Firewall exception for “File and Printer Sharing” is not enabled by default. Check the boxes below to enable CIFS/SMB sharing.
Enabling “File and Printer Sharing” also enables pinging into the said Windows 10 machine since this group also enable “Echo Request – ICMPv4) that the details can be seen in Advanced Firewall Config rules.
netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group="Network Discovery" new enable=Yes
netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group="File and Printer Sharing" new enable=Yes
Just out of good housekeeping, I’d like to move user folder to another drive letter so I can back it up quickly for re-installing Windows or plan program storage better (anything that can be re-installed, I don’t care to back it up).
There’s a lot of warning about messing with redefining where %userprofile% points to (which is %systemdrive%\Users\%username%) or using symbolic links (such as subst) for file redirection. So I’m sticking to the officially supported ways that doesn’t involve scripting or messing with the registry, i.e. move only the ones Microsoft expects users to be able to move it themselves.
I’ve identified these folders are safe to move:
The basic user shell folders
For a newly installed Windows 10, that’s basically every subfolders in %userprofile% itself!
Here’s the dumb way to do it which is taught nearly everywhere since Windows 7: using the location tab in these special shell folders:
They told you the hard and dangerous way modifying the registry, namely HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders:
It’d be a pain in the ass to do it for 13 folders in Windows 10 (much less in Windows 7 so it was reasonable to do it this way back in the days). Turns out through experimentation, I figured that you can just move the shell folders to your chosen the destination folder, and the shell folders (which are decorated with extra features) can figure out they are being moved register the notifiers (aka the registry) properly, which is all the steps in location tab condensed to one drag and drop!
I observed the registry location and see what are the impact of the moves. A bunch of new entries are created corresponding to the 13 subfolders being moved
I believe those are the unique names for the named folder as their superficial name can change without having program confused about their nature.
I noticed only 6 core subfolders (which are the bread and butter ones that was there since Windows 7) is updated with the new path.
The others that are not changed are heavily tied to programs you installed (AppData) and Windows Explorer config (start menu, right-click explorer context menus) and IE stuff (cache and cookies). These data do not relate to the typical files users must backup but the configuration files that store user preferences. This is why I’m not surprised when Microsoft tells people not to mess with them because old software cruft might not handle them in a unified way after 20+ years of evolution.
App/Tiles (Metro UI) data starting Windows 8
Easus’ blog page might have confused the shell folders with files for Metro UI (Apps) and thought this is another way of moving files, which isn’t. This is the additional step specific to Tiled App files:
What I forgot to annotate above is “New apps will save to:” will also generate a \WindowsApps\MutableBackup folder. Such “Program Files” is owned by ‘SYSTEM’ account and “WindowsApps” is owned by ‘TrustedInstaller’ account, which you cannot clean them up after you changed your mind without first taking ownership and give yourself full permissions. Here are the folders created by the first item of the “Change where new contents is saved” page:
It’s usually more convenient to move the shell folders to {target drive}:\%username% that’s shared with the special folders for the Apps with the same name so Apps and programs can share files with a common folder. But technically these are two split concepts and you are free to make them separate.
The registry is not where you should muck with the path. Please let Windows’s proper user interface (shell folder’s Location folder handling) do it as registry is just one of the many places they will manage the settings. Also remember moving these special (aka shell) folders do not move your %userprofile% which is your home folder that things like Powershell starts with by default (I had to change the working directory and there isn’t a variable associated with the {target drive}:\%username% because variables to those special folders do not manage their root.
Basically allowing multiple users logged into Windows at the same time boils down to modifying 12 dwords (32-bit words) or 48 bytes in termsrv.dll and the content and location (byte offset) varies depending on which version it is.
The rest is just fighting with file lock behavior, Windows self-repair, updates, anti-virus and things that tries to ‘correct’ the modified file so the changes stick. These are hell of hard and tedious.
RDP wrapper was the tool to do this but it stopped updating since 2017 so it won’t track any updates and newer versions pushed later.
There is a tool called autoupdate that rides on top of RDP wrapper which automates the process for each version that was pushed out with the (byte location, byte values) defined in a config file called rdpwrap.ini.
