AppImages Stopped Working/ Installing

On my Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, I was using AppImageLauncher to help mange my AppImage files.  Recently I've tried to add three different AppImage files.  All three failed to run.  

I did what I usually do; download the AppImage file, right clicked on it and checked the Allow Executing File As Program box.  Usually you could then double click on the AppImage file and it would launch AppImageLauncher which would offer to "Integrate" the AppImage file or just "Run It Once".  Well that's the part that stopped working.  AppImageLauncher would error out on both the Run and Integrate options which would keep your AppImage file from starting.  The solution is to just uninstall AppImageLauncher.

To do this, simple open a terminal window and type the follow line:

 sudo apt purge appimagelauncher

That's it, you have now uninstall AppImageLauncher.  This will not affect any previously installed AppImages.  It will allow you to use new AppImage files, you just won't get the "Integration" that AppImageLauncher provided. (You'll have to add desktop or start menu launchers yourself). 

I'm not sure what caused AppImageLauncher to stop working correctly but the time saved by automated integration was less than the time required to trouble shoot this problem.

NOTE:  YOU WILL HAVE TO RESET YOUR MACHINE AFTER UNINSTALLING APPIMAGELAUNCHER   

When Using Firefox, Stopping FACEBOOK from Auto Refreshing Your FEED When You View Comments/Pictures/Videos.

I use Firefox to access Facebook and Chrome for most everything else (for right now).  Facebook has a bad habit of doing an Auto Refresh on your feed when you click on a photo, video, or read the comments, so that once you come back to your feed it's updated losing your place in the feed.  Facebook doesn't do this every time but the longer you look at the comments/pictures/videos the more likely you are to get the refresh.  This is stupid and Facebook should put a simple toggle to allow you to disable this "Feature", but they don't.  Here is the only fix I've found that works, modifying a Firefox preference called accessibility.blockautorefresh.

Here's how to access and modify the preference:

NOTE:  This blocks auto refresh on all sites, not just Facebook so if it negatively affect other sites you can simply toggle this back to false (disabled) which undoes this change.

1. In the Firefox address bar, type about:config and press Enter.
(You'll be presented with a warning. Click "I accept the risk and continue.")

2. In the search bar, type accessibility.blockautorefresh and press Enter.

3. The preference for accessibility.blockautorefresh will appear in the search results. 

4. Double-click on the button (pictured below) to change its value to true (enabled) .

5. When your done it should like like the picture below.

There you go now Facebook will NOT auto-refresh while your reading comments or looking at a post or the posts picture/video/comments.

NOTE:  This blocks auto refresh on all sites, not just Facebook so if it negatively affect other sites you can simply toggle this back to false (disabled) which undoes this change.

UPDATE:  5-23-2025: This only partially works, refreshes still happen but far less often. 

Virtualbox not showing USB Devices to the Guest OS

When I try to add a USB Device in Oracle Virtualbox to the settings for my virtual Windows 11 Guest (Ububtu 24.04.1 is the host) all I see when I click on the "+" in the USB section is "<no devices available>".

What you should see is your host's list of attached USB devices with a checkbox beside each device (like the below picture).  You should be able to check this checkbox allowing it to show up and be used in your Guest OS.

To solve the problem of not having a list of USB Devices, you will need to add your user name to the vboxusers group with this command in a Terminal Window.  

sudo adduser $USER vboxusers

NOTE:  This will add the current Ubuntu Host user to the vboxusers which will allow your USB Devices to show up. If you do not want to add the current user, replace $USER with the required users name.