Raspberry Pi top Panel freezes or slows

Some of the widgets/plugins in the Raspi’s top Panel cause system instability. You’ll have to try to get a terminal to open, or else try to ssh in.

You can delete the user’s lxpanel config file, then reboot. This will recreate the default Panel, which you can now break again…

sudo rm -r ~/.config/lxpanel

From here you can either restart the X session with:

startx

or else reboot:

sudo reboot

A new default Panel will be generated.

Raspberry Pi changes Wi-Fi MAC address on boot

This is a new security feature in Network Manager.

Disable the MAC address randomization by creating the file

/etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/100-disable-wifi-mac-randomization.conf

with the content:

[connection]
wifi.mac-address-randomization=1

[device]
wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no

or:

mv /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/100-disable-wifi-mac-randomization.conf /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/100-disable-wifi-mac-randomization.conf.bak

echo "[connection]" >/etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/100-disable-wifi-mac-randomization.conf

echo "wifi.mac-address-randomization=1" >>/etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/100-disable-wifi-mac-randomization.conf

echo -e "\n[device]" >>/etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/100-disable-wifi-mac-randomization.conf

echo "wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no\n" >>/etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/100-disable-wifi-mac-randomization.conf

Afterwards you may need to update your device’s MAC in your DHCP server.

Then reboot.