Category Archives: Howto

[XPS 15 9560/Precision 55520] FIX for Lag/Stuttering on Kaby Lake

Posted on by
50

I bought a Dell XPS 15 9560 recently and after setting it up and updating all drivers, etc. I noticed there was a lag/stuttering when using Google Chrome browser.

It turns out I was not alone – apparently many people noticed the same problem. I came across this reddit thread which helped me to fix the issue: [XPS 15 9560/Precision 55520] FIX for Lag/Stuttering on Kaby Lake

The problem seems to be a buggy driver for the Intel HD Graphics 630 display adapter.

The most current version (as of the time of writing) on the Dell web site is version 21.20.16.4574

In order to fix the problem you need to download version 21.20.16.4590 from the Intel’s web site: Intel® Graphics Driver for Windows [15.45.14.4590]

EDIT (17 April 2017): You should see a yellow banner on Intel’s site saying there is a newer version of the driver:

It is version 15.45.16.4627 and it is working fine on the same computer I installed 4590 before. You may wanna use the newer one. The steps below are the same regardless if you use 4627 or 4590.

There is .exe and .zip file. Download the .zip file and save it on your disk. Extract the files.

Right-click the start button and run Device Manager:

Expand the Display Adapters, right-click Intel(R) HD Graphics 630 and select Update Driver Software…

Important: In the dialog below do not click Next or Browse. Instead click on Let me pick from a list of devices on my computer.

You will see a list of devices. This just shows the graphic card and what drivers are installed. You may have more than one driver installed for the same graphic card. This is normal – when a newer version is installed the old one is kept so you can revert back to an older driver if you want.

Important: The picture below shows one of the items selected – this was my mistake. You do not have to select one. Just click Have Disk… to continue.

Navigate to the folder where the drivers were unzipped. Open the Graphics folder. In my case the full path is C:\Users\Vicki\Downloads\win64_154514.4590\Graphics

There should be an .inf file. Select it and click Open.

This should start the installation. After it is complete verify the driver has version 21.20.16.4590.

Note: The steps might be different for you since I took the screen-shots after I had the new driver installed.

The important part is to not click Next but to choose Let me pick from a list of devices on my computer as mentioned earlier.

This seems to fix the lag/stuttering I was experiencing. I hope this works for you too.

Ubuntu updates via command line

Posted on by
Reply

Update:

sudo apt-get update        # Fetches the list of available updates
sudo apt-get upgrade       # Strictly upgrades the current packages
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade  # Installs updates (new ones)

Clean up the system from old packages:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get autoclean && sudo apt-get clean && sudo apt-get autoremove

Check the Ubuntu version:

lsb_release -a

Force Apt-Get to IPv4 or IPv6 on Ubuntu or Debian

Posted on by
Reply

You can force IPv4 with:

apt-get -o Acquire::ForceIPv4=true update

or IPv6:

apt-get -o Acquire::ForceIPv6=true update

To make this persistent,check this post out:

https://www.vultr.com/docs/force-apt-get-to-ipv4-or-ipv6-on-ubuntu-or-debian

How to install Mono on Ubuntu

Posted on by
Reply 
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 3FA7E0328081BFF6A14DA29AA6A19B38D3D831EF

echo "deb http://download.mono-project.com/repo/debian wheezy main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mono-xamarin.list

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install mono-runtime

How to install .Net Core on Ubuntu 16.04

Posted on by
Reply

Add the dotnet apt-get feed

In order to install .NET Core on Ubuntu, you need to first set up the apt-get feed that hosts the package you need.

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://apt-mo.trafficmanager.net/repos/dotnet-release/ xenial main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/dotnetdev.list'
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver apt-mo.trafficmanager.net --recv-keys 417A0893
sudo apt-get update

Install .NET Core SDK

Before you start, please remove any previous versions of .NET Core from your system by using this script.

sudo apt-get install dotnet-dev-1.0.0-preview2-003121

Initialize some code

Let’s initialize a sample Hello World application!

mkdir hwapp
cd hwapp
dotnet new

Run the app

The first command will restore the packages specified in the project.json file, and the second command will run the actual sample:

dotnet restore
dotnet run

And you’re ready!

You now have .NET core running on your machine!

Source: .Net Core on Ubuntu

How To Watch Netflix on Ubuntu The Easy Way

Posted on by
Reply

I was trying to find a way to watch Netflix in Ubuntu 14.04 In the past you had to install Wine and Silverlight. Since Google Chrome 37 it should work natively. Still I was getting Error Code: M7063-1913

It turns out some libraries were messed up. Apparently the problem is fixed in 14.10 Alpha but I wanted to keep running the oficiall stable version.

I step by step instructions on how to get Netflix to work in Google chrome in Ubuntu 14.04 are available here:


How To Watch Netflix on Ubuntu The Easy Way

Re-map keyboard keys

Posted on by
Reply

Many computer keyboards have an Fn key. It allows adding a second function to an existing key. An example is the F11 key. In combination with the Fn key it acts as a Volume Down:

Fn + F11 = Volume Down

Some other keyboards have this the opposite way – F11 acts as a Volume Down by default and you have to press and hold Fn in order to get the normal F11 key functionality.

