758
This application is licensed to you by its owner.
Microsoft is not responsible for, nor does it grant any licenses to, third-party packages.
Downloading https://github.com/vim/vim-win32-installer/releases/download/v9.2.0758/gvim_9.2.0758_x64_signed.exe
  ██████████████████████████████  12.7 MB / 11.7 MB
Successfully verified installer hash
Starting package install...
Successfully installed

C:\>

[/software/editors/vi] permanent link

Jellyfin is a free and open-source media server application. It can be installed on an Ubuntu Linux system as a Snap package through the App Center.

Alternatively, you can install the software from a terminal window with the command sudo snap install itrue-jellyfin.

$ sudo snap install itrue-jellyfin
[sudo: authenticate] Password:               
itrue-jellyfin 10.11.11+ubu2604 from Isaac True (itrue) installed
$

[ More Info ]

[/network/web/server/jellyfin] permanent link

The Winamp media player was developed to run on Microsoft Windows operating systems. The last stable release of the software was released about three years ago on April 26, 2023. If you need a native Linux alternative to Winamp, Audacious is a free and open-source audio player that has a GTK-based interfrace (GTKUI),but which can also be configured with a Winamp-like interface and which supports Winamp 2 skins, i.e., Winamp .wsz files (a type of ZIP archive file). You can also migrate Winamp playlists into Audacious; it supports the standard .m3u and .m3u8 playlist formats, though you will need to modify the Windows-style file paths to be Linux-style file paths. To use Winamp playlists on a Linux system, such as an Ubuntu system, you can take the following steps.

1. Locate your Winamp playlists, which are .m3u or .m3u8 files typically located in C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Winamp\Plugins\ml\playlists where username is the relevant username. You can view the contents of that directory from a command prompt window using the command dir %appdata%\Winamp\plugins\ml\playlists since %appdata% is an environment variable pointing to the account's AppData\Roaming directory.

   A list of the playlists is contained in the playlists XML file. In that file, which can be viewed in a text editor such as the Windows Notepad, you will see data like the following:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?>
   <playlists playlists="35">
   <playlist filename="plf8064.m3u8" title="Moonzic (Top Favorite Mix)" id="{8B45286F-9CF9-4A14-9045-F27EDC1ED72B}" songs="217" seconds="0"/>

   The first line above shows the version of XML in use is 1.0 and the character encoding is UTF-16. The next lines shows that, in this case, there are 35 playlists. The next line shows the filename of 1 of the 35 playlists and the title for the playlist in Winamp.

2. If the music files, e.g., the .mp3 files referenced in the playlists are not accessible from the Linux system, copy them to a location that is accessible from the Linux system. If you preserve a similar folder structure, if you need to copy or move the files, editing the playlists files will be easier. E.g., if the Winamp playlists contain paths like:

   C:\Users\Alice\Music\Artist\Album\song.mp3

   You could have a similar folder structure on Linux like the following:

   /home/alice/Music/Artist/Album/song.mp3

3. Edit the playlists files. You could use a global find and replace function in a text editor or you could update all of the files at once with sed (short for stream editor), which you can run from a Terminal window. Sed will likely already be present on a Linux system. You can verify that by using the which command, i.e., which sed, which will show you the location of the program, if it is present. Sed is also available for Microsoft Windows systems at sed for Windows. A sed command like the one below, if executed from the directory where the playlist files are located, could be made to make the needed changes if the the Windows and Linux file paths were like the ones above.

