#rhs linux

I just set my first custom keyboard shortcut! I finally figured out how to create a custom keyboard shortcut to open Flameshot. I've been trying for at least 3 days, maybe a week actually now that I think about it...

Long story short, I missed how in Windows 10, I was able to screenshot a portion of the screen, which would then be directly copied to the clipboard, ready to paste anywhere I want, with a simple stroke of Win+Shift+S.

Well, I recently learned the PrntScrn button functions a little differently in Linux Mint. I love that I don't even need a keystroke combo to take a screenshot; just tap PrntScrn and it's ready to save/copy wherever I want!

But that only works for screenshots of the entire screen. I haven't figured out how to edit screenshots as easily as I could on MS Paint, which I often use for cropping. So I found a lovely little program called Flameshot that lets me select a portion to screenshot (and it lets me adjust AFTER I set it, unlike Win+Shift+S which only gives one chance to highlight The Correct Area for the snip). I like that the screenshot'ing and markup are in one step too, it's very useful and I love it already!

What I didn't love is having to minimize everything (yes, this is annoying even with Super+D), to see the Flameshot shortcut on the desktop, and then click it it, and THEN choose the screenshot area. And I didn't want to pin it to the panel. (The icon's just obnoxiously bright and I don't want the entire bottom panel to be covered in icons.) But even pinning it to the panel and having to start it up is more steps than I want for my "workflow" (more amusements than work, really).

I figured out WHERE to set custom keyboard shortcuts within a week of switching to Mint. What I didn't figure out is how to set them to a PROGRAM.

I'm not sure exactly what I did wrong? I'm trying to change the theme to something blue and transparent, but all the themes I've tried so far are only changing the... mint? menu??? I don't know what you call the equivalent of the Windows Start Menu on Linux Mint. Most of them don't even change the panel background!

But I wanted something that changes the applications windows, too! Mint/Cinnamon doesn't seem to come with an OOB way to change the colors like Windows does. (Although my w10 laptop won't let me customize the colors either, it refuses to click/activate the boxes once I set it o a high contrast theme, so that's. Weird.)

Anyways. So I tried to install a theme where the preview showed changed application windows too. The same exact way I've been installing every other one-- I download a zip (or some other kind of compressed archive format), extract it to .themes, and go to the Themes app to select it from the drop-downs.

Except as soon as I selected it, it froze everything but the cursor. Dead stop. Couldn't click anything.

I feel like I accomplished my first-ever Linux-y thing on my Linux laptop. So the Linux Mint Cinnamon desktop has very teeeeny tiny little buttons in the title bar. (The minimize, maximize, and close buttons.) And that laptop only has a 12" screen.

I've spent about a week trying to figure out how I can make those buttons bigger. The trouble with Linux seems to be that there are 14 million ways to do ANYTHING. As an expert, I'm sure this is fun. As a beginner though, this makes trying to problem solve very confusing.

People were talking about moving files around, downloading and unpacking them manually, and all this stuff.

Turns out all I need to do is edit a file with some CSS and save it.

Lucky for me, I used to edit deviantArt journal CSS, I edit my tumblr themes with custom CSS, and even took some web design classes. I'm quite familiar with CSS! The really hard part was trying to figure out the names of the elements and parameters I had to use. But I found a guide on the Linux forums that went over it!

I copied what I wanted into my gtk.css file, tweaked some numbers, and saved.

Then ctrl+alt+esc, and BAM. I can actually SEE where the title bar buttons are!

I didn't take a screenshot before I shut my Linux laptop down for the night, oops. I was too self-satisfied to think about recording it in that moment.

But I didn't take a "before" screenshot to compare it with, anyways.

Bonus round: FONTS!

I installed the Evanescent font, too. X) (The opensource font that's based on Evanescence's logos and such.) Turns out Linux Mint makes it super easy to install fonts; just like in Windows, all you do is get the .ttf file and open it, then click "install". Super easy. Just the same as Windows. (And I daresay Evanescent looks even cooler in Linux than Windows. Or maybe that's LibreOffice's win?~)

Anyways. I guess Linux doesn't come with the Arial font, which I've been using to write my stories in for LITERALLY 20+ YEARS. I do Not want to change if I don't have to. That simple font gets me into Editing Mode.

Another thing that the 14 million different answers made confusing was trying to figure out how to get Arial on that computer. I tried something with a package from the repository, but I couldn't figure out how to accept the license agreement. I tried clicking, pressing enter, pressing all sorts of other keys, highlighting, scrolling, F buttons, typing <Ok>, I just. Could not figure out how to select Ok. Really dumb thing to get hung up on, but it sure got me hung up on it.

So I did more research. Turns out I can probably copy the .ttf file from a Windows computer and install it on Linux that way. :P

And if not, I guess Liberation Sans isn't terrible. It would just be an adjustment to make at a time when my writing muse is already desperately floundering...

I finally had the time, spoons, and excitement to overshadow my unease and got my new laptop put together +running!

and also i wanted something new and fun and exciting to do to help me cope with Silver's loss.

I was admittedly a bit uneasy, hesitating for weeks, as I bought the Framework DIY version, which comes to you in pieces rather than fully-assembled, and while I've built PC towers from parts before, I've never assembled a laptop.

Turns out Framework makes it easy; all I had to do was put in the SSD hard drive and RAM, slot on my extensions, and slide on the cover. Plenty of space to work in there; the snaps needed a slightly lighter touch than a tower motherboard, but otherwise it's very much the same.

I wasn't sure if the .ISO USB I flashed with Mint would work due to some error messages Rufus threw while I was flashing it, but it's working beautifully!

Now I just need to figure out how to tweak the cinnamon.css theme file for the custom colors I love giving my computers so much, and while I'm at it, increase these dang title bar buttons.

(Gosh, everything on Cinnamon is TINY... The title bar, the scrollbars, the icons. At least I figured out how to tweak those last two. And I had Firefox increase the text size just so I could read the webpages. This laptop's only a 12" screen, after all... but I found out by accident, it's a TOUCH screen! Even when it's NOT in tablet mode!)

((The tablet mode specifically only works in Ubuntu rather than Mint, apparently, but I might have a new way to try digital art now that I have a touch screen... 🤔))

* I do still have my Windows 10 one; I still have to format an external hard drive to be usable between both Windows and Linux after all, and I still have to figure out how to get my story files to stop displaying the tracked changes when opened from something simple like Wordpad, because for obvious reasons, I don't have a Microsoft word processor on here, but rather LibreOffice.

Still, it's moving along, and soon I'll be able to leave Windows behind, almost for good!