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 …

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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 …

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