Things to Do after Installing Linux Mint

Linux_Mint Linux

Open SSH

/etc/ssh/sshd_config

Port 2222
ListenAddress 127.0.0.1
PasswordAuthentication yes

sudo service ssh --full-restart or sudo service ssh start

• Reference:
  https://token2shell.com/howto/using-wsl-from-token2shell-or-any-terminal-emulator-via-openssh-server/

Create a shortcut for the mapped host directories

ln -s {target} {name}

Adjust interface size

DPI settings

Better with the help of dconf-editor.
Navigate to org.cinnamon.desktop.interface.text-scaling-factor. The text scaling setting always overrides the Xft.dpi setting. In the same position, cursor scaling can also be adjusted.
(Remember to apply this setting for both current user and root user. Direct run for current user and root for root user. Changes take effect immediately for current user.)

• Reference:
  https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/4033
  https://askubuntu.com/questions/197828/how-to-find-and-change-the-screen-dpi

Taskbar size

Right click on the taskbar -> Panel settings

Firefox size

about:config -> layout.css.devPixelsPerPx (to values like 1.2)

• Reference:
  https://fedoramagazine.org/how-to-get-firefox-looking-right-on-a-high-dpi-display-and-fedora/

For KDE

• Reference:
  https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI

Fonts

Install fonts

font-manager
(Note: This will install fonts in the user's folder, but not system-wide. To install fonts system-wide, copy fonts directly in any folder under /usr/share/fonts.)
After installation, if you'd like to apply them system-wide, follow the instructions below:

1. Move the fonts from ~/.fonts/Library to /usr/share/fonts/truetype/custom or any other directory within share.
2. Some of the affected fonts may appear as random characters. Run sudo fc-cache -fv to rebuild cache and restart the affected applications.

Apply the fonts for the system in cinnamon-settings (for both current user and the root user) or skip this step and perform "font fallback settings" in the next section to apply the settings more system-wide.

• Reference:
  https://askubuntu.com/questions/386160/how-to-install-multiple-ttf-fonts-for-system-wide-usage

Font fallback

In this section helps to customize the preferred (default) fonts for "serif", "sans-serif" and "monospace". After the operations, the generic font families will refer to the fonts specified.

Edit file fonts.conf located in /etc/fonts. Add the following contents after the match sections.

<fontconfig>
    <match>
        ...
    </match>
    <!-- ↓↓↓ -->
    <alias>
        <family>serif</family>
        <prefer>
            <family>Times New Roman</family>
            <family>Noto Serif CJK SC</family>
        </prefer>
    </alias>
    <alias>
        <family>sans-serif</family>
        <prefer>
            <family>SF UI Display</family>
            <family>Microsoft YaHei UI</family>
        </prefer>
    </alias>
    <alias>
        <family>monospace</family>
        <prefer>
            <family>Sarasa Mono SC</family>
        </prefer>
    </alias>
    <!-- ↑↑↑ -->
</fontconfig>

(For futher customizations for system-specific fonts that I do not like, append also the following lines.)

<alias>
    <family>Helvetica</family>
    <prefer>
        <family>Neue Haas Unica W1G</family>
    </prefer>
</alias>
<alias>
    <family>Helvetica Neue</family>
    <prefer>
        <family>Neue Haas Unica W1G</family>
    </prefer>
</alias>
<alias>
    <family>Arial</family>
    <prefer>
        <family>Neue Haas Unica W1G</family>
    </prefer>
</alias>
<match target="pattern">
    <test qual="any" name="family">
        <string>SF UI Display</string>
    </test>
    <edit name="family" mode="append" binding="strong">
        <string>PingFang SC</string>
    </edit>
</match>

• Reference:
  http://www.techytalk.info/change-serif-sans-serif-monospace-generic-font-families-mapping-linux-operating-system/
  https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1trzs2/mac_os_xlike_font_smoothing/
  https://www.linux.org/docs/man5/fonts-conf.html

Extra work for Firefox

If the UI font of Firefox doesn't respect the system font settings, try the following solution.

• Open .mozilla/firefox/xxxxx.default/chrome/userChrome.css. (Create one if the directory or file doesn't exist.)
• Write the following lines:

/* Global UI font */
* {
    font-family: Microsoft YaHei UI !important;
}

• Restart Firefox.