   sed -i 's|C:\\Users\\Alice|/home/alice|g; s|\\|/|g' *.m3u8

   • The -i tells sed to edit files in place, i.e., to make the changes to the specified file rather than create a new file.
   • The commands sed will use are enclosed in single quotes.
   • The s at the beginning of the command instructs sed to perform a substitution. The vertical bar is being used to separate the old string from the new replacement string. Another character could be used, such as a colon, etc.
   • The string to be replaced, C:\\Users\\Alice is placed within the first pair of vertical bars. Each backslash must be preceded by another backslash because the backslash character has a special meaning — it is an escape character. If you have a period in the replacement string, you should also precede it with a backslash, since the period (.) has a special meaning in a regular expression, also. The replacement string is enclosed within the second set of vertical bars.
   • The g that follows the 4th vertical bar indicates it is a "global" replacement operation, i.e., it should occur everywhere the original string occurs in the file.
   • The semicolon separates the first command from a second one, which indicates any backslashes in the file should be replaced with forward slashes. I.e., the backslashes that occur later in each line should also be replaced.
   • The *.m3u8 indicates that the sed commands should be applied to all .m3u files in the directory.
4. After updating the .m3u8 files, within Audacious, click on Playlist and select Import.
5. Navigate to the location of the playlist then select one by clicking on it and then click on the Import button.
6. The playlist name, e.g., plf68B in the example below, will match the filename for the .m3u/.m3u8 file. You can rename it to match the name for the playlist in Winamp by opening the Winamp playlists.xml file, which will be in the same directory as the playlist .m3u8 files, in a text editor or web browser and looking for the corresponding entry, e.g.:

   <playlist filename="plf68B.m3u8" title="Disney Classic Tunes" id="{AAD2A93E-93E9-442B-B24C-88D0BFBB4607}" songs="44" seconds="8231"/>

   Right-click on the playlist name in Audacious and choose Rename.

[ More Info ]

[/software/audio_video/Audacious] permanent link

Advanced Diary is a journaling/diary application for Microsoft Windows systems developed by CSoftLab. It stores the location of the currently active datbase in the Windows registry at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CSoftLab\Advanced Diary\Databases in the key Database0. You can query the value from a command prompt using the reg query command reg query "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CSoftLab\Advanced Diary\Databases" /v Database0. You can change the value from a command-line interface (CLI) using the reg add command.

C:\>reg query "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CSoftLab\Advanced Diary\Databases" /v Database0

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CSoftLab\Advanced Diary\Databases
    Database0    REG_SZ    Protocol=Local*Database=C:\Users\Alice\Documents\Advanced Diary\diary.dndb


C:\>

It stores the settings for automatic backups at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CSoftLab\Advanced Diary\Options. The default option settings when no automatic backup has been set are shown below.

C:\>reg query "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CSoftLab\Advanced Diary\Options" | find "AutoBackup"
    AutoBackup    REG_DWORD    0x0
    AutoBackupPath    REG_SZ
    AutoBackupMode    REG_DWORD    0x0
    AutoBackupTime    REG_BINARY    4F5555555555D53F

C:\>

You can change the backup settings in the program by selecting Tools, then Options, then Backup from the Advanced Diary menu bar.

The registry settings when automatic backups have been turned on with a backup location specified and the default backup options left in place, e.g., every day, are shown below.

C:\>reg query "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CSoftLab\Advanced Diary\Options" | find "AutoBackup"
    AutoBackup    REG_DWORD    0x1
    AutoBackupPath    REG_SZ    P:\alice\Advanced Diary Backups\
    AutoBackupMode    REG_DWORD    0x0
    AutoBackupTime    REG_BINARY    4F5555555555D53F

C:\>

When you turn on the backup option, the next time you start the program you will see a AutoBackup window prompting you to OK a backup. if you leave the "Confirm before running AutoBackup" option checked.

The "AutoSave" option is stored in the registry at AutoSave under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CSoftLab\Advanced Diary\Options. The default value is zero. With "AutoSave entry ever 5 minutes" turned on the value will be "1" as shown below.

C:\>reg query "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CSoftLab\Advanced Diary\Options" /v AutoSave

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CSoftLab\Advanced Diary\Options
    AutoSave    REG_DWORD    0x1


C:\>

The value in minutes for the interval at which automatic saves are performed is stored in the AutoSaveInterval key. The key that controls whether the user is prompted to confirm backups is stored in the BackupConfirmation key. A value of "0" indicates that confirmation is not required.

