Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on the Acer Aspire E15

I have been moderately content [1] with Ubuntu 14.04 on the Acer Aspire E15 for about a year. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, another long term support release, has recently been published and of course I had to try it out! Installing the live image on a USB stick: bring some patience The first obstacle is that … Continue reading Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on the Acer Aspire E15 →

Ubuntu on the Acer Aspire E15 (E5-571G-51TH)

Having failed the 3rd repair attempt at the Thinkpad E540 [1] I gave up and bought the next best laptop from the nearby store that somehow is usable for programming. Behold: the Acter Inspire E15. 8GB RAM, i5, matte screen (1920x1080). It worked out of the box with the SSD transplant from the old Lenovo, … Continue reading Ubuntu on the Acer Aspire E15 (E5-571G-51TH) →

Formatting USB flash drives for write speed

Flash drives enjoy a reputation for being fast and that certainly goes for high-end models with their elaborate memory controllers and multi-bank layouts. A fundamental "problem" with current flash memory technology is that writing even a single bit of information requires that an entire block of flash memory is reset first [1], which greatly reduces … Continue reading Formatting USB flash drives for write speed →

Ubuntu: physical power button not working

At some point the physical power button on my file server (ubuntu 12.04) stopped working and I had to do a software shutdown everytime. The solution is to (re) install acpi: sudo apt-get install acpi sudo apt-get install --reinstall acpi-support

Reducing power consumption on the HP Probook 4720s and Ubuntu 12.04

As said earlier, Ubuntu 12.04 does a good job with power management on the 4720s. With some manual settings power consumption can be further decreases, albeit not much this time. I wrote this script which takes a parameter: on: enable power management settings off: disable power management settings extra: on + enable extensive power management … Continue reading Reducing power consumption on the HP Probook 4720s and Ubuntu 12.04 →