• Reference:
  http://www.linux-databook.info/?page_id=1306
  https://www.userchrome.org/how-create-userchrome-css.html

Input Methods

Fix fcitx

After installing fcitx, right clicks on it can fail to display the whole menu on Linux Mint 18.3 Cinnamon.
Try sudo apt remove --auto-remove fcitx-ui-qimpanel to solve the problem (a log out is required).

• Reference:
  https://askubuntu.com/questions/668269/fcitx-pinyin-input-menu-doesnt-appear

Cloud Prediction

Right click on fcitx -> Configure -> Addons -> Search for "Cloud" -> Configure -> Prediction source -> Baidu

Eliminate Beeps

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/452978/how-to-completely-turn-off-system-beep-sounds-forever-for-good-for-real

Install Clash

1. No easy way to install clash. Download the Premium version of the binary from https://github.com/Dreamacro/clash/releases/tag/premium and put it in the system as /opt/clash/clash.
2. Download a Clash config file and put it as /etc/clash/config.yaml. Make sure to set the mixed-port as the port we want.
3. Create a service file.

Service File with systemctl Available

If systemctl is available, the service file can be simple. Put it as /etc/systemd/system/clash.service.

[Unit]
Description=Clash Daemon
[Service]
ExecStart=/opt/clash/clash -d /etc/clash/
Restart=on-failure
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Service File with systemctl Unavailable

If systemctl is not available, we have to write a full script and put it as /etc/init.d/clash.

#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          clash
# Required-Start:    $local_fs $network
# Required-Stop:     $local_fs
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      
# Short-Description: clash daemon
# Description:       Manage Clash service
### END INIT INFO
set -e
# /etc/init.d/clash: Start and stop the Clash daemon
DAEMON=/opt/clash/clash
CONFIG_DIR=/etc/clash/
PID_FILE=/var/run/clash.pid
test -x $DAEMON || exit 0
. /lib/lsb/init-functions
start_clash()
{
    # Return
    #   0 if daemon has been started
    #   1 if daemon could not be started
    start-stop-daemon --start --quiet \
        --make-pidfile --pidfile $PID_FILE --exec $DAEMON \
        --background -- \
        -d $CONFIG_DIR \
        || return 1
}
case "$1" in
  start)
        log_daemon_msg "Starting Clash daemon" "clash"
        #start_daemon -p $PID_FILE $DAEMON -d $CONFIG_DIR
        start_clash
        log_end_msg $?
        ;;
  stop)
        log_daemon_msg "Stopping Clash daemon" "clash"
        killproc -p $PID_FILE $DAEMON
        RETVAL=$?
        [ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && [ -e "$PIDFILE" ] && rm -f $PIDFILE
        log_end_msg $RETVAL
        ;;
  restart)
        log_daemon_msg "Restarting Clash daemon" "clash"
        $0 stop
        $0 start
        ;;
  reload|force-reload)
        # No need to reload
        log_daemon_msg "Reloading Clash daemon" "clash"
        log_end_msg 0
        ;;
  status)
        status_of_proc -p $PID_FILE "$DAEMON" clash
        exit $?    # notreached due to set -e
        ;;
  *)
        log_action_msg "Usage: /etc/init.d/clash {start|stop|reload|force-reload|restart|status}"
        exit 2
esac
exit 0

Install DeadBeef

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:starws-box/deadbeef-player
sudo apt update
sudo apt install deadbeef

Switch to GTK3 in the preferences if the text is blurry in Wayland.

• Reference:
  http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2013/09/install-deadbeef-player-ubuntu/

Install Java

• Reference:
  https://www.linuxuprising.com/2018/04/install-oracle-java-10-in-ubuntu-or.html
  http://www.webupd8.org/2015/02/install-oracle-java-9-in-ubuntu-linux.html (For JDK before 10)

Install MySQL

• Reference:
  https://www.tecmint.com/install-mysql-8-in-ubuntu/
  https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-mysql-on-ubuntu-18-04

• Allowing remote access from another IP address?
  https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19101243/error-1130-hy000-host-is-not-allowed-to-connect-to-this-mysql-server

  • In case you see errors like "ERROR 1146 (42S02): Table 'mysql.role_edges' doesn't exist"
    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17780630/table-mysql-user-doesnt-existerror

Install Nginx

• Reference:
  https://www.itzgeek.com/how-tos/linux/linux-mint-how-tos/install-nginx-1-6-on-linux-mint-17.html
  https://websiteforstudents.com/nginx-1-15-1-released-heres-how-to-install-on-ubuntu-16-04-17-10-18-04/ (The source can be found here, but remember that it doesn't tell us to add the apt key, which can cause errors in some distros. Also, if you follow this link, the lsb_release value is not optimal in Linux Mint. Try to replace sylvia in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/Nginx.list with xenial instead.)

