Rade UK

By default Dolphin File Manager is set to open the last viewed location, and I find that quite annoying because if the last location was a USB drive that is no longer mounted, when you open Dolphin it will try and load that last location but it will display an error as it is no longer mounted. Additionally if the last location was a folder you accessed that required sudo, it will also display an error. You can easily change the behaviour of Dolphin File Manager so that it will always open to a location of your choice, for example your home directory, which makes the most sense to me. Personally I think KDE should default to opening your /home directory and not the last location you accessed.  Or is it just me?

I've been using Ubuntu 23.10 as my main OS for a few months now and its been really great, doing everything I need. My needs are not much, I use my PC to browse the internet, record game play from my PlayStation 5, simple edits to videos and that's about it. Well... I've started playing a few games again in Steam through Proton and it is impressive to see older games like APB Reloaded and Warframe run better in Ubuntu than Windows 11 on my Intel Arc A770 graphics card. Ubuntu 23.10 with custom icons and background July 2024 marks the end of Ubuntu 23.10 but April 2024 will see the release of Ubuntu 24:04 LTS which I am looking forward to, and it will be my main OS going forward. I think right now in 2024 Linux based operating systems are a very viable alternative to Windows but holding it back is a lack of awareness about open source software, and some areas where mainstream hardware support is lagging behind, wireless networking is a good example. There is...

This is a little tip on how to boost gaming performance in Linux when gaming on an Intel Arc graphics device. By default your Intel Arc device will be scaling its GPU clock frequency, my Arc A770 scales its frequency between 300MHz and 2400MHz. This can be a performance issue especially when playing games and if we fix the frequency so it does not scale we can achieve more consistent FPS or in some cases better FPS. It will be the older less GPU intensive games that see the most benefit. To quickly illustrate this, I am going to run glxgears with vsync disabled in a terminal vblank_mode=0 glxgears 21805 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4360.969 FPS 21947 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4389.193 FPS 21930 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4385.876 FPS 21966 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4392.969 FPS 21934 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4386.701 FPS This is with GPU frequency scaling. The next set of results have frequency scaling disabled, GPU frequency is fixed to 2400MHz. 52209 frames in 5.0 seconds = 10441.599 FPS 53527 fr...

This guide will show you how to recompile and customize your current Ubuntu 23.10 kernel. Reasons you may wish to do this include learning, changing kernel settings or just for fun. There are a number of different ways to do this, I like simple and easy to manage (see Debian kernel handbook chapter 4 ) and in this guide we will download the Ubuntu linux-source using apt install and compile the kernel as a *.deb package. At the time of writing in Ubuntu 23.10, the current linux-source is 6.5.0. Updates may change that, therefore take this into account when reading this guide. Also as a side note, this guide assumes secure boot is disabled. Before you begin I strongly recommend changing the default grub boot behavior so that you have a grub menu on boot and can select your kernel. By default the grub boot menu is hidden. This will make it easy to boot into a working kernel should your custom kernel result in a system that fails to boot. Using a text editor edit the defa...

A very interesting development if it does happen, I first became aware of this from a site called Phoronix and as pointed out over there more details can be found at: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/2051342 Ubuntu and many other Linux distributions come with a very generic kernel, not optimised for anything in particular but one key area this impacts quite negatively is gaming and multimedia.  Gaming on Linux has increased phenomenally since the release of Valve's steam deck powered by their custom Arch Linux distribution and their efforts with Steam and Proton, and with interest in gaming on Linux being at an all time high more and more people are trying it out only to be let down by their Linux distribution being poorly optimised out of the box for gaming. The Linux kernel being a major contributing factor, so much so that we now have gaming orientated distributions such as Nobara that have kernels tuned for low latency and various other tweaks to improve gam...

This is a quick guide on how to setup IPFire so that multiple PlayStation 5 consoles can play Call of Duty at the same time with an open NAT connection. Call of Duty on the PlayStation 5 uses UDP port 3074. To get an open NAT connection all you have to do is port forward UDP port 3074 to your PlayStation 5's local IP. However, when you have two (or more) PlayStation 5's and you and someone else wish to play COD together at the same time, you cannot port forward UDP port 3074 to both consoles ( You can create the rule but it wont work ) and play simultaneously with an open NAT. One will work and one won't, or there will be connectivity issues resulting in both unable to play. This is normal port forwarding behavior. If you think about what port forwarding does you will understand why. It is a rule that tells your router to send all incoming external traffic inbound for UDP port 3074 to a single local IP. Incoming external traffic: UDP 3074---> send to ---> 10.0.0.2 Now...

I've been using pfsense for a few years and it has been a good replacement over a traditional router but I've been dissatisfied with its online gaming performance. If I plug my modem directly to my PlayStation 5 and play COD MW2, things are good. If I then use pfsense, even if it is configured to allow an open NAT the gaming experience is like there is some form of delay despite having the same ping. I would describe this as other players seem to be reacting well in advanced and I appear to be out of sync. This is more evident when I watch myself dying in the kill cam and see what the other play saw me do. Either pfsense is bad, I've configured it poorly, it's a hardware issue or a combination of these things.  In any event I decided to give IPFire a go and my COD MW2 experience is like I have my modem plugged directly into my PlayStation 5. Even my PC online browsing is more responsive and things are loading quicker! I therefore recommend using IPFire over pfsense -  h...