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It was slow for me too, guys, but if you tweak the system, allocate virtual space for ram, etc., It is actually pretty decent...
My worries were ram and hd, I fixed those though, thankfully. My secret?: Tweek (not the powder or rocks, ie ur settings, fix them n00bz) Create virtual memory from the he, I allocated 16gb so for me I have 20gb of ram on this, 4gb + 16 virtual Get large memory card, I have 256gb and may upgrade, as needed ... |
Ok so I've had this laptop for a few days now and tested almost all the LInux Distros for those interested.
Here are the list of the best experiences right after install(all are 64bit): #1 Zorin Lite 15 #1 Xubuntu 18.04, only edit you will need is change touchpad behavior to disable trackpad while typing(enable and set it to 0.2 seconds, increase time if you need to). Other minor gripe is it doesn't come with htop, but it'll prompt you in terminal on how to install. Super fast start up(~5seconds to log in from cold) #1*Peppermint 10, this distro actually works the best right out of the box, all hotkeys work and everything. HOWEVER, this is a big however. I cannot get this distro to install, it errors out at configing since it doesn't have the controller for the eMMc drive. If you can get it to install I figure it'd be just as good if not better than Xubuntu #2 Manjaro 18.1.2XFCE, very good but has some screen flicker at max brightness and slower than Xubuntu. Also sometimes on start up it has graphical glitches. #3 Lubuntu 18.10. Everything good except one thing, which for me is a pretty big no, default driver for touchpad does not enable tap to click on touchpad, I didn't stay long enough to enable it. #4 Lubuntu Mate18.04.3 :good but slower than previous distros, also has more screen tear for me on youtube #5 Crunchbang++, keeps freezing and having issues #6 Debian cannot start Edit: I haven't tried installing to the eMMC, but the machine runs Debian stable reasonably well installed on a USB 3.0 dongle. I highly recommend the 5.2 backports kernel & the backports firmware-atheros package. Bluetooth is working. #7Bodhi LInux 5.0.0: freezing/slow/slow startup #8 PopOS: I tried a heavier OS for fun, this seems to work just fine, a little slower than the rest but as expected for a heavier specced OS I didn't try Linux mint or Ubuntu, those are heavier distros that I did not want to touch. They usually work with everything but not my purpose of using this laptop. Hope this helps you. |
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VERRRRY SUSPICIOUS. Virus.
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https://launchpad.net/~saiarcot89...o
Someone is building current chrome browsers with the hardware acceleration built in, compatible with ubuntu.
https://www.pcsuggest.c
"It's pretty simple to installing Chromium Beta with hardware acceleration enabled in Ubuntu,
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:saiarcot895/chromium-beta
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install chromium-browser
You will also need proper GPU drivers for accelerated video decoding, for Intel GPUs install VA-API driver and relate shared libraries.
sudo apt-get install libva-glx1 libva-x11-1 i965-va-driver
Note: I was trying to use VDPAU for decoding videos with NVIDIA Optimus GPUs on Chromium, but that seems to be not possible at this moment."
I don't think we have to do that last step if the distro has the AMD gpu driver, open source or proprietary, installed. Looks like for intel with an nvidia mention.
1. Download and install Chrome (or extract the necessary files, if you know how to do that).
2. From the Chrome installation directory (probably /opt/google/chome or something similar), copy libwidevinecdm.so into ~/.config/chromium.
3. Restart Chromium.
Quote from a chrome developer:
"Our goal is to have a Stable and secure browser first, and a GPU-accelerated one second, when possible.
As we found out time and again, any sort of GPU acceleration has a lot of maintenance associated with it, between the multitude of configurations our users run, the general lack of quality of drivers (in particular on Linux), and the constant stream of incoming issue due to new hardware, driver, or distribution release."
I was playing around with VLC last night(a work around), was able to do 1080p 60fps with only 50%ish cpu. https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/...treams_in/
https://launchpad.net/~saiarcot89...omium-beta [launchpad.net]
Someone is building current chrome browsers with the hardware acceleration built in, compatible with ubuntu.
https://www.pcsuggest.com/chromiu...ing-linux/ [pcsuggest.com]
"It's pretty simple to installing Chromium Beta with hardware acceleration enabled in Ubuntu,
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:saiarcot895/chromium-beta
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install chromium-browser
You will also need proper GPU drivers for accelerated video decoding, for Intel GPUs install VA-API driver and relate shared libraries.
sudo apt-get install libva-glx1 libva-x11-1 i965-va-driver
Note: I was trying to use VDPAU for decoding videos with NVIDIA Optimus GPUs on Chromium, but that seems to be not possible at this moment."
I don't think we have to do that last step if the distro has the AMD gpu driver, open source or proprietary, installed. Looks like for intel with an nvidia mention.
In fact, I just ran the costa rica 4k/60 in youtube at 1080 and 65-80% cpu utilization quite smoothly! Seems the default open source mesa driver is already in elementary and probably most other distros unless it was snipped out for size.
Install elementary (or try another)
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
This gives us the commands needed for the following.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:saiarcot895/chromium-dev
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install chromium-browser
If the last command doesn't seem to run, type it in again.
Now type:
chromium-browser
and up it comes.
