Category: operating system - Freedom Penguin

How To Optimize Ubuntu for Speed

June 26, 2024

The release of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS is right around the corner and lots of users will be reloading their systems to take advantage of all the new features and updated software. Also, many other distributions are based on Ubuntu’s LTS versions, so all of you Linux Mint, elementary OS, Linux Lite and Zorin users can look forward to new versions coming along in the coming months, all based on Ubuntu 16.04. This means that lots of folks are going to be reloading their machines to get a nice clean install, so I’m going to present to you some tips and tricks that will make your system faster and more flexible. I’ve installed hundreds of Ubuntu systems over the last few years on all kinds of hardware and I have come up with a combination of tweaks that really make a huge difference in performance. You can mix and match to suit your own system but they really make the most difference when you start from scratch and put them all together at the time of installation.

The biggest data bottleneck in any computer happens whenever the system moves data into or out of hard drive storage so the focus here is on optimizing drive partitioning and activating system features that help keep data transfer rates high and make the most efficient use of available drive space.

Let’s assume that we’re going to install Ubuntu on a computer with one big happy hard drive and that drive is larger than 250 GB’s. We’re also going to assume that the machine does not have UEFI or Secure boot activated or it’s an older model that doesn’t have that feature. I see no benefit in UEFI with Linux so I always turn it off on client’s machines. Explaining how to disable UEFI is beyond the scope of this article because the procedure varies for different makes of computer motherboards but if you have to deal with it, there’s lots of great info on the Interwebs about how to get rid of it.

Hard drives come in three basic types these days: There’s standard spinning drives (HDD), solid state drives (SSD) and hybrid drives (SSHD). We will need to accommodate the differing needs of HDD’s and SSD’s. SSD’s require a bit more attention. SSHD’s are a combination of solid state and spinning drive technology but you can treat them just like standard HDD’s. The logic built into SSHD’s takes care of managing the solid-state portion of the drive. Enough with the preliminaries- let’s go!

Partitioning The Drive

The Ubuntu Ubiquity Installer will gladly partition our drive automatically if we choose “Erase disk and install Ubuntu.” The automatic installer creates one great big partition at the beginning of the drive space that contains the entire system, including all system files, boot files, and user data. It also creates a logical partition at the very end of the drive and assigns it as swap. It chooses the size of the swap area by figuring out the total amount of RAM in the system and giving it just a tiny bit more space than the amount of RAM in Megabytes.

This is all fine and good if we just want a quick and dirty install but what we’ll end up with will be less than optimal for performance and it won’t allow us to do some nifty things, like clone the drive and move the data to a bigger one or re-install Ubuntu or change to another distribution without having to reload our /home directories down the road. I often take this option when spinning up a VirtualBox VM or working with a client who is not all that computer savvy. We’re going for speed here so we’ll choose “Something else” from the list of options.

If the drive already has data on it, we’ll see partitions when the editor loads up. We want to start from scratch, so click on “New Partition Table”. This will remove the old partitions and give us a clean drive to work with. If this is a new drive, you may get a prompt asking you what kind of partition table you want to use. We’ll choose MS-DOS MBR. Either …

Manjaro vs Antergos | For The Record

February 14, 2024

| No Comments

| operating system

Both Manjaro vs Antergos are rolling release Linux distributions that are derived from Arch Linux. On the surface, they might appear to share a number of similarities. But it’s also important to realize that these two distros have some stark differences.

Before we get too deep into the Manjaro vs Antergos similarities, let’s first look at the roots of these two distributions – Arch Linux.

The Arch Linux Way

According to the Arch Linux website, Arch is designed to meet some very simple goals. Arch is designed to be fast, efficient and lightweight. In many respects, it’s arguably one of the best examples of what the Linux community can put together as a collective.

Arch Linux is also famous for its guiding set of principles.

– Simplicity: Keeping things simple.
– Modernity: Keeping up with the latest stable released software.
– Pragmatism: Offering both FoSS software and that of a proprietary nature.
– User centrality: The target user base is intermediate to advanced Linux users.
– Versatility: While most people use Arch as a desktop based operating system, Arch can be used for just about anything thanks in part to its extensive package repository.

