Monday, December 26, 2016

Linux, GPU, games and Google Chrome

Recently, I have been having a few issues with a few games: once in a while, I like to play a bit of FPS to de-stress, and my frame rate was just abysmally low, what used to be a good 60 FPS went down to 20-30, leaving me with barely playable games, although these were great under Linux Mint 17.

After a bit of searching, I have found something interesting: if Google Chrome is running, the frame rate will be bad. If it is not, my games are back to normal. As Google Chrome uses the GPU for various tasks, I guess this was either due to a conflict (the two applications fighting for GPU resources) or Google Chrome setting some parameters that are detrimental to the games. Looking at Google Chrome's GPU status shows that a few features are either disabled or not available.






Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Upgrade from Mint 18 to Mint 18.1

A few days ago, there were news that Mint 18.1 was out and ready for install. This morning, my update manager prompted me to install the MintUpdate package, a sign that the new version is ready for prime time.

The release notes do not show anything that would affect me, and so far, so good.

The overall feeling is that nothing really changed: visually this is still the same, the system does not seem to be faster or slower.

A good point: the upgrade did not remove my PPA and other additional depots. It was one of the many little things that made me cringe during the update from 17 to 18. It is not very hard to put back (all the information is in ~/Upgrade-Backup/APT/sources.list.d) though.

Comment if you have had any issue.