Chinese and English Voice Input on Ubuntu with Fcitx5-VInput and Alibaba Bailian
Published:
Set up Fcitx5-VInput Lite with Alibaba Bailian’s streaming speech recognition and configure a Ctrl + Alt + Shift recording shortcut through the Fcitx5 GUI.
Blog posts
2026
SSH into a VMware Windows Guest Without Giving It Internet Access
Published:
Use VMware Host-only networking to SSH from Ubuntu into a Windows 10 guest, with an optional NAT adapter that stays disconnected when Internet access is unnecessary.
VMware Freezes After Unpause: Disabling 3D Acceleration Fixed It
Published:
A Windows 10 guest appeared frozen after Unpause. Reopening Workstation restored its display, and disabling 3D acceleration made Pause and Unpause work normally again.
Fix an NTFS Dirty Volume That Won’t Mount on Ubuntu
Published:
Ubuntu refused to mount an NTFS partition because its dirty flag was set. Checking it with ntfsfix and clearing the flag restored access without rebooting into Windows.
A VMDK Passed Its Integrity Check but Would Not Boot: Diagnosing Missing Disk Metadata
Published:
A read-only investigation found surviving Windows file records inside a structurally valid VMDK, but missing partition tables and damaged NTFS metadata explained why VMware could not boot it.
Fix Waydroid ARM Apps Freezing at 1000% CPU: Switch from Houdini to libndk
Published:
ARM apps in Waydroid became unusable with 1000–1200% CPU usage. Replacing Houdini with libndk restored normal operation on my Intel machine.
MATLAB Installation Guide for Control-System Work
Published:
A practical MATLAB installer selection for control, physical modeling, state logic, and advanced control workflows.
Fix MATLAB R2020a Installer on Modern Ubuntu: GLib, Pango, and FreeType
Published:
A local, reversible workaround for the MATLAB R2020a installer failing when its old bundled GLib is mixed with Ubuntu’s current Pango stack.
SV660N + MS1 from Scratch: EtherCAT, ROS 2, and a Smooth First Spin
Published:
Fresh Ubuntu 24.04 to a smooth SV660N/MS1 spin: wire the holding brake 24 V, build IgH with –disable-eoe, ROS 2 Jazzy + motor_drive, reach panel _88rn, run a soft CSP demo, and stop without EE081.
Set Dell Battery Charge Limits on Linux with cctk
Published:
| On Dell Latitude 5501, smbios-battery-ctl can read charge limits but cannot set them. Use Dell Command | Configure (cctk) to write Custom:50-80 to the EC. |
Disable Clash Verge Rev Auto Check Update on Ubuntu
Published:
Turn off Clash Verge Rev update checks by setting auto_check_update: false in verge.yaml — a setting the GUI does not expose.
SV660N Keypad Panel Status Codes
Published:
SV660N 5-digit keypad: decode _28ry / AL blink, and panel-as-read faults (E6200, E6400, EE083) mapped to CoE 0x603F/0x203F.
Why ROS 2 Demands System Python (And How to Fix Virtual Environment Conflicts)
Published:
Standard Python virtual environments hide ROS 2 apt packages from colcon. Use –system-site-packages so pip stays isolated while builds can still import em, catkin_pkg, and friends.
GRUB’s GRUB_DEFAULT and GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT: Flexible but Confusing Design
Published:
GRUB splits reading and writing the saved boot entry across GRUB_DEFAULT and GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT. That flexibility helps admins and automation, but it exposes mechanism instead of user intent—and nested configfile menus can silently break remember-last-selection.
How to Install Ubuntu 24.04 Real-Time Kernel (PREEMPT_RT) on a Dual-GPU Laptop
Published:
Install ubuntu-realtime on Ubuntu 24.04 with Intel + NVIDIA hybrid graphics: why apt stalls at 2%, why NVIDIA DKMS fails against PREEMPT_RT, how to finish dpkg, and how to restore nvidia-smi on the generic kernel only.
Add VS Code to the Nautilus Context Menu on Ubuntu
Published:
Use a Nautilus Python extension to put Open in VS Code on right-click for files, folders, and empty folder backgrounds.
Give AI Agents Sudo with SUDO_ASKPASS
Published:
When an agent cannot type a sudo password into a TTY, a short zenity askpass helper unlocks a stable sudo -A workflow.
Free Disk Space by Cleaning Stale Snap Revisions on Ubuntu
Published:
How I reclaimed about 2.8 GB from /var/lib/snapd/snaps on Ubuntu 24.04 by removing disabled Snap revisions and unused GNOME platform snaps.
Learning Notes: Control Systems Engineering (Nise 7th, 2015)
Published:
Shared learning notes for Nise Control Systems Engineering 7th Edition — review questions with my answers and LLM answers side by side.
Fixing llvmpipe on Ubuntu Wayland with Intel + NVIDIA Hybrid Graphics
Published:
How I diagnosed a misleading llvmpipe report on Ubuntu Wayland and fixed the real Xwayland/GLX fallback by updating Xwayland and Xorg core packages.