For the Arch Linux target audience, these principles are a breath of fresh air. For Linux users who simply want the rolling release element of the distro bundled with the bleeding edge software, these principles simply aren’t what casual users want. Enter the Arch derivative distributions of Linux.

Antergos Linux is essentially Arch Linux

A lot of Arch users may disagree with me on this, but last time I checked Antergos was using Arch from end to end, plus a repository or two for Antergos specific packages. Remove those one or two repositories, you have an Arch distribution of Linux.

Where Antergos differs from Arch comes down to the fact Antergos is built to make using the distro simple. Antergos comes with a GUI installer, plus it also has a really great feature selection tool to make customizing your desktop experience dead simple.

One feature that I love about Antergos is that I can select my desktop environment with one ISO. This means I can decided on the desktop environment during my installation. I opted for GNOME since this is the most commonly used desktop with Antergos.

Then there is the matter of selecting additional features for your installation. I choose to install Antergos with Chromium as my only browser. I also choose to use a long term support (LTS) kernel for stability, printing support, the Steam gaming client and the uncomplicated firewall (UFW).

It’s little things like the feature selector that make using Antergos so dead simple to install a full featured desktop.

The next item I’d like to show you is the Antergos updater application.

This update software allows you to select the repositories you wish to install from, check for updates automatically (on a schedule you select), and even check for updates from the Arch User Repository (AUR).

From the same application, simply click back and you’re now in the package manager. From here, you can install software from the Arch repositories or from the AUR.

Outside of the items listed above, Antergos is essentially an Arch installation using the GNOME 3 desktop environment. There are no special tools or control panels post-installation. Even the package manager is simply a tool called Pacmac that’s available from the Arch repositories.

Manjaro Linux is based on Arch Linux

Manjaro Linux isn’t Arch. Not only does it use its own repositories that are in no way affiliated with Arch Linux, about the only thing it shares with Arch is the fact that it’s a rolling release and is compatible with the AUR.

There are three desktop environments available, however the default ISO available for Manjaro offers is XFCE. The installer is simple to use but is rather basic. There isn’t any feature selector provided during the installation. So whatever Manjaro comes with by default is what you’re going to get. For most people, this isn’t a big deal. It’s simply a point of consideration you should be aware of if deeper installation control matters to you.

Once …

Exploring Tiling Window Managers

November 22, 2024

| No Comments

| operating system

If you have a low-resource computer, one with a small screen like some laptops, or are even someone just looking for something different to try, a tiling window manager could be a good option. They’re not for everybody, but then they’re not just for command-line commandos either.

I’m a keyboard guy, I like using keyboard shortcuts and keeping my hands on the keyboard as much as possible. Besides, I suck at touch typing and reaching for the mouse constantly just throws me all out of whack when I go back to the keyboard. It’s one of the reasons I was a KDE user for such a long time. KDE’s Plasma Desktop is probably the most keyboard customizable desktop environment out there. Plasma had some quirks though; there were bugs and oddities that annoyed me quite often. So I found myself in the “looking for something different” category.

I decided to give Gnome 3 a try. It’s a very nice desktop, though not as keyboard-friendly as Plasma, but close. It’s slick, well thought-out and quite customizable. I used it for a while, but—maybe it’s just me—it seemed like there was a lot of wasted space in the user interface. When putting applications side-by-side or corner tiling them, it seemed like so much of the screen was taken up with UI elements that it was annoying. That, and every time there was an update, something would break. Generally what broke were the extensions I had installed for it, and sometimes the theme I was using. I tried Enlightenment E17 next. It was also very nice, but it had a confusing settings manager and was just buggy. In time, I probably would have learned the configuration, sorted out the various bugs, and made better use of it. But time wasn’t a luxury I had much of. So then I tried MATE, and liked it a lot. Still do, and have it installed on my machine, though I rarely use it anymore. What I started to run into was theming quirks, that are mainly caused by GTK 3 apps and the constantly shifting way they’re themed. I run a very mixed set of applications, some Qt, some GTK 3 and some GTK 2, with a smattering of command-line ones. It was getting really hard to find a theme that would work well with all my apps and not pollute my ~/.xesssion-errors file with warnings and errors. MATE is a great desktop and I still use it from time to time just for a change. But there were still some personal irks (quirks?) I had with it that kept me looking for another option. Since I’d been seeing a lot about tiling window managers, I figured what the heck, let’s give one of them a try. That was about 2 years ago, and I’ve been using one ever since.

