In my case, I had an errant line in my grub config file. What’s that? It’s the bootloader. It’s the thing that controls how the machine passes control from the BIOS to the hard drive (not exactly, but that’s good enough to get you approving nods at cocktail parties; go with it.)

Sometimes when you monkey with things in Linux, you make mistakes, and oh shit. Now what. This is probably one of those times (if you’re seeing the infamous black screen with cursor). My story was simple. Instead of a “quiet splash”, where you don’t see the system messages as your computer boots and shuts down, which is the default behaviour with Ubuntu, I wanted to see the system messages. This is controlled by GRUB — the Grand Unified Bootloader.

There’s a simple file that controls how GRUB behaves. It is: /etc/default/grub

If you edit that file (as root (with sudo), of course), be very careful. In my case, I wanted to remove the “quiet splash” in the line

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

When I did this, I left some text between the quotes. Oops. In order to see the system messages, the line should read

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""

In my case, the change results in this (after I fixed the error that precipitated this whole conversation):

Now, when you edit this file, in order for the changes you’ve made to have an effect, you must run:

sudo update-grub

Of course, I did this. But with the errant text between the quotes (not shown here, because I went back and fixed it), GRUB was like, what the fuck do you actually want??

The result: the black screen of death.

The solution: when booting, press whatever it takes to force the boot menu. For me, on a Lenovo Yoga 530, I pressed F12.

From the boot menu, you can drop into a command prompt (recovery mode) and edit the grub file and remove whatever is wrong.

Then, DON’T FORGET, run

sudo update-grub

Then resume boot as normal.

In my case, this fixed the problem. If this doesn’t fix the problem, then I recommend altering your GRUB config so that you can see system messages, then boot again and see where the problem is. Then, search for solutions to that problem, whatever it is.

But, in many cases, errant grub config might well have been the problem.

** A quick note about the black screen with the cursor: sometimes the system is really just waiting for something to finish, and if you’re patient enough, it’ll finish and the next phase of booting or whatever will commence. In this case, the question is how patient you’re willing to be. (I’m not very patient, so I’d just cold boot the bastard and figure out what was taking so long and eliminate or streamline it. But that’s me, and I’m really fun in queues.)

The symptom: Suddenly, randomly, some of the keyboard will stop working. Usually this happens in clusters. Perhaps some of the number keys stop working. Perhaps some of the qwerty row. Sometimes the shift key stops working. It could be anything.

The problem is either hardware or software. Here’s how to easily determine which.

• Reboot and get into the BIOS (use F2, F1, whatever special key for your machine).
• Find a place where you can enter text. The admin password field is an option.
• Try to enter text with the keys that weren’t working.
• If the keys work, then it is a software problem.
• If the keys still do not work, then it’s a hardware problem.
• Exit without saving!

Hardware

I’ll start with hardware, because that’s probably the problem. (Especially with Linux; blaming drivers is such a Windows thing to do, isn’t it….)

Easiest fix: clean the keyboard. Use a can of compressed air with a straw; you know the ones. Hold down one of the errant keys and spray air under the top as best you can. See if that does it. (Some warn that this might jiggle debris around and make things worse, so proceed with caution, as always.) If this doesn’t do it, invert the machine and gently tap the keys as you would when typing. In this case, gravity will try to pull any bits out. Finally, you can pop off an errant key and spray air directly around under the top.

Did that work? No? Well, things get more complicated.

Slightly more difficult fix: reseat the ribbon cable. (Unless you’re lucky enough to be using an old ThinkPad where taking the keyboard out is an absolute cinch! But then, if you’re using an old ThinkPad, you’re probably not having keyboard problems (those were the best laptop keyboards ever made. Full stop.))

To reseat the keyboard ribbon cable, you have to get into the machine. This will vary from model to model, but it probably involves removing screws. Do that and find the ribbon cable and reseat it.