Install Shadowsocks

Install Shadowsocks with GUI

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hzwhuang/ss-qt5
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install shadowsocks-qt5

Apply the browser with the add-on "SwitchyOmega" to enable it with auto-switch.
- Reference:
https://www.sundabao.com/ubuntu%E4%BD%BF%E7%94%A8shadowsocks/

Install ShadowsocksR

GUI Version

Prefer the AppImage.
https://github.com/shadowsocksrr/electron-ssr/

GUI Not Available

Step 1:

wget https://github.com/shadowsocksrr/shadowsocksr/archive/manyuser.zip

or

wget https://s3.tok.ap.cloud-object-storage.appdomain.cloud/xzdl/manyuser.zip

Step 2:
Extract it and place the contents in an appropriate location.

unzip manyuser.zip
sudo mv shadowsocksr-manyuser /opt/shadowsocksr

Step 3:
Create a user configuration.

sudo mkdir -p /etc/shadowsocksr
sudo vim /etc/shadowsocksr/user-config.json

Step 4:
Fill in the configuration fields. Dominant fields are available as:
server, server_ipv6, server_port, password, method, protocol, protocol_param, obfs and obfs_param.

Step 5:
Start by running

sudo python /opt/shadowsocksr/shadowsocks/local.py -c /etc/shadowsocksr/user-config.json -d start

And check the status by

sudo tail /var/log/shadowsocksr.log

If it's working properly, the next step can be done optionally to make it more convenient for later use.

Step 6 (optional):
Add the lines

alias start_ssr="sudo python /opt/shadowsocksr/shadowsocks/local.py -c /etc/shadowsocksr/shadowsocks.json -d start"
alias check_ssr="sudo tail /var/log/shadowsocksr.log"

to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc.

• Reference:
  https://arcdetri.github.io/shadowsocksr-ssr-on-ubuntu.html

Install V2Ray

Core: v2ray
Client: qv2ray
SSR Plugin: qv2ray-plugin-ssr-git
Trojan Plugin: qv2ray-plugin-trojan

Install QQ/TIM/Wechat

Gnome / GTK Based

Download https://deepin-wine.i-m.dev/setup.sh and sudo run it to add some repos.
Take TIM for example:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install deepin.com.qq.office

Refer to the page below for the package names of the other apps.
https://github.com/zq1997/deepin-wine

KDE

Approach 1:
Follow the instructions in the following page. Note the information related to KDE.
https://github.com/wszqkzqk/deepin-wine-ubuntu

Approach 2:
Follow the steps in the Gnome section and manually install gnome-settings-daemon.
Then make it auto start when logging in:

1. Create a file named gsd-xsettings.sh in $HOME/.config/autostart-scripts.
2. Copy in the following text.

#!/bin/bash
/usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gsd-xsettings

Log out and log back in and TIM should be able to started correctly.

Sync Time between Windows and Linux

Windows gets time from server and writes the zoned time into BIOS. It displays BIOS time directly.
Linux gets time from server and writes the UTC time directly into BIOS. It displays converted zoned time from BIOS.

To make Linux (Ubuntu 16.04) behave the same as Windows,

timedatectl set-local-rtc 1 --adjust-system-clock
timedatectl /* To check if the system uses local time */

There's also a way to make Windows behave like Linux, but with auto sync disabled on Windows.

• Reference:
  http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2016/05/time-differences-ubuntu-1604-windows-10/

Themes

• Reference:
  http://www.noobslab.com/2016/04/macbuntu-1604-transformation-pack-for.html

What if Cinnamon Freezes

Ctrl + Alt + F4 to start a TTY.
export DISPLAY=:0; cinnamon &

https://askubuntu.com/questions/143838/how-do-i-restart-cinnamon-from-the-tty/198935#198935

Scripts and Tutorials by Others

https://github.com/erikdubois/Ultimate-Linux-Mint-18.1-Cinnamon