In Zorin 16, I used to just press Ctrl+Shift+PrntScr and it would immediately give me an adjustable square that I then could select any part of the screen, it worked seamlessly, I'd just let go of the left click button and whatever I selected, a snapshot would be taken but NOT downloaded, it would save it to my clipboard.
But now with Zorin 17, selecting requires two clicks instead of one, it also saves it to my Pictures folder too, along with copying it to my clipboard.
Another thing is that the selection tool looks very different, it had big circular endpoints that block view of what's being selected, it also grays the unselected which also obscures whats being selected.
Sucks.
Correct, the screenshot utility is different, as is now integrated into the gnome shell whereas previously it was a standalone utility. Luckily, you can install that and replace the keyboard shortcut that triggers it.
It also had a bug when saving screen recordings, but I haven't followed up on that in quite a while; it may have been fixed already.
You can install it with sudo apt install gnome-screenshot and then follow these steps to update the keyboard shortcut.
Thank you, I installed the gnome screenshot tool just now. But I cannot get it to give me the selection adjustment feature without the screenshot menu popping up and me having to click "Selection" and then "Take Screenshot", it also makes a "shutter snap" noise, which Zorin 16 didnt do that either. So Zorin 16 was a one key press, one click and one unclick. And now Zorin 17 is a key press, button click, then a 2nd button click, then a 3rd button click, then a button unclick.
Also just checked flameshot and flameshot cannot do the seamless and quick screen selection tool that was on Zorin 16.
In the keyboard shortcut, edit the command and replace the --interactive flag with --area. This will straight away take you to select a rectangle from the screen and immediately save it. I'm not sure about the shutter sound, though, it's not doing anything for me.
EDIT: Ah, I remember another thread where they asked about the audio file and how to remove it:
@zenzen , thank you. Good job. You fixed the issue, now its all back to normal like Zorin 16. Except one thing. When I do "/usr/bin/gnome-screenshot --area" using the shortcut, it saves it in the pictures folder. I want it to save to my clipboard. I tried /usr/bin/gnome-screenshot --area --clipboard AND also /usr/bin/gnome-screenshot -a -c
and neither worked. Google gemini A.I. suggested I try xclip, but I dont have xclip installed and you might have a better solution.
(gnome-screenshot -a -f - | xclip -selection clipboard)
You are somewhat on track. The problem with that is that gnome-screenshot doesn't support Wayland, so the clipboard option would not work in this case. Zorin OS 16 uses X11 as the default display manager, but Zorin OS 17 uses Wayland now.
Your options are to switch to X11:
Or apply a hack to workaround this limitation:
Install a clipboard tool for Wayland:
sudo apt install wl-clipboard
Adjust the command that runs when you press the keyboard shortcut.
Since it'll start getting a bit too lengthy for a one line, I suggest you create a new script file and store somewhere in your home directory. Typical location for that would be in $HOME/.local/bin but you can use any other location you like.
Update the command that runs on keyboard shortcut to:
/home/zenzen/.local/bin/screenshot.sh
Note that you need to type the full path ($HOME usually translates to /home/zenzen), updating the username accordingly. The rest of the path is, as I said, completely up to you.
What this script does is save the screenshot in a temporary file and then the wl-copy command saves it into the clipboard. This file is saved in an in-memory file system, so it's very fast and avoids reads/writes to the disk. It will persists until you logout or shutdown the system, but you can also adjust the script to delete it immediately afterwards.
You might at this point consider using another tool but this should work fine for now. I could update the script to detect whether you're on X11 or Wayland, and then run the appropriate command, but generally speaking I would recommend using one or the other. Personally, I prefer X11.
EDIT: After a quick test, turns out that the problem is simply that gnome-screenshot -f doesn't output the file to standard out and instead directly writes the file to disk. You would have to follow the exact same steps whether you're using X11 or Wayland, with the only difference that instead of using wl-copy you'd use xclip -sel clipboard.
@zenzen , Thank you. I just installed Zorin 17. Before I proceed I need to decide whether I should choose Wayland or X11, and I need to know what are the pros and cons of Wayland vs. X11, I could google this, but googling it wont tell me the pros and cons specifically to Zorin 17.
So can you guys please tell me what the pros and cons are? @swarfendor437 , @Aravisian
"You might at this point consider using another tool but this should work fine for now."
I have tried flameshot and shutter and couldnt get them to do anything close to or efficient as what we are achieving. I havent tried Spectacle yet though. I will only try spectable if our current project doesnt work.
X11 (xorg) has been the main Desktop drawing tool from the early days of a Graphical Linux desktop. Wayland by comparison is new and favours AMD over nvidia Graphics cards. Other downsides are that Wayland cannot support sharing your desktop over your preferred meeting application. It can't run games without something called X-Wayland (basically Wayland using X11 at a guess, as I am no expert).
However based on numerous posts on issues affecting forum members I disable it by default after any install that makes it the default compositor. At least in Plasma the default is X11. I also on a separate note remove all reference to flatpak and snapd, my get go is either the command line using apt install or using Synaptic Package Manager.
You can search around the forum for that, it's been discussed at length:
In theory, you'll have better performance and security.
In practice, however, at least for the time being, you will not notice a thing. The real difference is software support: as you've seen with gnome-screenshot there are other programs that don't support or work well with Wayland, and you'll need to jump through hoops (or use different tools).
In this forum, half the issues are caused by Flatpaks and/or Wayland. Two technologies that were full of promises but are still very lacking in a lot of aspects.
When I was working I was tasked with creating a manual, "How to create accessible images using Inkscape". It started out in Windows 7 at work, but Snip-It tool could not capture the mouse cursor in drop-down menu. So I did it over the summer-break in my own time using GNU/Linux and Shutter for the screen capture.