There seems to be a general idea that tiling window managers are for the geeky, that they’re only for command-line gurus and those who choose to live in a CLI world. Frankly, most screen-shots we see of them in action do nothing to dispel the idea. Tons of terminals open in little tiles showing code and system stats that are the common fodder. The plain fact is this is simply not true. GUI apps work wonderfully well in a tiling window manager. There are trade-offs, though. Tilers are very keyboard-centric, though you can still use a mouse for many things. If you’re a mouse maven, you probably don’t want to try one. They’re very basic, though many are infinitely expandable and customizable. Out-of-the-box they have few if any system-tray widgets, fancy menus or glitzy themes. They also don’t have compositors, at least none that I know of (yet). So if you want effects like drop-shadows and transparency, you’ll have to install a separate compositor. Probably the biggest sticking point for many is: while some tilers are usable right away, many require some configuration before you can even use them. All of them will eventually require the user digging into configuration files to get the most out of them. For these trade-offs what you get is a window manager that makes ultimate use of your screen space, …

Skype’s Dead – All Hail WebRTC

November 5, 2024

| No Comments

| Linux, operating system

It seems like only yesterday that Skype came onto the scene. Suddenly, the idea of making calls over the Internet felt completely doable. Before this, the alternatives were pretty limited. I forget my first experiences with Skype, but I remember some of the “boutique” distros at the time we’re bundling with it (Xandros, etc).

Well, according to this page the party is over. Seems he’s still under the impression Microsoft gives two rips about Linux users or their non-enterprise customers. Fun fact, Microsoft doesn’t care. Don’t get me wrong, I think Skype’s download page still making reference to Ubuntu 12.04 is quite disappointing too. But I’ve long since shrugged and moved on with my life. Today, I’ll show you what I use instead.

But everyone I know uses Skype

I deal with this frequently myself, especially from my “Windows using co-workers.” Basically I have two options: I can use my existing installation of Skype to be added to their existing meeting or I can use my Android phone. Although this is far from ideal, it does provide me with a stop gap.

During a work related meeting I had on the 24th (a remote call-in meeting I needed to attend), one of the things that came up was the need to do screen sharing. My co-workers needed to share their screen with me, but as usual Skype failed for some reason. Roughly 15 seconds later, the meeting’s creator started up a screen share with his Join.Me account. No big deal.

Now for those instances I simply have to have a video conversation, I’ve been pushing people into trying Firefox Hello (using WebRTC). There are other alternatives that are also WebRTC based, if you prefer. Based on my tests, Firefox’s Hello has worked rock solid from Firefox to Firefox. Your mileage may vary, though.

How I use WebRTC

It’s no secret that I have Telegram running on my desktop most of the time. When someone needs to reach me, this is one of the most common methods. This means either I can send a link to a WebRTC chat or someone on my Telegram list can send one to me instead. To this end, I generally recommend using Firefox Hello. It’s what I use when chatting one on one with a single person.

So how’s the performance? How about this – two bar 4G connection on an Android tablet vs a wired connection on my Linux PC.

Some takeaways

1) The audio was recorded from a $40 tablet I got from Verizon. The Linux PC was connected to a wired connection.

2) Since I had booted into my Antergos partition to run updates, I decided to try this experiment right then on the spot. I usually run this on my Ubuntu MATE desktop.

3) There were two bars of network service here.

4) The audio on both ends was pretty good. It may have looked odd with both angles, but I can tell you it was a flawless experience. I listened to audio from both sources and each matched the video of the source.

