Sparky 5.12 ("Sid") on Asus E200H

[niftyprose]

Hi guys,

I'm on my fourth or fifth Asus X205 / E200H, the SSD-equipped netbook. My latest machine is the first I've bought in several years and is intended as a backup. I decided to install the latest stable Sparky, to which I will upgrade my old machine shortly. I thus went from Sparky 4 ("Tych") to 5.1 ("Sid") in the course of a week or so. This note includes a couple of queries for long-term users of 5.x and a couple of pointers for others in the same boat as me. 

(There's a separate thread describing disk formatting issues.)

Assuming a successful install, I hit the following issues -- comments welcome.

* I miss the old pop-out-apps-menu-on-right-click arrangement, which worked very well on smaller laptops. Is there an easy way to duplicate it in LXQt?

* While I don't miss editing menus by hand, the Tyche feature that let you put most-used items at the top of the menu for quick access was useful. Is there some way to duplicate that in LXQt?

* Is there any way to retitle the file manager to be just 'File manager'? 'PCManFM-Qt File Manager' is a silly name, even tho the software is rather good.

* Why does installing Inkscape require me to install the wretched ImageMagick?

The following two are things I found out today and thought worth sharing:

* If you have to install Microsoft Teams and Skype for work, you can mitigate the headaches to some extent. In the case of Teams, you can edit .config/Microsoft/Microsoft Teams/desktop-config.json to switch off the settings which make the software load at startup and persist even after a closing request. And, in the case of Skype, you can Google a proper .deb version rather than struggling with the .rpm installer which is the only option on the download site.

* It is possible to make Bluetooth work in Linux even on a cheap Broadcom adapter. Bluetooth looks like a much worse problem than it really is -- the hassle is actually the product of two quite small issues. The first is that Broadcom sells its hardware Bluetooth dongles without providing software, so you have to find it yourself. Running "sudo dmesg" in a terminal will throw up a red-highlighted ref to missing firmware which you can google, download and install (make sure you get the right one -- there are about 20 with very similar names). Once you've copied the firmware, you then have to activate the software. I found this guide very helpful: http://maketecheasier.com/setup-bluetooth-in-linux

Best, NP