C:\>reg query "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CSoftLab\Advanced Diary\Options" /v AutoSaveInterval

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CSoftLab\Advanced Diary\Options
    AutoSaveInterval    REG_DWORD    0x5


C:\>reg query "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CSoftLab\Advanced Diary\Options" /v BackupConfirmation

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CSoftLab\Advanced Diary\Options
    BackupConfirmation    REG_DWORD    0x0


C:\>

Related articles:

1. Obtaining a command prompt in Windows 11
   Date: August 14, 2023
2. Remotely Enabling Remote Desktop Protocol From the Command Line
   Date: April 11, 2009
3. Checking Microsoft Windows proxy server settings
   Date: January 7, 2015

[/os/windows/software/journaling/AdvDiary] permanent link

You can view the current name of a system running a Microsoft Windows operating system (OS) using the hostname command in a PowerShell or command prompt window. You can change the name of the host by opening a PowerShell window with administrator privileges by choosing "Run as administrator" when opening the window and then using the PowerShell command Rename-Computer -NewName "name" where name is the new name you wish to assign to the system. Note: names must be 15 or fewer characters due to NetBIOS limitations and should only use standard alphanumeric characters, i.e, A-Z, 0-9, and hyphens (-). Spaces and most special characters are invalid and will cause an error.

PS C:\Windows\system32> hostname
DESKTOP-PNS32H3
PS C:\Windows\system32> Rename-Computer -NewName "Jamestown"
WARNING: The changes will take effect after you restart the computer DESKTOP-PNS32H3.
PS C:\Windows\system32>

You will need to reboot to have the new name go into effect; you can add the -Restart option to the command to restart automatically. E.g., Rename-Computer -NewName "TheNewName" -Restart.

To join a Windows domain from a command-line interface (CLI), you can issue the command Add-Computer -DomainName "YourDomainName" -Credential (Get-Credential) -Restart — replace YourDomainName with the name of the Windows domain. If you don't want to automatically reboot, omit the -Restart option.

Add-Computer -DomainName "ad.example.com" -Credential (Get-Credential) -Restart

cmdlet Get-Credential at command pipeline postion 1
Supply values for the following parameters:
Credential

You will see a "Windows PowerShell credential request" window open where you can provide a user name and password for an account in the domain administrators group. The system will automatically reboot if you have added the -Restart parameter.

[/os/windows/PowerShell] permanent link

To determine the IP address of a Microsoft Windows system from a command-line interface (CLI) you can open a command prompt window and use the ipconfig command ipconfig /all. If you only need the IPv4 address you can pipe the output into find or findstr. Alternatively, you can use a netsh command.

C:\>ipconfig /all | find "IPv4 Address"
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.8(Preferred)

C:\>ipconfig | findstr /C:"IPv4"
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.8

C:\>netsh interface ip show addresses

Configuration for interface "Ethernet"
    DHCP enabled:                         Yes
    IP Address:                           192.168.0.8
    Subnet Prefix:                        192.168.0.0/24 (mask 255.255.255.0)
    Default Gateway:                      192.168.0.1
    Gateway Metric:                       0
    InterfaceMetric:                      25

Configuration for interface "Loopback Pseudo-Interface 1"
    DHCP enabled:                         No
    IP Address:                           127.0.0.1
    Subnet Prefix:                        127.0.0.0/8 (mask 255.0.0.0)
    InterfaceMetric:                      75


C:\>

You can also use a PowerShell cmdlet to view the IP address.

PS C:\> Get-NetIPAddress -AddressFamily IPv4


IPAddress         : 192.168.0.8
InterfaceIndex    : 5
InterfaceAlias    : Ethernet
AddressFamily     : IPv4
Type              : Unicast
PrefixLength      : 24
PrefixOrigin      : Dhcp
SuffixOrigin      : Dhcp
AddressState      : Preferred
ValidLifetime     : 15:58:12
PreferredLifetime : 15:58:12
SkipAsSource      : False
PolicyStore       : ActiveStore

IPAddress         : 127.0.0.1
InterfaceIndex    : 1
InterfaceAlias    : Loopback Pseudo-Interface 1
AddressFamily     : IPv4
Type              : Unicast
PrefixLength      : 8
PrefixOrigin      : WellKnown
SuffixOrigin      : WellKnown
AddressState      : Preferred
ValidLifetime     : Infinite ([TimeSpan]::MaxValue)
PreferredLifetime : Infinite ([TimeSpan]::MaxValue)
SkipAsSource      : False
PolicyStore       : ActiveStore



PS C:\>

You can get a more concise version showing the interface and address with Get-NetIPAddress -AddressFamily IPv4 |Select-Object InterfaceAlias, IPAddress.