Clearly, WebRTC is terrible, right? Not.

So how about Skype? How can we get people to use Firefox Hello instead? Well it’s pretty tough – ready? First, assume the Skype user has a copy of Chrome or Firefox installed. With me so far? The next step is to make sure Firefox Hello is open, then click on the little link that looks like a chain. Done? Great, it’s been copied. All you have to do is send that to whoever you wish to talk to.

Facebook messenger, Telegram, Google Hangouts chat – send it any way you want. When they receive the link, the click it and you’re all set. Compared to installing Skype on any platform and adding contacts, it’s far easier to send someone a link through a messenger folks actually have open.

What about conference calls?

Now it would be fair to point out that the biggest shortcoming of Firefox’s Hello feature is that it’s limited on how many people can participate. After some testing, it appears it only supports two video chat participants…sort of like Skype on Linux.

Desktop –

…

Solus Review For Casual Users

November 1, 2024

| No Comments

| operating system, Solus

I have been watching the progress with Solus Linux from afar for some time now. I’ve even had other Freedom Penguin contributors share their thoughts on Solus. So when I decided to give everyone my review, I wanted to make sure I cover the basics…then move on to the stuff I cared about – using it as a daily driver.

Solus is not based on any other distro. It’s a Linux unto itself and this article shares my experience with it.

Solus Review – The installation

Honestly, installing any modern Linux distro is incredibly uneventful and boring. This isn’t a bad thing, rather a point of fact we need to remember when we read about or watch someone doing a Linux review. With that bit of unpleasantness out of the way, there are some cool items of note with the Solus installation I’d like to point out.

The user security policy for Solus is great. Some distros will allow you to utilize terrible passwords limited to under five characters. Solus puts its foot down on this practice and requires the passwords be longer than some newbies might be inclined to run with.

Because of this, I ended up going with a seven character password that Solus allowed without any further delay.

Another nice touch that made my day was that Solus presented me with the option to add additional users to the upcoming Solus installation. Best of all, the summary of each user to be added is explicitly clear as to the abilities and control granted to said user.

From here, I finished up my Solus installation and was ready to see what the desktop had to offer.

Solus Review – First impressions of Budgie

The Budgie desktop is fantastic. It’s responsive, logically laid out and reflects a balance between staying out of your way while respecting the traditional desktop experience.

One of my favorite highlights is how Budgie utilizes a traditional menu launcher, yet the settings and other elements of the desktop still manage to utilize some of its GNOME Shell roots (speaking of the gtk elements Budgie is NOT based on GNOME Shell). I especially appreciate the Budgie settings that seem to borrow the best of GNOME Tweaks, but do so in a more integrated way.

Solus Review – Package management

Last time I tried Solus, I found most of the programs I needed, yet still had to put in a couple of requests for some that I found missing. In 2017, Solus has added these applications that I need in addition to providing Flatpak support.

Software like Simplenote, MakeMKV, OBS Studio, Wire – all available in the software repositories. There is also a growing number of third party (often proprietary) software is also available in the Third Party section of the package manager.

The available Third Party applications is also impressive. All of the expected titles ranging from Chrome, Plex, Skype, Slack and Enpass are included. I especially appreciated seeing the inclusion of the Google Talk plugin. This is what allows us to use services like G+ Hangouts.

One final aspect I wanted to touch on is that there is a setting in the Software Center for those of you who might be on metered bandwidth. This is helpful as it’s turned on by default and helps to prevent heavy data usage when checking for updates.

Solus Review – Odds and Ends

In the above video, I touched on installing and running software that wasn’t made available in the Solus repositories. First off, it turns out that while you can absolutely run PIA (the VPN provider) using the OpenVPN client with 100% success, the Linux application that comes with the OpenVPN PIA script doesn’t work as I initially thought.

Next up is the PulseAudio Equalizer. I haven’t tested this yet outside of a virtual machine environment just yet. However, based on testing the GUI aspect of it, I believe it does indeed work and will be providing a tutorial on this later on.…

Solus Stands on Its Own

April 29, 2024

| No Comments

| operating system

If I had to pick one operating system of the year, I would be picking Ubuntu MATE 16.04, if Solus hadn’t come along and stolen the title.

