Ubuntu Boy

Silent PC

2010-03-27T09:28:00.000-07:00

Recently I have went on a quest to make my PC silent. Its been a great success.

The main noise maker was the power supply. I ordered the TX650W power supply from Corsair. 5 stars.

I also disconnected all three of the cheap fans that came with the Antec case, and replaced them with one Scythe S-FLEX SFF21D 120mm Case Fan.

Now that the computer is pretty much silent, I want to make sure it's not going to over heat.

After doing some research, LM-Sensors seems to be the foundation for temperature sensing apps in Ubuntu. Once LM-Sensors is installed you should be able to run the command, sensors and get an output like the following:

~$ sensors
w83627ehf-isa-0290
Adapter: ISA adapter
VCore: +1.05 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +1.74 V)
in1: +11.30 V (min = +6.76 V, max = +0.53 V) ALARM
AVCC: +3.33 V (min = +1.14 V, max = +1.22 V) ALARM
3VCC: +3.30 V (min = +0.06 V, max = +0.54 V) ALARM
in4: +1.73 V (min = +0.34 V, max = +1.70 V) ALARM
in5: +2.04 V (min = +0.26 V, max = +0.02 V) ALARM
in6: +5.94 V (min = +6.20 V, max = +4.74 V) ALARM
VSB: +3.38 V (min = +0.08 V, max = +0.34 V) ALARM
VBAT: +3.26 V (min = +3.60 V, max = +2.13 V) ALARM
in9: +0.00 V (min = +1.22 V, max = +1.25 V) ALARM
Case Fan: 0 RPM (min = 10546 RPM, div = 128) ALARM
CPU Fan: 981 RPM (min = 4687 RPM, div = 16) ALARM
Aux Fan: 0 RPM (min = 10546 RPM, div = 128) ALARM
fan4: 0 RPM (min = 10546 RPM, div = 128) ALARM
fan5: 463 RPM (min = 1155 RPM, div = 16) ALARM
Sys Temp: +50.0°C (high = +4.0°C, hyst = +15.0°C) ALARM sensor = thermistor
CPU Temp: +37.5°C (high = +80.0°C, hyst = +75.0°C) sensor = diode
AUX Temp: -25.0°C (high = +80.0°C, hyst = +75.0°C) sensor = thermistor
cpu0_vid: +0.000 V

One gotcha I encountered was getting Lm-Sensors to work with an Asus motherboard.

Originally when I tried the sensors command I got the following output:

No sensors found!
Make sure you loaded all the kernel drivers you need.
Try sensors-detect to find out which these are.

After some more digging I found this fix:

~$ sudo modprobe w83627ehf force_id=0x8860

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-871001.html

2 Ubuntu fixes: Blue Video & Skipping Sound

2009-06-22T18:25:00.000-07:00

Although Ubuntu has been very stable for me -it never crashed- several subsystems often turn silly. This may be because i have something mis-configured :( .. but i know some fixes which have been getting me by.

Video in media players turns blue (blue tint)
Quick fix: System > Administration > NVIDIA X Server Settings > X Screen 0 > X Server XVideo Settings >> Adjust the Hue to "0"

Sound starts to "skip", actually i cant hear anything besides "dun-dun-dun-dun..."

Quick fix: In terminal type "sudo alsa force-reload"

Review for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, a Linux operating system that becoming increasingly popular, but is it better then windows?

2009-06-17T21:55:00.000-07:00

Windows has always been the dominate player in the operating system market, however now a completely free alternative is becoming more mainstream. This review is not meant to be a complete overview, but rather some observations from my personal experience.

Basic installation is now easier then Windows, it can be install as an application in windows, making it even easier to install and uninstall when dual booting with windows. Installing and finding applications is quick and easy because Ubuntu has a vast library of free software that is only one click away. Everything is modular, even the GUI can be uninstalled, in fact the Server edition and Desktop edition, are only different because they have different default modules on installation. The GUI is great, it supports multiple desktops, which keeps running programs very organized...great for multitaskers! For windows there is a program that adds similarly functionality, but it’s much slower.

The web support forums and tutorials I found are mainly command line solutions, maybe because it’s easier to write -tell users just to paste some commands- or just that the people who know enough to answer questions or write tutorials prefer command line. For those of us who prefer clicking around a GUI we may find this a downside of Ubuntu. Also since drivers are mostly closed source getting the right drivers installed may be a challenge. Setting up support for things like dual monitor support is hardware dependent, and thus requires research for each device.