PS C:\> Get-NetIPAddress -AddressFamily IPv4 | Select-Object InterfaceAlias, IPAddress

InterfaceAlias              IPAddress
--------------              ---------
Ethernet                    192.168.0.8
Loopback Pseudo-Interface 1 127.0.0.1


PS C:\>

[ More Info ]

[/os/windows/PowerShell] permanent link

1. Shut down the VM
2. With the VM selected, click on Settings, then General, then select Features. Change the Shared Clipboard setting from Disabled to Bidirectional then click on OK.
3. Start the VM.
4. In the running VM, click on Devices then select Shared Clipboard . Make sure it is set to Bidirectional.
5. Select Devices then Insert GUest Additions CD image....
6. When you see the "VirtualBox - Question" window with the message "Do you wish to download this disk image file fromt he Internet?", click on Download.
7. If you see a window asking you to confirm the VirtualBox Guest Additions disk image file followed by the URL for the download, e.g., https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/7.2.6/VBoxGuestAdditions_7.2.6.iso, click on Download.
8. You should then see a window informing you that the VirtualBox Guest Additions disk image file has been successfully downloaded and saved locally. The download location is ~/.config/VirtualBox/VBoxGuestAdditions_x.y.z where x.y.z is the version of the ISO file, e.g. VBoxGuestAdditions_7.2.6.iso. You will be asked "Do you wish to continue with Guest Additions installation?" Click on Continue.
9. Open the Windows File Explorer, then navigate to "CD Drive (D:) VirtualBox Guest Additions" in the left pane and with it selected, in the right pane, right-click on VBoxWindowsAdditions and select "Run as administrator". When asked if you wish to allow the program to make changes", click on "Yes".
10. You will then see a "Welcome to the Oracle VirtualBox Guest Additions Setup" window which will inform you "It is recommended that you close all other applications before starting Setup. This will make it possible to update relevant system files without haviging to reboot your computer." Close any applications you are running in the Windows VM and then click on Next.
11. At the next window you can "Choose Install Location". Unless you need to change the location, just click on Next.
12. The next window is one where you can "Choose Components". You can click on Install to proceed with the default options. The space required is 675.0 KB.
13. At the next window you will be informed "Your computer must be restarted in order to complete the installation of Oracle VirtualBox Guest Additions..." and asked "Do you want to reboot now?" You can click on Finish to immediately reboot. Once you have rebooted, you should be able to copy and paste between the host and guest operating systems. You should also see the "VirtualBox Guest Additions Service" and "VirtualBox Guest Additions Tray Application" processes running if you bring up the Windows Task Manager.

[/os/virtualbox] permanent link

To install Discord on an Ubuntu Linux system, you can install it as a Snap package through Ubuntu's App Center.

At the install screen, I saw the message below:

Snaps are confined, as such Discord may be unable to perform some of the tasks it typically does when unconfined. This may result in the system log getting spammed with apparmor errors. Granting access to the system-observe interface when in the snap will enable the features, and thus reduce the logging.

snap connect discord:system-observe

AppArmor is a Linux kernel security module that provides system administrators the capability to restrict the access programs have to the system on which they run.

[ More Info ]

[/os/unix/linux/ubuntu] permanent link

If you would like to use the Python programming language on a Microsoft Windows system, one way to install Python software is to use the Windows Package Manager, aka winget. Open a command prompt and enter the command winget install python. After the software is installed, you can view information on the Python package with the command winget show python.

You can then type python in a command prompt window to open the Python interpreter where you can enter commands. E.g., in the example below it is being used as a calculator. You can exit the program by typing exit(). You can run Python scripts from the command prompt window using commands in the form python example.py.