If it was a contest (and let’s admit it; it is.) this would be nothing short of a gripping and dramatic victory for Solus’ lead developer Ikey Doherty and team, especially in this new generation of proven and truly great Linux systems. If it wasn’t for the fact that the Linux community at-large was full of such amazing and cooperative people, I would call it a distro war.

Now, before I get called out for trying to “sensationalize”, let’s get something straight. In recent weeks I have heard the words “competition” and “competitors” used more in the interchange of “fellow developers of other distros” than I have ever heard in my years of involvement with open source.

And I’m proud to say that I welcome it with open arms. Nothing makes you better than someone trying to outdo you. At the moment, no one is trying to outdo you like Team Solus, so you’d better eat your Wheaties.

They’ve Been Win-ning!

If you’ve used Solus at all in the past couple of months you’ve probably noticed a deluge of changes and bug fixes. I feel as though I’ve been watching a day and night construction of the Winchester House; only this time it’s not out of fear of ghosts and the stairs being added actually lead somewhere.

It’s been an amazing (and sometimes startling) experience. Anyone who read my initial Solus review will probably remember my misadventure with Wine, where I was trying to get a Windows MUD client to load. My reaction was genuine. I was writing in real time. One minute I was testing the client in Solus and it wasn’t working. A few minutes later I tried it again, using the same method as before and it worked. I was able to play Aardwolf on Solus and it was like getting a present. Is there a Betty Ford for MUDs, by the way?

Many, many improvements have occurred since those heady days of development by Ikey and the gang. Most recently, with the 1.2.0.5 release, some of the tightening up includes a fix for a slightly annoying battery icon refresh issue and some keyboard region “guess” issues.

They also switched over to Gnome screensaver for screen locking and for better power management. Somewhat infamous installation issues for the Nvidia Maxwell cards as well as the Intel Skylake chip series were addressed. Gnome technology stacks for 3.20 were added as well as Ikey’s favorite PulseAudio 9, Mesa 12, GCC 6.1.0 and glibc 2.2.4.

If you’ve ever been curious but afraid to try installing it yourself, Solus saved you the trouble of installing the latest Linux kernel, 4.7.2. So far my experience has been really terrific and I’ve not run into any issues in these regards.

I’ve Got to Run, Run Like the Wind…

I like an OS that doesn’t mess around and Solus definitely gets to the point and sings in the startup and shutdown departments. Even on my recently modified Acer Chromebook 15 with SeaBIOS it boots up in 13 seconds. You read that right. Even with Numix icons installed and having to select Solus on GRUB. There’s even an optimistic little “Doong-doong-doong!!” chime once the desktop appears Shutdown? Four. That’s applause-worthy.

Apps start up very quickly, with even Google Chrome beating the clock. So even on low-spec systems, you can really sense the drive for a great desktop experience. It’s light, but pretty. It’s fast but doesn’t skimp. It’s easy; even if you’re the laziest desktop user on the planet you can get what you need without having to go spearfishing on the Internet.

Beavis Installs Packages

In the Solus repo, you’ve got a slew of new packages ready to go whenever you want them. In fact, 41 were introduced, however many of those fulfill several software dependencies for installing others. However, those are easy to spot since they use a “brown postal wrapper” icon. Another thoughtful touch is Solus’s way of understanding that you’re pretty busy and don’t have time to look through all your …

Ubuntu Bluetooth Headphones Fix

September 2, 2024

| No Comments

| operating system, Ubuntu

After extensive testing and research, I have put together a complete work-around for playing high-quality audio through Bluetooth headphones using the Blueman Bluetooth application. I haven’t bothered testing this with other Bluetooth applications. If memory serves me, the alternative Bluetooth apps lack the ability to choose audio profiles – but I might be wrong. Going forward, just understand that this was done exclusively with Blueman.

