Linux Mint themes in Debian

Adwaita was my preferred theme for use with Cinnamon on my Debian boxes. But its use with Cinnamon has now been blocked because reasons. You may see it as one or more of the themes in use, but once you switch to something else, you can't get it back.

IMHO, the next best option is to use Linux Mint themes, which inconveniently aren't available in Debian or by downloading through Cinnamon's control panel.

However, for the time being at least, you can get them by adding a Linux Mint repository to your apt. This is documented here.

The steps I use are:

1. As root, inside /etc/apt/sources.list.d create the file linuxmint.list
2. Using your favorite editing means, put the following line to the file:
   deb [trusted=yes] http://packages.linuxmint.com zara main
   This points to the Zara release. In the future, you may want to point it to something newer.
3. apt-get update
4. Use Synaptic or your favorite tool to browse the new packages. I installed:
   mint-cursor-themes
   mint-l-icons
   mint-l-theme
   mint-themes
   mint-x-icons
   mint-y-icons is in Debian, so I didn't install the Linux Mint version.
5. After installing what you want, edit linuxmint.list to disable the repository by putting a # in front of the repo info:
   # deb [trusted=yes] http://packages.linuxmint.com zara main
6. apt-get update (again)

The last two steps are important so you don't continue to see the Linux Mint packages and inadvertently do something with them that borks your system. This also means you won't be notified of updates to the theme packages, so you might want to enable the repo periodically and check.

I'm currently using the Mint-Y-Blue application theme along with GNOME-Colors Brave for icons and a DMZ cursor. It works for me. If that's all you want too, then you only need to install mint-themes from the linuxmint repos.

Firefox page rendering size

After I installed version 134.0 of Firefox on my Debian sid system, web pages were rendered about 20% larger than they should be. The UI wasn't oddly scaled though; the issue was limited to the web page rendering area.

I tried working with layout.css.devPixelsPerPx, which comes up often in search engine results. But this scaled everything, including the UI.

Then I tried the first solution described in Fix UI Scaling and Large Fonts Issues in Firefox 103 and Later Versions, and it's working beautifully. Specifically, here's what I did (quoting from the article):

1. Open Firefox and type about:config in the address bar and press Enter. It’ll show you a warning message, click on “Accept the Risk and Continue” button. It’ll open Firefox’s hidden secret advanced configuration page i.e. about:config page.
2. Now create a new preference ui.textScaleFactor as NUMBER and set its value to 100 to fix the scaling and fonts issue.

This appears similar to the "--force-device-scale-factor" hack that I need to use to get Google Chrome to behave.

Firefox extensions certificate expired quickfix

The proposed solution to Firefox's certificate expiration issue won't work on Debian because data reporting is disabled for Debian builds of Firefox. A workaround mentioned in passing here appears to have worked for me.

The workaround consists of visiting https://storage.googleapis.com/moz-fx-normandy-prod-addons/extensions/hotfix-update-xpi-intermediate%40mozilla.com-1.0.2-signed.xpi directly and allowing Firefox to install the xpi file.

Drive carefully. Your mileage may vary

Solving "device not managed" for Ethernet connections in Network Manager

At some point or another, Network Manager in Debian sid stopped managing my Ethernet connection. The source of the issue is /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf:

[main]
plugins=ifupdown,keyfile

[ifupdown]
managed=false

The [ifupdown] clause seems to be telling NM not to do it. The solution is to turn the frown upside down, but doing so in NetworkManager.conf means the setting will likely be clobbered the next time NM is updated. The solution to that is to create a file in in conf.d named 10-globally-managed-devices.conf. NM upgrades should leave custom files in conf.d alone.

Source

The new su PATH behavior

The su command that's now being packaged with Debian sid has significant change in behavior. In the past, when you did an:

$ su

the PATH would get set to root's PATH. Now, it remains the user's path:

$ su
Password:
# echo $PATH
/home/mithat/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games:/snap/bin

This means you won't pick up /usr/sbin where a lot of commands you'd typically use with root privileges live.

The fix to this is that you now have to append a dash to the command:

$ su -
Password:
# echo $PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/snap/bin

I don't know whether this impacts gksu or if sudo and/or gksudo are affected. gksu is affected as well, but with gksu there doesn't appear to be a way to get back to the old behavior.

Fixing Skype for Linux scaling

After a long hiatus from (actually a deliberate avoidance of) Skype, I need to install it again -- at least temporarily. And the latest version of Skype for Linux is appears to be an Electron app, which means its scaling on my non-standard 118 dpi screen is seriously wonky.

The typical fix for this with Chrome/Chromium and Electron apps is to pass the --force-device-scale-factor option to the executable. Applying this option to Skype works as well, but you need to dig a bit to find where to add it. I ended up modifying /usr/bin/skypeforlinux so the last line reads:

nnohup "$SKYPE_PATH" --force-device-scale-factor --executed-from="$(pwd)" --pid=$$ "$@" > "$SKYPE_LOGS/skype-startup.log" 2>&1 &

Fixing Chromium remote extension loading in Debian sid

The newest Chromium in Debian sid disables remote extension loading by default. This has the effect of disabling extensions en masse. I'm not sure what the reasoning is, but it's damn inconvenient.

It's claimed that one way to get the old behavior back is to add

--enable-remote-extensions

to the list of flags in /etc/chromium.d/default-flags. This will affect all users on the system, and the file could be overwritten by an upgrade. In addition, until I know better what's behind the change, I'd really like to apply the change only to my account, not to all users.

I did this by adding:

# fix latest Debian Chromium disabling remote extensions
export CHROMIUM_FLAGS=$CHROMIUM_FLAGS" --enable-remote-extensions"

to my ~/.profile. Be sure to log out and back in to experience the change.