This is what you should have been focused on…. How do you propose that I learn the linux environment? That would be wonderful if it’s not some IT structured information like everything else here…. Why could you not expand on that?
OK, I will, but first, why doesn’t anyone tell me how I can LEARN the Linux way? There is no curve or straight as an arrow learning if you don’t know how to learn the basics of this OS.
@idahobronco There is not one, simple way to learn Linux. It is, like most things in life, a process often of trial and error.
First we need to help you figure out where your files are, that is the most important thing right now as I view it.
I guess I don’t know the file names or how to identify image files among the others. To me it is just a list that mostly has to do with my Brave browser. And if I do recognize a may be image file, how do I open it to check? Where my files are located at, is a mystery. Some appear to be in pictures file and some seem to be in documents file. Some are in image apps and some are in Dolphin…. it is very confusing. In the Dolphin program the downloads are in monthly listings. Most will open up but the ones in question, in August say that the program does not support that type of file. And when it comes to Image viewers, I don’t have a clue. There are so many of them. I would like to use the best one with the most versatile abilities. I know some files are different than others in their format but I don’t know why.
Thank you! You just helped by explaining the learning process is not set in stone. Yes, some pics of a soffit and fascia job I did is very important and one pic in particular of a bank envelope with the obvious manipulation of the amount of money he was going to pay me is another important piece of info. The soffit and fascia reference refers to covering the eaves of a house with siding products.
Thank you so much for offering to help me. I would have switched back to windows a long time ago if I didn’t have faith that this OS was superior to others. I have heard good things about it but I am always STOPPED in my tracks when I go to do something easy, like viewing my pics. I am very independent and a little head strong so please don’t let me piss you folks off. I am just very frustrated and have a small claims meeting tomorrow. My bad for not reaching out to you long ago. I have been frustrated for months trying to get things right on this OS.
HOW you transfer files makes a big difference. If you sometimes use Dolphin and othertimes use a Photo Manager or a Cloud Service, the you can expect each to treat the photos differently. It’s currently unclear how you moved the photos, or if you consistently used the same method of moving the files.
If you used Dolphin to transfer files, then the location on your system depends upon where you clicked or dragged.
If you used a Photo Manager, then the photos might be in that application’s database or photo-storage directory somewhere.
If you used a Cloud service, then the photos might be unloaded to the internet instead of downloaded to your Kubuntu system.
You might take a test photo on your phone, then use the phone’s file browser to see how it makes a filename. Many phones create a filename based upon date and time that the image was captured.
For example, a sample photo on my phone might be located in the DCIM/Camera directory, and the filename might be IMG_20250324_114503302.jpg
In this case, I took the photo on 2025-03-24 at 11:45 hrs. You can see how those are incorporated into the filename.
You can search for files that match your phone’s pattern of creating filenames. I might search, for example, for files that start with IMG_ or end with .jpg
If your phone also incorporates the date into the filename, this can help narrow your search.
If you take a sample photo, it might help to re-create how you moved the photos to your Kubuntu system, looking carefully at which application you used and what you selected.
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My photo came up on my phone as…… 20260324_130958.jpg/Internal storage/DCIM/Camera and I always used a usb cable connected from my phone to my computer. It always stopped me from the process until I went into my phone and changed the usb actions to… tranfer images. Where it went to after that is kind of a mystery to me. I have used Shotwell and GNU Image Manipulation Program to some extent and it always seems to point to Gwenview, so I have used that also. Just today a new program popped onto my system that is called ImageMagick. I was going to try to use that, but I guess I am cluster Fing everything around by using different apps. Where I think the missing pics are at is in Dolphin downloads.
When I look in Dolphin pictures, they are definetly from my phone. Just can’t understand where ALL of my pictures are, because I always used the same process… I think. The other day, it only downloaded one out of 3 pics from my phone….??
In Dolphin, when I went to download my image under Samsung phone, it posted a pink message….Unknown error code 150
Bad parameters
Please send a full bug report at https://bugs.kde.org.
This is a type of file in downloads also that won’t open…. tar.gz and tar.xz, they says.. Sorry, the file you are trying to upload is not authorized (authorized extensions: jpg, jpeg, png, gif, webp).
Dolphin sent… tar:/home/brian/Downloads/firefox-143.0.1.tar.xz/firefox/icons… to Gwenview and it did nothing.
Is there no program or process to examine Kubuntu to see if it has a glitz in it or if it didn’t download properly?
How can you tell if a listed item is an image in Konsole?
This looks like the kind of problem you get when you use PTP (Picture Transfer Protocol) to transfer a file that is not recognizably an image file – .tar.gz and .tar.xz are compressed archives, they might contain images but they aren’t images themselves. You might get better results by choosing MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) for transfering data from your phone.
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Those are compressed files. Unless you compressed them, they are unlikely to be what you seek. In this example, ‘firefox-143.0.1.tar.xz’ seems likely to be a web browser that you downloaded (compressed – very large). There are easier ways to download and install software.
Firefox icons? Those also seem to no be among what you seek. It’s not a surprise that a viewer doesn’t want to open them. They are not images. They are icons.
