chaslinux.com – Page 5 – Anyone can learn Linux

March 27, 2023

findmonitor.sh – a Linux BASH shell script to create a PDF of monitor information

About findmonitor.sh The Working Centre’s not-for-profit Computer Recycling Project sometimes receives donations of many monitors all at once. Our previous method for handling monitors was to set them up, run them through a bunch of tests, print a label on our label printer, and enter the monitor into our point of sale. This method hasn’t worked very well for us when we’ve received a lot of monitors all at once.…

Xubuntu desktop background showing conky with 20 CPU cores displayed

March 20, 2023

Handbrake performance on more than 6 cores

Diminishing returns after 6 cores Handbrake is a video transcoder. It’s normally used to convert and compress video from a format into a more compressed format. Handbrake comes in a command line version, handbrake-cli, and a graphical version, handbrake. I’ve seen it mentioned several times that Handbrake is best at 6 cores or less, after that the encoding returns are diminishing. I thought this was the case with some of…

March 8, 2023

36 Extra programs Computer Recycling installs on our Xubuntu Linux systems

A mix of extra software designed to make transitioning to Linux easier The Computer Recycling Project at The Working Centre has been installing Linux on computers as far back as late 2001. Back then Linux wasn’t the primary operating system we installed on computers, but even way back in 2001 we saw the usefulness of Linux on the desktop. (If you want a real throwback, check out the distribution we…

February 22, 2023

Sometimes a newer computer isn’t better

Most of the time a newer computer *is* better Conventional wisdom dictates the newer a computer is, the better the computer is. This bit of advice generally holds true comparing an earlier version of a system with a later version of a similar system. A 12th generation i3-13100 processor will absolutely crush a 1st generation i7-970 in every aspect I can think of, and do it at less than 1/2…

February 17, 2023

If I was building a new Media Centre

I could cut corners, but… This evening I went through the exercise of thinking about the parts I would use if I was building a brand new computer to serve as our living room media centre. I went into this exercise thinking this is something I’d build if I wasn’t thinking about cost. The parts I’ve chosen are not necessarily optimal for the build, some, like the CPU cooling, are…

February 16, 2023

Updating Discord on Xubuntu

Discord is one of those applications that is a PITA (Pain In The Acetabulum). The problem is that updating Discord is not a matter of simply running sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade, the app likes to do its own thing. When Discord has an update, it starts the download of a new .deb (Debian Package) when launched. Discord won’t load if there’s an update waiting that hasn’t been…

hardware.sh, a BASH script that produces a PDF of hardware information

February 15, 2023

Hardware detection script for *buntu Linux refurbishers

About the script I wrote the hardware.sh BASH script to make it a bit simpler for volunteers at The Working Centre’s Computer Recycling Project to figure out what hardware was in a computer. For more than a dozen years we’ve been asking volunteers to gather information from the BIOS, or using phoronix-test-suite under our PXE booted Debian Live environment. Volunteers would write the information on quarter page-sized sheets we would…

February 4, 2023

22 Programs I regularly use under Xubuntu

Introduction (method for choosing programs) When coming up with this list of programs I use regularly under under Xubuntu I felt I had to set some criteria. Any program in this list had to be a program I use regularly outside of work. I use quite a few more programs that run under Xubuntu when I’m at work. While there’s some crossover between what I use at work and home,…

February 3, 2023

Add webp support to Xubuntu 22.04

Introduction (webp) The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is an amazing image editor. I’ve used GIMP at The Working Centre’s Computer Recycling Project ever since I started volunteering for the project back in November of 2001. GIMP is one of the programs in Xubuntu that can open images ending in the .webp extension. Webp is a format developed by Google that was intended to replace jpg, png, and gif formats.…

February 1, 2023

Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish

It’s a challenge to talk about Xubuntu Linux without referring to Xubuntu’s more popular relative, Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu Linux was started in 2004 and based around a then popular flavour/distribution of Linux, Debian. Debian Linux was the distribution The Working Centre’s Computer Recycling Project initially used to develop our own Linux distribution, WCLP – Working Centre Linux Project, way back in 2001. By 2006 the project had switched to Ubuntu…