Ubuntu, another choice

A small update rolling out to the Ubuntu-based   Pop!_OS   distro could make a big impact on system performance. Pop!_OS now enables  zram  support by default — and to  quote Sytem76  themselves the feature  “actively compresses memory in the background, increasing the amount of free memory your system has available. This results in increased FPS in games, or faster simulations and compiler runs.” Pretty nice, eh? Instead of moving infrequently used data to a separate swap partition on disk (which is slow), zram compresses data, and keeps it in RAM (which is faster). On systems with lower amounts of RAM available zram allows more available memory to be used for runnings apps and games. Though I’m yet to try it on Pop!_OS, zram is something I use on several devices as  Fedora enabled zram  a few years back. Though I don’t come bearing any graphs to back the enthusiasm up, it’s something I definitely  think  I feel the benefit of, eve...

The new  Wine 8.0 release  boasts better-than-ever support for running Windows apps on Linux distributions such as Ubuntu. You can install Wine on Ubuntu from the  Ubuntu Software  app (or using  apt  at the command line), but the version of Wine available in Ubuntu is (almost always) an older version than that currently available. If you want to install the latest stable version of Wine on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or 22.10 follow the steps below, which I’ve adapted from the instructions available on the WineHQ wiki. Note, to simplify this process I recommend using the command line. It is technically possible to add the official Wine repo via a GUI, but the exact steps differ depending on which version of Ubuntu you use. The CLI steps below work on ALL versions of Ubuntu, and also work on Ubuntu flavours, and Ubuntu-based distros like Linux Mint. Install Latest Wine Release on Ubuntu Step 1: Enable 32-bit support First things first, you need to explicitly enabled 3...

  Ubuntu’s been working on its   new OS installer   for a couple years, now it looks like the upcoming Ubuntu 23.04 ‘Lunar Lobster’ release will finally ship it by default. The latest pending  Ubuntu 23.04 daily builds  use the reworked installer by default, and is expected to power the default install experience of the Ubuntu 23.03 beta in March. Thing is, despite the fact the installer is built using an entirely different toolkit ( Flutter ) and now leverages the Ubuntu’s  server-based  Subiquity  and  Curtin  efforts, it doesn’t look  that  different to the existing one. In fact, if no-one told you the installer was rebuilt you’d probably never tell. The new installer was available to test in previous versions of Ubuntu using a special ‘canary’ ISO, and is also  available as a Snap  app you can run (but shouldn’t) on an existing Ubuntu install. Now the Flutter-based front-end has filtered out in the official daily ...