Lots of people report success with this technique. But notice something: to do this, you have to invert the laptop and, voila! Gravity and jiggling very well might dislodge debris as in the Easiest Fix. (I struggle with the ribbon cable solution. It’s either seated correctly or not. How could this possibly affect Shift-9, for example? It just doesn’t add up. If you can think of a way that it does add up, please leave a comment. (Haha. Fuck comments.))

While you’re at it, some recommend doing a power cycle. This means disconnecting the battery and pressing the power button for anywhere from 30 seconds to an hour. This will discharge any weird built-up static or whatever. Plausible solution, but I bet it doesn’t help!

If you’ve done these things and the symptoms persist, then you might have drawn the short straw and gotten a munted keyboard. It happens. These are fiddly things, and nobody’s perfect. You might just be staring down some new hardware.

(This happened to me; ultimately, it was a glitch in the actual hardware; there was nothing to be done outside of replacing.)

Software

Uh. If you’re using Linux, then, reinstall the driver? No? That isn’t really a thing. But what I can recommend is updating everything responsibly. The drivers are part of the kernel, so at this point, you’re monkeying with that kind of thing, and that’s not for everybody. (It’s also very likely not your problem. If one key works and one key doesn’t, then clearly the driver works — because that one freaking key works!)

If none of this works and you’re in a real pinch, then plug in a USB keyboard.

Seek professional help.

First, bring up your “Settings”. You can do this through the drop down in the top right corner, if you’re using Gnome. Or, you can hit the “Super” key (usually the “Window” key), then typing “settings”.

Here’s mine.

Oh my god now you know my gmail.com address. Whelp….

See, it’s pretty simple these days. Just click “Online Accounts”, then click on Google, then enter your information and accept that Linux will be able to access your stuff, and you’re in business.

Now, your calendar should be integrated in the top bar of Gnome. Like this:

As you can see, I prefer a pretty basic setup. See those dots under the days? Those are all events on my Google Calendar. Events will show up in the “Notifications” area, as appropriate. “No Events” today. Oh well.

For further tips on how to set up your Gnome environment as incredibly simply as mine, refer to my Tweaks post.

For now, enjoy how easy they’ve made it .

The solution is simple enough with a few commands, but you’ll have to use the terminal for this one.

First, the symptom: Using Firefox, it was not possible to scroll using the touchscreen. Instead, all you could do was click links or select text. You could drag the scrollbar, but generally this is not the behaviour of a tablet, and tablet behaviour was what we expected.

The solution: You need X11 Gestures, touchegg, and to adjust a few settings in Firefox and elsewhere.

First, ensure that you have touchegg installed (this link is for an older version of Ubuntu, but the same principle applies).

Next, assuming you’re using Gnome (Ubuntu out of the box uses Gnome), you’ll want to install X11 Gestures. This is a Gnome Shell Extension, and if you’ve not set yourself up to use those, you’ll want to set up Gnome Shell Extensions now.

At this point, your problem will not be solved. There are two more subtle steps, and they have to do with security, so proceed with caution. (You’ll be OK. I believe in you.)

In Firefox, in about:config, set dom.w3c_touch_events.enabled=1. Here that is in monospace:

dom.w3c_touch_events.enabled=1

Now, you need to edit a file that only root (the administrator) can edit. The instruction is this: edit /etc/security/pam_env.conf and add MOZ_USE_XINPUT2 DEFAULT=1

I use an editor called vim. You can use whatever editor you want. gedit is popular. nano is popular. Whatever you’ve settled on, use that. Replace in these commands as necessary.

sudo vim /etc/security/pam_env.conf

Once in the file, ensure you have a line that looks like this (the last blue line):

Save the file and reload modules — or just bloody reboot — as necessary.

Was all of this necessary? To be honest, I don’t know exactly; I’m unsure whether the X11 Gestures were necessary, but they’re cool and you should have them. I know that pinching and scrolling didn’t work in Firefox until these last two steps, so they’re essential.

Following this, I bought my own Lenovo Yoga 530 and set all this up. Then, when I installed Google Chrome, it worked seamlessly. So, officially, this is a troubleshooting guide for Firefox in Gnome with a touchscreen.

Enjoy.