Basically extract all the zip files to the same folder and copy the latest INI file along with it, run the helper routine
autoupdate -taskadd
to add the startup hook (running helper\autoupdate__enable_autorun_on_startup.bat does the same thing) then run the main routine
I’ve been using CPIME for ages and I’m comfortable with Sidney Lau’s phonetic scheme. Jyutping is unnatural to Hongkongers because we do not consider ‘j’ a ‘y’ sound like Germans do.
However, since Windows 10, there aren’t much choices when it comes Cantonese IME that defaults to Sidney Lau’s and yet it accommodates common swearwords (including the most common ones that were technically incorrect) well. The only reasonable choice is Andrew Choi’s CAP, which I will write about how to get it working for Windows 10 on another blog post.
There aren’t much choices for Linux either. There’s RIME, but it’s super hard to install and Sidney Lau’s phonetic scheme is buried deep down that can only be changed with shortcut keys during the IME composition mode. The deal breaker is t.he lack of swearword support. Being able to type 林鄭我?你老母 is essential for every self-respecting Cantonese speaker. 「屌」你老母 just won’t cut it. Lol.
CAP takes a quite bit of wrestling to get it to install in Windows (in another post) and quite a bit of wrestling to get it to function in Linux. Once you get it working, it’s a very powerful Cantonese IME that allows superfast typing unless you plan to play with words (玩食字). I just can’t praise the IME design enough and I was willing to deal with the quirks which curbs its wide adoption.
Andrew Choi made a few release at his blog page in 2012 (ibus), 2015 (ibus), 2018 (fcitx), 2019 (fcitx4) and 2021 (fcitx4). For the linux version, this blog post is only concerned with the 2021 version (latest at the time of writing).
For Linux CAP, installing the debian package is the easiest part:
sudo dpkg -i fcitx-cap_1.0.0_amd64.deb
The thorns are
get the CAP show up on the list of valid input methods
fend of fcitx5 which is trying to kill CAP
deal with IME settings state corruption (especially when working with other IME)
live with being unable to select characters from subsequent pages of selection candidates
CAP is not immediately available as an IME out of the box (even after installing the .deb package)
.
You will need to add Chinese to “Install / Remove Language” under “Language Support” to get anything to show up there!
Fend off fcitx5
fcitx5 was recently released and Ubuntu is aggressively trying to push it onto every user. However, its very existence kills the currently available CAP which is written for fcitx4 as of the 2021 release. This means you will have to give up fcitx5 if you want to use CAP!
Fcitx5 is considered as a replacement for fcitx4, so whenever Ubuntu sees that you have fcitx installed (which is likely fcitx4), it’ll tempt you into installing fcitx5. DO NOT ACCEPT THE INVITATION! However, fcitx5 do not coexist with fcitx4. Your fcitx4 will be removed the moment you installed fcitx4. To go back to fcitx4, you have first to remove fcitx5 completely then re-install fcitx.
What makes things more complicated is that Ubuntu’s gnome Language Support GUI keeps prompting you to install fcitx5 whenever you start it or do something with it such as installing new languages (which is required as the first non-obvious step). It’ll typically try to deceive you into installing fcitx5 with a dialog box like this:
but if you open up the details it’s fcitx5 which will cockblock CAP
However, when you try to perform the first step, if you already have fcitx (fcitx4) installed, adding new languages (required to get CAP) to work will come bundled with upgrades to fcitx5! It’d be super frustrating. So you can choose between the two paths
1) Concede to fcitx5 and downgrade to fcitx4
install the languages first (with fcitx5 IMEs),
remove fcitx5
install fcitx4
2) Prevent fcitx5 in the first place
remove fcitx4,
install the languages (no fcitx IMEs)
install fcitx4
Remove fcitx4
sudo apt purge fcitx
Remove fcitx5
sudo apt purge fcitx5*
Install languages
If you already have fcitx installed (path #1), you’ll have to click yes and live with fcitx4 being upgraded to fcitx5 which you’ll have to destroy it later and reinstall fcitx4.