If you want to change the default behaviour and you are lucky enough all it takes is to make the change in the BIOS of the computer. More likely your computer have no such setting so you need to use a keyboard re-mapping software. One such program is SharpKeys.

Ubuntu on a stick – Installation

Posted on by
Reply

This is the first in a series of blog posts that talk about running Ubuntu from a USB flash drive.

Ubuntu (/u:’bu:ntu:/ oo-BOON-too) is a Debian-based Linux operating system. For more information about the operating system itself, please check Ubuntu (operating system) on Wikipedia.

Now that you know what Ubuntu is you may still wonder why anyone would like to run it from a USB flash drive. How about having a free full feature GUI operating system that comes with tons of free tools and applications that you can carry with you and run on any computer that has a USB port without the need to install anything? And it will even run on this 10-year old computer in your basement and will recognize all your devices and will install all the necessary drivers automatically. Not convinced yet? Well, I respect your right to do whatever you want with your time – go check what your friends are doing on Facebook or waste couple of hours on Minecraft. If on the other hand you are curious or stubborn enough to keep reading I will show you how to install Ubuntu on USB flash drive in few easy steps.

I will be doing this from Windows. I have 8GB USB flash drive and part of it will be used to host Ubuntu and the rest will be used for sharing files. In order to achieve this I need to partition the USB drive first. In Windows I use EaseUS Partition Master. Download it from here.

Install and run EaseUS Partition Master with the USB plugged in. We are going to create 3 partitions.

Partition 1
Type: Logical
File System: FAT32
Size: 2GB
Label: STORAGE

Partition 2
Type: Primary
File System: FAT32
Size: 1GB
Label: UBUNTULIVE

Partition 3
Type: Primary
File System: EXT2
Size: 4.22GB (The rest of the space)
Label: casper-rw

Press the “Apply” button to re-partition the USB drive. You should see something similar:

p01

The first partition will be used for file sharing. It is FAT32 because this is the file system that most of the operating systems can read. You can use it under Windows and Linux. If you need more space you can make it bigger at the expense of the last partition (casper-rw).

The second partition is where we are going to install UBUNTU. 1GB is a perfect size. It has to be FAT32 and Primary. Make sure it is set to Active. Since Windows will only show one partition for a removable USB flash drive we need this partition setup as described in order to be accessible in Windows.

The third partition will be used to store any changes we make to Ubuntu – installing new applications, changing the desktop image, etc. EXT2 is a good choice for a file system when it comes to USB flash drive. EXT3 and EXT4 are newer and have some advantages but also come with excessive disk operations which is not desirable for a USB flash.

Now you need to download the Ubuntu ISO file. We want the desktop version. I am using the 64-bit but you should make sure your computer is 64-bit. Otherwise get the 32-bit version. At the time of writing this the latest available version is Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS.

The next step is to install UBUNTU on the USB. There are several tools to do that and I had different results in the past. One that work well for me is Universal USB Installer. Download it.

Run the installer and on the selections page select Ubuntu from the drop-down, browse to the location you saved the ISO file and select the USB Flash Drive from the drop-down. Also use the slider to specify the Persistent file size. Do not slide it all the way to the right because it will complain there is no enough space. Just put the slider in the middle – the size of the file is not important since we are not going to use it at all. We are doing it just to make the installer to update some configuration files that tell the system to persist the changes. We will be using the third partition we created to persist all the changes we are making to our system:

p02

Leave the installer to run and be patient. When it is ready you should see a message like this:

p03

Click the “Close” button to finish. Go to the USB in file explorer and delete a file called casper-rw. This is the file that would keep all the changes normally. Since we have a dedicated partition we do not need it and have to delete it.

The last step will be to hide the UBUNTU partition and instead make the STORAGE partition the active one. Run the EaseUS Partition Master and make the STORAGE partition Primary and set it to Active:

p04

As a result you will see a new drive labeled STORAGE in windows explorer which you can use to for storing files – music, pictures, etc.

Now it is time to boot from the USB. Depending on the computer you have you might have to change the boot order in your BIOS or if it supports a boot menu you can select the USB drive directly from there. Once the GUI loads try to change the desktop background and reboot again. You should see the new background you selected which confirms that the changes we make to the system are persisted between restarting the computer.

This is it! Hopefully it works for you. If you have any problems, please go back and make sure you followed all the steps. If you still have questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Keep in mind that in general Ubuntu will run much slower from a USB flash drive than from a regular hard-drive. What the USB gives us is a system we can take with us and run on another computer. If you have a dedicated computer on which you would like to run Ubuntu it is much better to install it on your hard-drive. A good information on how to run Ubuntu alongside Windows can be found here:

WindowsDualBoot