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Everything that’s not the very new big deal of the day but is pretty handy in everyday life and therefore nice to know. You’ll read here about gaming in Linux, encryption of emails send by facebook or how to use vim as an IDE.

Custom color scheme for KDE/Plasma

In:  Nice to know 5. November 2018

Customizing the KDE/Plasma color scheme can be stricky

Customizing the KDE/Plasma color scheme can be stricky

Sometimes I wish to create a custom color scheme, but not all the colors were used. For example widgets (like application starter and task bars) do not use the custom color scheme. Here are some solutions that may help:

Create a color scheme

Color schemes are stored in /usr/share/color-schemes/FooBar.color. To create a new one, just copy an existing one:

  • cp /usr/share/color-schemes/FooBar.color ~/.local/share/color-schemes/MyScheme.color

Customize color scheme

Now you have to fix the metadata of the scheme and customize the colors:

  • Metadata are in the MySchema.color at the button in the [General] section
  • Change the Name here

Now you can adjust the colors. KDE has a tool for that, just search for “Colors”, select your scheme and change the colors. Unfortunately the changes are written to a local files called ~/.config/kdeglobals, which is not your new color scheme. I just copied the content to my color scheme, so what I did was:

  • Use the KDE tool to customize colors (just search for “Colors”)
  • Copy color-relevant content from ~/.config/kdeglobals
  • Replace the old section in MySchema.color with the ones you just copied

All properties that can be set are listed here: https://hig.kde.org/style/color/dark.html

Create a desktop theme

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Fix Blender error amdgpu_query_info failed (-9)

In:  Interesting facts, Nice to know 18. September 2018

After a downgrade of libdrm, Blender works like a charm.

After a downgrade of libdrm, Blender works like a charm.

Since I switched to Arch Linux with the xf86-video-amdgpu graphics driver for my AMD RX 570, blender crashes immediately after start. Also running as root or reinstalling the drivers didn’t help.

This error message occurs:

~ $ blender
amdgpu_device_initialize: amdgpu_query_info(ACCEL_WORKING) failed (-9)
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

If we look at the dump (either in /tmp/bmw27_gpu.crash.txt or /tmp/blender.crash.txt), it looks something like this:

# Blender 2.79 (sub 0), Commit date: 2018-05-26 21:51, Hash 32432d91bbe

# backtrace
blender(BLI_system_backtrace+0x34) [0x5607730d03f4]
blender(+0xb7b562) [0x56077265c562]
/usr/lib/libc.so.6(+0x37e00) [0x7f5b39807e00]
/usr/lib/libdrm_amdgpo.so.1(amdgpu_get_marketing_name+0xc) [0x7f5afcb35bdf] [...weitere Zeilen...]
(complete dump: pastebin)

The solution

The solution comes from a StackExchange user, who suggests a downgrade on the libdrm to version 2.4.93-1.

In Arch I just used the tool downgrade to do so:

  1. Install from the AUR with e.g. yay -S downgrade
  2. Find available versions: downgrade libdrm
  3. Pick a version and downgrade to it (for me 2.4.93-1 worked)

After that, everything worked like a charm.

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Interesting facts, Nice to know

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Use Vim as a simple IDE

In:  general, Interesting facts, Nice to know 4. June 2018

Vim already has all functionalities to use it as an IDE.

Vim already has all functionalities to use it as an IDE.

Everybody can install an IDE and use it, but how to use vim as an IDE? I’ll show you settings, shortcuts and features of vim, which turns it into an IDE without using plugins or magic, just plain vim features.

These are the features I’ll focus on:

  • Features out of the box:
    • Basic usages: Open, save, close, …
    • File explorer
    • Create tabs and use them
    • Split the window
  • Navigation in vim:
    • Find, replace, …
    • Jump (e.g. to the next occurrence, definition, …)
  • Build and run software
    • Debugging
  • Create own settings:
    • Line numbers, syntax highlighting, highlight cursor line, …
    • Auto completion in a drop-down menu

These are all adjustments to vim.

Basic usage

Even if you should be familiar with the modes in vim, here’re are some basic commands:

Open a file (without tabs): :e /path/to/file
Save a file: :w
Close a file: :q and without saving :q!
Show information on a command: :help command

Built-in File explorer

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general, Interesting facts, Nice to know

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