If you already removed fcitx, Language Support will only install IME for other systems such as ibus associated with installed languages
Install fcitx4 AND activate it
sudo apt install fcitx
Remember to select the installed Fcitx 4 as your IME system (not ibus, etc, or none):
Now CAP is on the list of available IMEs in fcitx-configuration
Learn the new shortcut keys that are different from Windows
One default out of the box that’s hard to guess is moving from page to page. It used to be PageUp/PageDown but CAP follows fcitx’s global configuration moving between pages, which is the lower case of +/- keys which is basically =/- because + is upper case while it was intended to be lower case. I know, this is confusing!
IME switching follows the OLD windows shortcut keys (like Windows 98 and XP days), which
Ctrl+Space means turning IME on/off (global sense),
Ctrl+Shift changes IME languages (newer Windows use Alt+Shift by default)
Shift to temporarily disable/enable the IME (i.e. English mode) but stay within the language state
More customizations to get it closer to Windows IME behavior
CAP follows the global config settings in fcitx, unlike mozc (Japanese IME) which sometimes play by its own rules which behaves similar to its Windows’ counterpart.
If you are used to CPIME’s vertical lists, you can change it in ‘Appearance’ tab.
CAP candidate selection quirks when used with mozc (bug?)
For some reason, when both CAP and mozc are freshly installed, the first time you use the candidate list in mozc by selecting space/tab, the candidate list will disappear!
I installed and uninstalled fcitx, mozc and CAP and realized narrowed the bug to this reproducible path. My suspicion is that there’s a setting regarding the candidate selection shortcut (usually by ‘1’~’9’+’0′) parameter state that’s not exposed in fcitx-configuration that was being changed my mozc. And this guess puts me closer as I was able to play around with mozc’s config and found a candidate selection shortcut option
Note that mozc only has a max shortcut of 9 items (instead of 10, that means the ‘0’ key is not available as shortcut key) despite fcitx-configuration’s Global Config has a different idea (which CAP can use the 10th key, aka ‘0’ as candidate selection shortcut)
I noticed that after switching ‘1’-‘9’ to ‘a’-‘l’ (or no shortcut) mode, activate it in mozc by using space key to expand selection (this is necessary or the change won’t happen), I get the ‘1’-‘9’+’0’ candidate selection shortcut when I go back to CAP. I also noticed if I messed with the maximum number of suggestions in mozc a few times, I can get into an undefined state in CAP where it shows the candidate selection shortcut for the first few but not the rest, such as this:
I also noticed CAP has one consistent bug that the candidate selection (not just the keys) ONLY WORKS FOR THE FIRST PAGE! I tried to use the candidate selection shortcuts or click on the character with mouse for subsequent pages, it only commit the current word choice disregarding the selection!
I’m spoiled by Greeshot in Windows and I find the gnome-screenshot that came with Cinnamon lacking.
With Greenshot, Print Screen key by default selects an area (which should be the most versatile and productive mode which should be prioritized with least complicated keys) and prompts you on whether you want to copy to clipboard or save a file.
Gnome-screenshot went with the most traditional behavior where Print Screen keys captures the entire screen AND it saves to a default file in ~/Pictures folder with timestamped file names, which I don’t want (I prefer copying to the clipboard).
So natively in gnome, Ctrl is the modifier for copying to clipboard. Shift is the modifier for selecting a section of the screen. So the most common operation I want to do became a bit of finger gymnastics Ctrl+Shift+Print and there are no immediate access to image editor like Greenshot (don’t even bother with GIMP, it’s slow to load and convoluted).
I discovered a much neater app called Flameshot. It has a much quicker design that you can select a section of a screen and do the most common screenshot edits on the fly and copy to the clipboard or save to files, even faster than Greenshot, which opens the captured image into a separate editor and you have to click file->copy-to-clipboard after edits!
Turns out that Flameshot does not use the native gnome’s print screen categories,
so establishing the shortcut has to be done as just a simple shortcut for running the command:
/usr/bin/flameshot gui
and I chose to use Win/Super+Print for Flameshot
Again, the command is /usr/bin/flameshot gui (or where flameshot is located if it’s not under /usr/bin)
