After working thru my Lubuntu 18.04 notes, it's time to get started on 20.04LTS. 18.04 has served me well, but support for 18.04LTS ends in April of 2021. With the maintainers dropping LXDE in favor of LXQT, I expect there will be some surprises along the way... will things be better and faster? Or will the new distro require more memory and processor power?
The computer I'm grading is a vintage 2013 Asus netbook, X102ba with 4GB of memory, 320GB disk, and a dual-core AMD processor running at 1GHz, so I'm pretty sensitive to performance issues. I need the new distrbutuon to run as well as 18.04. And I'd like to find that the tweaks I made to 18.04 running LXDE work with 20.04 running LXQT, too .
Before getting started, I'd like to plug the Lubuntu Manual. It's well-organized with a lot of useful information. Many of the tweaks I made in Lubuntu releases 17 and 18 by editing configuration files can be done using the Lubuntu 20.04 GUI configuration tools. Let's get started.
First Note: Installation Media
Everything went well through my first note, Installation media. There are really no changes here.
Second Note: Broadcomm Wireless Adapter
The old HP dv8210us laptop with the Broadcomm wireless adapter took its last boot, so the Broadcomm wireless adapter is no longer an issue.
Third Note: ConsistencyNot surprisingly, adding Windows-L (or meta-L in Unix-speak) to lock my screen has changed. In my two previous posts, I edited the lubuntu-rc.xml file in my ~/.config/lubuntu directory. That file no longer exists, and this time I'll use the built-in Preferences > LXQT Settings > Keyboard Shortcuts to add this function. This opens the Global Actions Manager (that's a mouth-full!). Click the Add button, move the cursor to the shortcut and press the desired shortcut, Windows-L in this case. Add a short comment (Lock Screen like Windows), select the Command radio button, and add the command xdg-screensaver lock. Click OK, and you're done. You can lock the screen with either Ctrl-Alt-L or Windows-L.
Fourth Note: Two Monitors
There's a huge improvement here in setting the position of the second monitor. My extended monitor sits to the right of my labtop's screen, and making everything work smoothly in Lubuntu 17 and 18 was tricky. Now the Monitor Settings app sets everything up, there's no fooling with xrandr, and there's no need to add a second task bar to the extended monitor.
Select Preferences > LXQT Settings > Monitor Settings. Click on Set position, drag the monitors into the correct position for your setup, and click apply. Confirm the new setting works for you, and you're all set.
But, if you've become accustomed to task bars on both monitors (and I have), it's easily done. Move cursor to the task bar, right click, and select Add New Panel. Set the new task bar to your favorite position on Desktop 2, then select Widgets from the left panel, and add the widgets you'd like to use. Unlike LXDE, all the settings for both task bars are stored in one file (~/.config/lxqt/panel.conf), so there's no advantage (and probably some risk) in editing files manually. Just configure everything thru the UI.
Fifth Note: Network and Volume Indicators
As I expected, there are changes here. For the volume indicator, right-click on the task bar (aka panel), select Configure Panel, select Widgets from the left panel, and add the Volume Control if it's not there. For the Network, make sure the Status Notifier Plugin (statusNotifier) is added. The Status Notifier includes the battery monitor and the network status icons. Everything works as it should without any tricks, so if you add these two widgets, no further action is required.
I prefer the Network indicator to the nm-tray indicator. To change this, follow the instructions in Advanced Networking, selecting the Network and unselecting the nm-tray.
Sixth Note: More on Network Interfaces
I have two wireless network interfaces with my Asus netbook. The built-in Qualcomm Atheros AR9485 worked fine out of the box. In addition, I have a Realtek RTL8192cu USB dongle. When booting into Windows 10, I found the Realtek interface is much faster than the Qualcomm interface. In Lubuntu 17, the Realtek interface would stop working every two or three minutes until I disabled/enabled the interface. Then it would work again for another two or three minutes. The Realtek interface no longer quits working every two or three minutes in Lubuntu 20.0, so this problem has been fixed. But the throughput in Speedtest is faster using the Realteck interface under Lubuntu 18.04 than it is under 20.04, so I'm going to apply the same update.
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r) build-essential dkms git
git clone https://github.com/pvaret/rtl8192cu-fixes.git
sudo dkms add ./rtl8192cu-fixes
# NB: The step above reports a version.
# As of 2018-04-12, the version is 1.11, not 1.10.
# Use the correct version in the next step.
sudo dkms install 8192cu/1.11
sudo depmod -a
sudo cp ./rtl8192cu-fixes/blacklist-native-rtl8192.conf /etc/modprobe.d/
sudo cp ./rtl8192cu-fixes/8192cu-disable-power-management.conf /etc/modprobe.d/
reboot
After rebooting, speedtest shows about a 10MB/second improvement in through-put.
Seventh Note: Printers
As expected, the postscript-capable Lexmark Optra S installed with no problems. Even better, the installation found the wireless Epson Workforce 2860 and installed the correct drivers. But installing the Epson NX420 turned out to be an even bigger headache than I expected.
First, I had to fight through the cartridge-not-recognized messages on the Epson printer. This is a common complaint on the web; it's just a matter of finding one of the black-magic solutions that work. After finally satisfying the printer's lust for ink cartridges, I was able add the printer and print the test page.
The Epson Workforce installed so cleanly that I hoped I would have better luck with the NX420 this time, but no. The test page images and text did not align cleanly. Referring to my earlier notes, I downloaded the driver from http://www.openprinting.org The Discover software installation tool will open the downloaded file, but Discover will not install a file from an unsigned archive. Instead of opening the the downloaded file automatically, save it, and then run the command
sudo gdebi epson-inkjet-printer-nx420_1.0.0-1lsb3.2_amd64.deb
from a terminal window. There are a couple dozen dependencies that will be installed as well, so don't be alarmed. After the install is finished, right click on the NX420 printer, and open the properties. Under Settings, check the values in the Make and Model line. This looks like informational text, but it's actually the driver. Click on change, wait while Change Driver dialog. The recommended manufacturer (Epson) is already selected, click Forward. There will be two choices of drivers, choose the one that says Epson Stylus NX420 Series - epson-inkjet-printer 1.0.0-1lsb3.2. The other, Epson Stylus NX420 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2 is the bad driver. Select the correct driver, click Forward, click the radio button to Use the new PPD, and click Apply. The test page should print correctly now.
Eighth Note: Final Tweak
The keyboard and touch-pad on the netbook are pretty tight, and I frequently bump the touch-pad while typing. Of course, this sends my cursor all over the place, and soon I'm typing text three paragraphs above where I should be. Because I have a mouse, I really don't need the touch-pad most of the time, and I want an easy way to turn it on and off.
I will re-use the script in my Lubuntu 18.04 Upgrade post. The script toggles the touch-pad on and off, and we'll just need to bind the script to a key. Open the Global Actions Manager (Preferences > LXQT Settings > Keyboard Shortcuts). Click the Add button, move the cursor to the shortcut and press the desired shortcut key. I use fn-F9 because that key has a small touch-pad image on it. The Global Actions Manager identifies this key as XF86TouchPadToggle. Select the Command radio button, and enter the full path and filename of the script in the command box. Click OK, and you're done. Now I can enable or disable the touchpad with the fn-F9 key.
