Kubuntu on a Windows Laptop

11 Sep 2023: Hobby or Business Tool

Q. If I load Kubuntu onto a Windows laptop, do I get the same results as a Kubuntu Focus System?

A. No. If you install on a Windows laptop, you will get to do any research, integration, tools, and testing yourself. If that’s what you want, it’s a great way to learn a lot about Linux system administration. However, sometimes that can be a lot of work, especially on newer hardware. In fact, some hardware may not work at all, thus the need for research!

What can a good Linux vendor provide? Let’s consider the Hint Widget, shown above. This widget present 12 frames that detail many features such as keyboard shortcuts. These are often unique for each model, so the frames only show the details correct for your system.

The Welcome Wizard guides developers and creators to personalize their system with the services. Each stage can launch the tools you need along with illustrated guides.

These are just a few of hundreds of optimizations the Focus team maintains through all system updates. Others include power management, a deep learning suite, and a video sync selector. They also validate updates to keep your system reliable. So if you want a system with neat features and a minimum amount of fuss, we’ve got you covered.

What is a Good Email Client?

08 Sep 2023: Email, Calendars, and Contacts

Q. What email client do your recommend?

A. We recommend Thunderbird. Many email vendors test their updates with it because it is so widely used. This is critical if you want something that works reliably. Thunderbird enables you to do many email operations much faster and more completely than a web client. Examples include search or bulk deletions or filing to folders.

Thunderbird supports many extensions. Perhaps the most popular include those for Contacts and a Calendar. Kubuntu uses Thunderbird as its default email client. You can install with a click from the Curated Apps page. Check out the Guided Solution article that shows how to connect to emails and calendars, and how to import from Outlook.

Hide The Home Directory

19 Aug 2023: So you wanna get sneaky?

Q. How can I hide my home directory?

A. It depends on what you mean by the word “hide”.

If you just want to prevent others from seeing your files, use sudo chmod 700 "$HOME".

However, if you mean “how do I prevent others from knowing I even have an account”, well then things get trickier. The path to your home directory for local accounts is found in /etc/passwd, and this must remain public on most modern Linux systems. Here are 5 options to partially or completely hide accounts:

• Strong: Use chroot jails to isolate users you don’t trust. This is the most complete solution, but it is not trivial to create or maintain and has other limitations. A common example is an SFTP user on a shared server.
• Likely strong: Deploy LDAP and SSSD to provide login services. The server might even be local. This should provide a means to keep other users isolated, like other server-based authentication schemes, although we have not tested it.
• Weak: Remove the read property from the /home directory with chmod go-r /home. This will prevent others from listing other users. However, people can still see all home directories in /etc/passwd.
• Weak: You can move the home directory to a different, hidden directory when adding or modifying a user (sudo adduser, or sudo usermod). However, people can still see all home directories in /etc/passwd.
• Quite Weak: You can modify your home directory to use a dot so that it does not show in a regular file listing. However, ls -a will show it, and it will also be visible in /etc/passwd.

In summary, the simple options are weak and fairly easy to circumvent. The stronger solutions are harder to implement. For strong isolation, I’d investigate SSSD with a local server before chroot jails, as this probably has the fewest side effects for a normal system.

Change Default Editor

06 Aug 2023: Write right

How can I change the default editor from Vim to Something like Emacs?

A. The EDITOR environment variable is useful, but instead of setting it directly, you probably want to set it at a deeper level. In a terminal:

If you are running KDE, use System Settings > Applications > File Associations to specify a GUI editor for different file types.