Sunday 28 August 2016

Crappy Netflix Playback? Here’s How to Test Your Streaming Speed | WIRED

Google Chrome will play NetFlix on Linux but Chromium will not.

Linux is therefore limited to 720 and not 1080 as it doesn't run crappy IE or Edge.



Crappy Netflix Playback? Here’s How to Test Your Streaming Speed | WIRED:



'via Blog this'

Screen tearing problem on Cub Linux

I've been testing Cub Linux RC1 (based upon Ubuntu 14.04) and had some problems with video playback. After some research I found that editing ~/.config/compton.conf and changing the following lines removed the issue:

Replace backend = "xrender"; with backend = "glx";

Replace vsync = "none"; with vsync = "opengl";

Note: This works fine on the Integrated Intel HD5500 graphics but still produces tearing if I switch to the Radeon Discrete graphics. Not sure if I can find a setting that works with both... Thoughts?

How to force Linux appliaction to run using discrete graphics card

On a laptop with integrated (Intel HD5500) and discrete (AMD Radeon R7 M265) the applications startup using the integrated graphics by default. setting the variable DRI_PRIME=1 causes the applications to use the discrete graphics instead.

e.g.

"glmark2" runs on the integrated graphics vs "DRI_PRIME=1 glmark2" runs on the discrete graphics.
"chromium-browser" runs on the integrated graphics vs "DRI_PRIME=1 chromium-browser" runs on the discrete graphics.

You can also force the use of radeon graphics by the use of a grub flag.

ati - Very Low Temperature Reading for graphics driver using lm-sensors - Ask Ubuntu:



'via Blog this'

How to force Linux appliaction to run using discrete graphics card

On a laptop with integrated (Intel HD5500) and discrete (AMD Radeon R7 M265) the applications startup using the integrated graphics by default. setting the variable DRI_PRIME=1 causes the applications to use the discrete graphics instead.

e.g.

"glmark2" runs on the integrated graphics vs "DRI_PRIME=1 glmark2" runs on the discrete graphics.
"chromium-browser" runs on the integrated graphics vs "DRI_PRIME=1 chromium-browser" runs on the discrete graphics.

You can also force the use of radeon graphics by the use of a grub flag.

ati - Very Low Temperature Reading for graphics driver using lm-sensors - Ask Ubuntu:



'via Blog this'

How to force Linux appliaction to run using discrete graphics card

On a laptop with integrated (Intel HD5500) and discrete (AMD Radeon R7 M265) the applications startup using the integrated graphics by default. setting the variable DRI_PRIME=1 causes the applications to use the discrete graphics instead.

e.g.

"glmark2" runs on the integrated graphics vs "DRI_PRIME=1 glmark2" runs on the discrete graphics.
"chromium-browser" runs on the integrated graphics vs "DRI_PRIME=1 chromium-browser" runs on the discrete graphics.

You can also force the use of radeon graphics by the use of a grub flag.

ati - Very Low Temperature Reading for graphics driver using lm-sensors - Ask Ubuntu:



'via Blog this'

Monday 22 August 2016

How to shrink a dynamically-expanding guest virtualbox image | dantwining.co.uk

How to shrink a dynamically-expanding guest virtualbox image | dantwining.co.uk:



'via Blog this'



This worked for me on Debian Testing which has a habit of increasing in size purely due to the number of updates required.



I first tried compacting the disk without zeroing the space and the disk size went down from 12.485GB to 12.476, a massive 9MB saving. ;)



I then followed the procedure in the post modified slightly for Debian:



  1. Install zerofree using 'sudo apt install zerofree'
  2. Power off the virtual system using 'sudo poweroff'
  3. Boot the system holding left shift
  4. Select advanced options
  5. Select recovery mode using the latest installed kernel
  6. Identify your root filesystem (and any other filesystems you want to compact) using 'mount'; take a note of the filesystem type they are using as well
  7. 'service rsyslog stop'
  8. 'service network-manager stop'
  9. Run the following two commands for all the required filesystems:
    1. 'mount -n -o remount,ro -t ext4 /dev/sda1 /'
    2. 'zerofree -v /dev/sda1'
    3. Replace ext3 with the required filesystem type, / with the required mount point, and /dev/sda1 with the required device
  10. 'poweroff'
  11. Compact the files system using cmd prompt if on Windows:
    1. 'cmd' (run as administrator)
    2. 'C:'
    3. 'cd "\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox"'
    4. 'vboxmanage modifyhd "D:\VMs\Debian Testing\Debian Testing.vdi"' (replace the .vdi path with our own disk image)
My Debian testing disk image was then reduced to 7.333GB saving a further 5.143GB or 41% of the total space.