Default Ubuntu Bluetooth settings work, but don’t work

By default, Ubuntu’s (and other distros’) Bluetooth settings provide working connections to most Bluetooth speakers and smartphones. Heck, using a cheap Bluetooth dongle on your computer, you can share your smart phone’s 4G Internet connection. Works incredibly well. And the same can be said when connecting to your Bluetooth speaker. Using the A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile) Bluetooth profile setting, today’s modern Bluetooth speakers work well because they only offer one profile – A2DP.

This leads us back to Bluetooth headphones. While there are exceptions, many of these headphones are actually headsets. This means they serve as a means of speaking to others over the phone or VoIP. Complete with a microphone, these headsets are considered to be HSP/HFP (Headset Profile) devices first, A2DP (high quality audio) second.

So here’s the meat of the problem with these headsets acting as headphones – Ubuntu’s default Bluetooth settings don’t like to cooperate with A2DP settings. Just as frustrating, the microphone portion of HSP doesn’t work due to a known bug.

Let’s summarize:

– Bluetooth speakers using A2DP only work fine.
– Bluetooth headsets using HSP/A2DP do not. An exception to this might be headsets without HSP profile functionality.

To address this problem, we’re going to be editing some specific files so that we can get Bluetooth headsets to work correctly and provide us with A2DP functionality. This will allow us to enjoy high-quality audio for watching videos, listening to podcasts or simply enjoying our favorite music. Sadly, at this time I haven’t had any luck with getting HSP profiles to allow for microphone compatibility. This may be fixed sometime in the future.

Editing the right conf files

To make things work correctly, we’re going to edit the following.

/etc/Bluetooth/input.conf
/usr/bin/start-pulseaudio-x11
/etc/Bluetooth/main.conf
/etc/pulse/default.pa

Now, I highly recommend backing up each of these files before editing them.

sudo cp /etc/Bluetooth/input.conf /etc/Bluetooth/input.bak

sudo cp /usr/bin/start-pulseaudio-x11 /usr/bin/start-pulseaudio-x11.bak

sudo cp /etc/Bluetooth/main.conf /etc/Bluetooth/main.bak

sudo cp /etc/pulse/default.pa /etc/pulse/default.bak

By backing these files up, you’re able to restore them instantly should you find this doesn’t work with your headset in question. That said, if you follow my instructions, happen to be using bluez 5.37-0ubuntu5, pulseaudio 1:8.0-0ubuntu3.2 running on Ubuntu 16.04, you should have no problem getting this to work.

Important! Be aware that when I updated Ubuntu 16.04 to use a newer version of pulseaudio, I found that the ability to switch audio profiles wasn’t cooperating. I’m still testing the newer version of pulseaudio to see if any additional changes need to be made. Therefore, on my daily PC, I am only running with security updates and various PPAs – I’m not updating recommended or unsupported updates. This will change once I have a chance to better vet the newer pulseaudio package.

First, we have /etc/Bluetooth/input.conf to edit. With each file, my recommendation is to erase the contents of the original and replace it with my edited version of each file.

http://pastebin.com/nzzTQCUT

Erase the original contents of your /etc/Bluetooth/input.conf, then copy the above pastebin and make it your new /etc/Bluetooth/input.conf – the active part here is IdleTimeout=0, which should help prevent your Bluetooth from timing out.

Next we need to edit the /usr/bin/start-pulseaudio-x11 file:

http://pastebin.com/TSkxbQh6

The part of the file that matters here is below:

if [ x"$SESSION_MANAGER" != x ] ; then
/usr/bin/pactl load-module module-x11-xsmp "display=$DISPLAY session_manager=$SESSION_MANAGER" > /dev/null
fi

Now we begin editing the Bluetooth configuration itself, in /etc/Bluetooth/main.conf:

http://pastebin.com/CSH9dtVp

I won’t bother touching on all the parts of this file that allow stuff to work, but suffice it to say we’re setting this up with a minimal configuration.

Then finally, we have our system wide pulseaudio settings in /etc/pulse/default.pa:

http://pastebin.com/q1jB7qDs

In this file, you can find the changes by looking for Matt in the code. I added it for …