Xubuntu

Hardware and Linux Distribution Differences This post covers a bunch of areas of media decoding and encoding that I’ve discovered over a number of years using Debian-based distributions like Xubuntu, and Linux Mint. Primarily I’ll cover some of the differences between Xubuntu and Linux Mint, how various hardware (CPUs and graphics cards) encode video, and some of the “gotchas” when it comes to different methods as they apply to Handbrake (software) and MakeMKV. ...

Jazz Jackrabbit – an introduction Back in 1994 the World Wide Web (WWW) was just starting to catch on, mostly via a dial-up connection. Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) were starting to be on the way out, but at the time I was running a bulletin board for a local computer club. One of the attractions of bulletin board systems (besides online games/aka doors, message boards, and chatting) were the extensive “shareware” software collections. If you weren’t going to a computer store to buy software, you were probably calling a bulletin board to download shareware or freeware software. Shareware software became known as “try before you buy” software. In most cases software was fully functional, but limited in some way (for example: a game where you could play the first few levels, but if you wanted more, you had to send the shareware author money for the rest of the software). ...

Introduction Recently I was checking out Youtube videos about a Linux-related program, and I came across a comment in one of the videos that I’ve seen before (I’m paraphrasing this to not identify the video or commenter): random comment on a Linux video: “Those commands don’t work. In Windows, you don’t have to write a book to install something. I’m going back to Windows.” The comment isn’t a question, but a statement: Linux is difficult, Windows is easier. ...

Moving more to a low-power solution Several months back I replaced the motherboard in the KODI media centre PC that sits in our living room. For many years our media centre has been rocking a Gigabyte motherboard with a second generation Core i7-2600 CPU. The Core i7-2600 came out in Q4 of 2010, making it almost 14 years old at the time I’m writing this. Still, it’s not a bad CPU. For several years it was the system I was compressing our movie collection on as the A8-5600K 4 core APU that was in my workstation (at the time) had about half the performance of the i7-2600. But about six months ago I replaced the CPU and motherboard with a still old, but more modern solution, a MSI motherboard and an Intel Core i3-7100. ...

Note: This is an older post, reposted from the old web site. The project has since mostly switched to Linux Mint XFCE versions 21.3 (Virginia) and 22.1 (Xia). We still have Xubuntu 24.04.2 on our PXE server, but only install it on request. Our checklist has evolved and we’ve separated some steps into other checklists. See my github repositories for more info. Workstation class hardware at a deeply discounted price Every now and then the Computer Recycling Project at The Working Centre gets a really interesting piece of hardware donated. As a not-for-profit project, most of our equipment is aimed at people who are lower income. This generally translates into lower prices, even for some equipment others would list for a lot more. But that doesn’t mean the project just wipes the machines, installs Linux, and dumps the equipment on a sales shelf… often equipment requires a little, or a lot more work. ...

Note: While I tried using Linux Mint XFCE at home for awhile, I still found Xubuntu 24.04.2 works best for my use cases. There are some filesystem differences, and while I was adverse to snaps because of control issues, I’m finding they have some advantages over flatpak that I like. This is a repost from the old website. Xubuntu Linux version 24.04 is out Version 24.04 of Xubuntu Linux is now out! Xubuntu Linux has been a staple of the Computer Recycling Project @ The Working Centre since 2010. With the project switching mostly to Linux, it’s now more important than ever that we’re up to date on trends, and new developments that affect the project. This new version of Xubuntu has a number of nice improvements, but in my testing on several different machines I’ve run into a number of issues as well. ...

The problem is power management (workaround) You’ve installed Xubuntu 22.04 on your laptop and things are going smoothly… Then you close the lid on your laptop and discover when you open it back up again that when you move the mouse it moves, but you cannot right or left click for some reason? The issue appears to be with power management. The work around we found that appears to fix this is to edit the file: ...

Switching printers at home Other than running out of toner, there was nothing wrong with the HP Laserjet P1102w printer we have at home. The printer printed cleanly, was compact, and was connected to our wireless network, so any machine on our network could print to it. In fact, I was planning on buying more toner this evening after we did our usual scouring of thrift shops. I thought there was a small chance I might find the right HP 85A toner at one of the stores we planned to go to. I did find some other toner at one of the thrift shops, and the $5.95 price tag wasn’t bad, but it was for a different model in the same line of printers. But this was actually after spotting an even better deal, an HP Laserjet 1320 duplex printer for a whopping $10.95. ...

OBS is awesome! Open Broadcasting Software, also known as OBS Studio, is an awesome piece of free and open source software that lets you capture audio and video from a wide variety of sources: screen capture, webcam, audio capture from the system, from an external source, from static images, slide shows, etc. It’s been awhile since I’ve used OBS to capture the desktop of one of the systems at work, an ASUS M51AC desktop with an i7-4770 CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. I installed OBS 30.0.1 and started to record a video of the desktop, using the webcam microphone for audio. After a bit of tweaking, adjusting Xubuntu’s microphone sensitivity, I managed to get audio recording correctly so audio levels did not “clip” (go into the red) in OBS. ...

Great, and a pain Discord is one of those programs I love to hate. I like Discord because it’s a good way for people to connect with me about Computer Recycling, and I find it really handy for connecting with people about Game Development and Game Jams. But the process for updating Discord on Linux isn’t good. Normally, I update most software on my system by opening a terminal (Windows Key + T) and typing: ...