Kubuntu is a multi-Gigabyte complete operating system. There is no ‘fix all malfunctions’ button, just like there isn’t in Windows or OSX or Android.
The operating system doesn’t care if a file is an image or a document or a music file or something else. Windows requires a file suffix (like .img or .jpg) but Kubuntu does NOT require suffixes. It’s up to the applications and the user name their files recognizably.
Happily, you already know that the images you seek end in .jpg .
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You either look at the extension of the file name - the part of the name after the last period ‘.’ – for example ‘.jpg’ or ‘.png’ – or you can use the commands ‘file’ or ‘mimetype’. If I enter
file ~/Bilder/IMG_20260324_221830.jpg
I get
/home/hddg/Bilder/IMG_20260324_221830.jpg: JPEG image data, Exif standard: [TIFF image data, big-endian, direntries=16, height=0, copyright=MM, resolutionunit=2, description=MM, width=0], baseline, precision 8, 2448x2448, components 3
and for
mimetype ~/Bilder/IMG_20260324_221830.jpg
it shows
/home/hddg/Bilder/IMG_20260324_221830.jpg: image/jpeg
These two commands don’t just look at the name of the file, they look at file contents and look for specific data in specific places (often called 'magic numbers) to identify file types.
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A tar file is a tape archive file which is a number of files compressed and to extract them you can either use a right click in a file manager (Dolphin) which will give you several options to extract OR you can use a terminal and navigate to the directory where the file is and run a command there. The link below gives examples.
https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/tar-extract-linux/
You go to the directory where the image is and run the ls -l and it will show if it has a jpeg, png, etc extension or you can use the file command: file nameoffile
I have no idea what you were trying to do with the firefox tar.xz file.
Your post above shows ‘20260324_130958.jpg’ which is the name of the image file. If you are using KDE plasma on Kubuntu , you should be able to use Gwenview and select it by clicking on the usb icon in the lower right of the screen and you should see Camera and clicking that will give you options and you can select Download with Gwenview. Your phone obviously would need to be attached and your pass code entered on the phone. When Gwenview opens, there will be an entry box at the bottom for ‘Import Destination’ where you can enter the path to whatever directory you want to use.
Your difficulty in learning Linux is compounded by the fact that you have to first ‘unlearn’ windows before learning linux.
Gwenview is pretty simple to use and ImageMagick is great software but is not likely to help do what you want as you will see if you go to their site at the link below.
‘I have no idea what you were trying to do with the firefox tar.xz file’…. Me neither as I have no idea of how to zip or unzip files, yet it happened 6 times between April of last year to Aug. I don’t know how to zip or even why to zip except to save room. This wasn’t done on purpose. That is why I am here. To find out where everything went. I have been having trouble with Linux every since I got here over a year ago. I need direction I guess, to unlearn windows and to learn linux. Any advise would be appreciated. Are you telling me that I will like the linux OS once I learn the ropes?
You need to calm down and focus. Let’s start there instead of posting tangents blaming the OS, shall we?
It seems you want to copy photos and eventually other files (bank statements are typically in PDF format / file type, not images) from your Android phone to your Kubuntu PC, right? So, focus on that.
Now, this may blow your mind but it’s the truth: It’s EXACTLY the same process you would use in Windows. The only difference is you will be using Kubuntu’s file manager (Dolphin) instead of the Windows’ file manager (File Manager). The following will be written in an OS agnostic way in order to prove the point
After connecting the USB cable and selecting the proper option in the Android phone a new drive will appear in the file manager. Click to open it, find & select the file(s) you want copied to the computer, right-click > Copy (or CTRL+C). Then open the folder (e.g. Pictures/Images, whatever…) where YOU want it/them saved, right-click > Paste (or CTRL+V). Wait for the transfer to finish and… That’s it!
A different method many people prefer is also totally OS agnostic: Cloud services (e.g. Google Drive). Any will let you automatically and/or manually upload photos, videos, other files from your phone to a remote server (quota varies, speed varies, “quality” of the apps varies and of course price for extended quota varies a lot; the basic free plan of any mainstream service is enough for most users). Once backed up in the cloud you can access and download the files to any computer you want, anywhere in the world, irrespective of the OS, most of the times you only need a web browser. It’s this simple.
Now, personal opinion, the main problems here are: 1. not being able to recognize the file types (hopefully solved in previous posts) (again, it’s exactly like in Windows, the file names are exactly the same so the dektop/laptop OS doesn’t matter, at all); 2. never having done such process (otherwise you’d understand the process already - if previously using Windows -, the slightly different file manager wouldn’t be an hindrance); 3. overall lack of computer literacy (I mean, sorry to be so blunt, but millions of elementary school children can do what you’ve been struggling with so much, while playing games!).
If you have issues opening the transferred files, doing something with them no matter what we’ll gladly help you to the best of our abilities. Please start specific threads for each different problems in order to keep it tidy and organized. This one is a mess already and a nightmare to read and that is entirely on you (you may think your rants are cute but they aren’t, it only makes you look really really bad).
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