Now in chrome tab:
chrome://flags/#enable-accelerated-video-decode
and install the h264ify chrome addin by googling it and hitting the "add to chrome" button.
I then ran the test video and saw with chrome://media-internals typed into a tab and clicking on the suspended h264 video stream that video_decoder is MojoVideoDecoder, or hardware acceleration!!!!!
Then enable widevine DRM for netflix, etc.
=== Widevine Support ===
The packages in this PPA have support for Widevine inside Chromium enabled. However, you still need to copy some files from Chrome into Chromium for you to use Netflix (or other websites using EME) in Chromium.
1. Download and install Chrome (or extract the necessary files, if you know how to do that).
2. From the Chrome installation directory (probably /opt/google/chome or something similar), copy libwidevinecdm.so into ~/.config/chromium.
3. Restart Chromium.
=== API Key ====
Some Chromium features, including Sync, require an API key, which is not included with the packages below. To use these features, please follow the 11 steps at http://www.chromium.or
export GOOGLE_API_KEY="api_key"
export GOOGLE_DEFAULT_CLIENT_ID="client_id"
export GOOGLE_DEFAULT_CLIENT_SECRET="client_secret"
Replace what is in the quotes (after the '=' sign in each line) with the appropriate value. You will need to log off and log back on (or restart if you prefer) for Chromium to use the keys.
=== NPAPI Plugins ===
Chromium dropped support for NPAPI plugins. This means that you cannot use the standard Flash (Flash 11.2) available through most methods. Instead, you'll need to install the PPAPI version of Flash through a package.
AND DONE!
Try this on other distros, may not work if its not ubuntu 18.04 LTS based like elementary is. Appears elementary includes the vaapi driver and looking at some benchmarks, thats the fastest decoder option. Surprised the AMD proprietary driver wasn't #1, but they haven't even released a newer driver...theirs is still only good for 18.04.
WOO HOO!
Of course, you have to manually update chrome periodically with another:
sudo apt install chromium-browser
And its a beta chrome release, not stable. So there may be bugs. And hope that guy keeps the PPA going.
...Try this on other distros, may not work if its not ubuntu 18.04 LTS based like elementary is. Appears elementary includes the vaapi driver and looking at some benchmarks, thats the fastest decoder option. Surprised the AMD proprietary driver wasn't #1, but they haven't even released a newer driver...theirs is still only good for 18.04.
...
Got the chrome sync working with the credentials and whatnot. What a bear. However if you follow the instructions it goes along fine. My lack of recent experience with linux guts definitely showed. At least I still remember vi commands from when I learned them in the 1980's.
Now I have to reinstall regular chrome and steal the widevines library so netflix will run. It wasn't clear from the directions if the library came with the PPA build and you just had to move it. Doesn't come with it, you need to steal it from another running linux chrome install.
And that'll be it!
Then it'll be time to address my home looking like a shipping warehouse for amazon and walmart.
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Our problems here stemmed from thinking it was something in the OS, video driver or ??? when all along chrome simply wasn't going to do gpu HW accel, even though it said it was.
Sounds like google had to pull people off of doing browser work to get something done on an 11th or 12th messaging app for android.
nvm: a few reboot and its working fine.
nvm: a few reboot and its working fine.
Still no luck getting netflix to work, but you can always keep a chrome install around and use that. Wildly varying hints/tips. Tried everything obvious and even tried useragent switching but netflix programmers worked overtime to make sure nobody can ever watch their content...
In fact, I just ran the costa rica 4k/60 in youtube at 1080 and 65-80% cpu utilization quite smoothly! Seems the default open source mesa driver is already in elementary and probably most other distros unless it was snipped out for size.
Install elementary (or try another)
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
This gives us the commands needed for the following.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:saiarcot895/chromium-dev
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install chromium-browser
If the last command doesn't seem to run, type it in again.
Now type:
chromium-browser
and up it comes.
Now in chrome tab:
chrome://flags/#enable-accelerated-video-decode
and install the h264ify chrome addin by googling it and hitting the "add to chrome" button.
I then ran the test video and saw with chrome://media-internals typed into a tab and clicking on the suspended h264 video stream that video_decoder is MojoVideoDecoder, or hardware acceleration!!!!!
...
Ok Tenkay thanks it works but mine on costa rica in 4k 60fps hdr running with h264ify and ublock origin for 1080p60fps cpu 80-97% utilization it ran much better way playable but still frames drops frequently but much much watch able with some stutter.
It is currently using MojoVideoDecoder in xubuntu 19.10.
I tried with other videos, it didn't seem very stable.
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It is currently using MojoVideoDecoder in xubuntu 19.10.
I tried with other videos, it didn't seem very stable.
Did you make a chromium build with the hw accel patch and the flag set? Or did you get mojovideodecoder working on something else?
Could also be the variance in performance/features between xubuntu and elementary?
I ran hours of youtube on it with good results. A few stopped saying the video couldn't be played (the thing I think may be related to ad blocking), but worked fine on refresh.
Do remember that stuff like costa rica and big buck bunny make any system wheeze a bit. My killer desktop plays them, but at resource levels well in excess of what the 14w's hardware can manage.