Related articles:

1. Obtaining a command prompt in Windows 11
   Date: August 14, 2023
2. Obtaining a command prompt in Windows 10
   Date: February 18, 2017
3. WinPython - Python for Microsoft Windows
   Date: May 13, 2018
4. Installing new packages for WinPython
   Date: May 18, 2018

[/languages/python] permanent link

My wife had been using DVDFab 13 under Microsoft Windows 11 and wanted to continue to use it for ripping DVDs after we converted her desktop PC to Ubuntu Linux. DVDFab 13 seemed to be working fine after I installed it using Wine until after I updated Wine to version 11.0 (you can see which version of Wine is present by issuing the command wine --version in a Terminal window). When I tried to run DVDFab afterwards, though, I saw the message “A debugger has been found running in your system. Please, unload it from memory and restart your program.”

When I queried ChatGPT about the issue, it replied “This error is usually not caused by an actual debugger running on Ubuntu. DVDFab contains anti-debugging / anti-tamper checks, and under Wine or Proton those checks can sometimes incorrectly conclude that a debugger is attached.” It also stated that, for DVDFab 13 specifically, there is an issue when trying to run the program on later versions of Wine with the problem appearing with version 10.3 or later. The problem occurs on newer versions, even when no debugger is running. I decided to install the application under Bottles, which I had previously installed on the system with Flatpak, to see if the problem might not occur if I tried to run the application under Bottles, but the problem still occurred. I.e., I saw the "A debugger has been found running in your system. Please, unload it from memory and restart your program.” message. It took me a considerable amount of time to resolve the problem, but I was finally able to fix the issue by disabling DXVK and VKD3D in the settings for the DVDFab bottle.

[ More Info ]

[/os/unix/linux/ubuntu/DVDFab] permanent link

To see the Flatpaks installed on a Linux system, you can issue the command flatpak list in a terminal window. To remove a Flatpak from a system, find the Application ID of the software by issuing the command flatpak list --app. Once you have the Application ID, you can uninstall the Flatpak with the command flatpak uninstall AppID where AppID is the relevant Application ID. To remove all of the application's local settings and configuration files, add the --delete-data option. E.g., to remove the Bottles Flatpak, I could use the command flatpak uninstall --delete-data com.usebottles.bottles.

alice@Wonderland:~$ flatpak list
Name             Application ID              Version Branch       Installation
Bottles          com.usebottles.bottles      63.2    stable       system
i386             …sktop.Platform.Compat.i386         25.08        system
Mesa             …esktop.Platform.GL.default 26.0.6  25.08        system
Mesa (Extra)     …esktop.Platform.GL.default 26.0.6  25.08-extra  system
nvidia-580-159-… …tform.GL.nvidia-580-159-03         1.4          system
Mesa             …ktop.Platform.GL32.default 26.0.6  25.08        system
Mesa (Extra)     …ktop.Platform.GL32.default 26.0.6  25.08-extra  system
nvidia-580-159-… …orm.GL32.nvidia-580-159-03         1.4          system
Nvidia VAAPI dr… …ktop.Platform.VAAPI.nvidia         25.08        system
Codecs Extra Ex… …ktop.Platform.codecs-extra         25.08-extra  system
i386             …Platform.codecs_extra.i386         25.08-extra  system
GNOME Applicati… org.gnome.Platform                  49           system
Yaru Gtk Theme   org.gtk.Gtk3theme.Yaru              3.22         system
gecko            org.winehq.Wine.gecko               stable-25.08 system
mono             org.winehq.Wine.mono                stable-25.08 system
alice@Wonderland:~$ flatpak list --app
Name        Application ID             Version     Branch     Installation
Bottles     com.usebottles.bottles     63.2        stable     system
alice@Wonderland:~$ flatpak uninstall --delete-data com.usebottles.bottles


        ID                                    Branch         Op
 1. [-] com.usebottles.bottles                stable         r
 2. [-] com.usebottles.bottles.Locale         stable         r

Uninstall complete.
Delete data for com.usebottles.bottles? [y/n]: y
alice@Wonderland:~$

A Flatpack may required shared "runtimes" components. When you delete the application, those runtimes can become "orphaned", but still occupy space on the system. You can, optionally, use the command flatpak uninstall --unused afterwards, if that is a concern.

[/os/unix/linux] permanent link