3

I'm using Ubuntu 13.10, and I have a problem with 3 text editors - Geany, Gedit and Sublime Text.

These 3 editors cannot access most of their menu items, including Open file and Save file.

The only way to access these menu items is to open those editors using root access.

The only editor that seems to work without root access is Adobe Brackets.

I'm not talking about root files, I'm talking about the menu items which are not accessible when just opening the editor (even with no documents open).

image

karel
  • 114,770
  • I which folder is the file you are trying to edit. Run sudo ls -l /PATH/TO/CONTAINING/FOLDER, and add it to your question. – Wilf Jan 13 '14 at 13:57
  • It isn't matter, when I just open the editor the menu item are non accessable –  Jan 13 '14 at 14:07
  • Does it matter which file you are trying to edit? And can you use keyboard shortcuts? – Wilf Jan 13 '14 at 16:07
  • it doesn't matter which file I try to edit, since I can't open files from menu. "ctrl+c" and "ctrl+v" both work. –  Jan 13 '14 at 18:33

2 Answers2

1

It sounds like the folder is not owned by your user, so you can't write to it - to sort this out either run this for a file:

sudo chown USERNAME:USERNAME /PATH/TO/FILE

or this for a folder/directory:

sudo chown -R USERNAME:USERNAME /PATH/TO/FOLDER

These commands will make the user USERNAME and group USERNAME the owner of the file or folder specified.

Alternately, you could just make 'Other' users have access to the file:

sudo chmod 766 /PATH/TO/FILE

or folder:

sudo chmod -R 766 /PATH/TO/FOLDER

Here are manual pages on chmod and chown

You can check the permissions of the contents of a folder by running:

ls -l /PATH/TO/FOLDER

You should get something like this:

drwxr-xr-x. 2 wilf wilf      4096 Jan 10 15:59 Desktop
drwxr-xr-x. 2 wilf wilf      4096 Jan 10 00:32 Documents
drwxr-xr-x. 3 wilf wilf      4096 Jan 10 18:25 Downloads
-rw-rw-r--. 1 wilf wilf     70582 Jan 11 22:22 gnomeRemove.txt

Where the drwxr-xr-x. is a directory with read and execute permissions to all users, with write permissions for the owner.

Your username should also be in place of wilf.

Wilf
  • 30,194
  • 17
  • 108
  • 164
  • Should I do that for geany + gedit folders? –  Jan 13 '14 at 18:34
  • No just the folder of the files that you can't edit. – Wilf Jan 13 '14 at 18:48
  • The problem isn't with the files, the problem is with the editor, with most of his menu items are not accessable –  Jan 13 '14 at 19:39
  • Sounds like a bug then... You could try another Desktop Enviroment, like XFCE, or Gnome. Don't know otherwise... – Wilf Jan 13 '14 at 20:09
  • Is Unity resposible menu items bug? Because purge and reinstall geany doesn't help there. –  Jan 14 '14 at 06:22
  • Also, it happens also in Libera Office, so it is a problem with all the text editors –  Jan 14 '14 at 06:36
  • Unity may be responsible, which is why I suggested using another desktop enviroment, which would likely use another window manager, and might removw rhe problem. – Wilf Jan 14 '14 at 11:34
  • I switched to cinnamon and it work great. Is there a desktop enviroment which is cinnamon + unity? –  Jan 14 '14 at 15:31
  • Gnome? Both Unity and Cinnamon are based on it. – Wilf Jan 14 '14 at 17:19
  • No, I want a enviroment with list of application and launcher like unity –  Jan 14 '14 at 20:53
  • Updated answer. – Wilf Jan 14 '14 at 22:24
1

Try another Desktop environment, as this is probably a bug in the current Desktop Environment and/or Window Manager that is causing the problem - the most similar would be:

others possibilities might be:

The links I haven given have tips on installation and customization.

For the most similar thing to Unity, use Gnome Versions between 3.4 and 3.8 may be best.:

App Overview
(source: wikimedia.org)

There is a search overview as well, if anything it is better than Unity's

If you want a Unity - like launcher as well, use the Dash to Dock extension. Other useful things to make it more like Unity would be Dash Hotkeys, and perhaps this.

Extensions are sometimes compatibility only with different versions on Gnome.Shell, you can check, and edit stuff with Gnome Tweak Tool

Community
  • 1
Wilf
  • 30,194
  • 17
  • 108
  • 164