Linux

Category page of all posts on the web site that are tagged as related to all things Linux including Ubuntu, Raspberry Pi OS and many other flavors

Radxa Rock 5B Steam Installation Guide for Armbian

Running Stardew Valley on Rock 5B

I recently went through the trouble of figuring out how to install Steam on the Orange Pi 5 and it worked really well. Now that I’ve already gone through the pain of figuring out how to do this I figured I might as well write one of these guides for the Radxa Rock 5B as well.

The new RK3588/RK3588S boards have much more power than we’ve typically had available to us in the past on ARM boards. With a whopping 8 CPU cores and a Mali 610 GPU the Orange Pi 5 is capable of running Steam using Box64/Box86. It’s even able to play basic games pretty well (with some tinkering usually).

In this guide I’ll show you how to set up Steam on the Radxa Rock 5B and run Stardew Valley on it. You should keep your expectations in line though because there is no native ARM client for Steam. We are using emulation and instruction translation. You will also likely be missing libraries for most games you try which will require some fiddling.

This guide is only for Armbian running the Ubuntu Jammy variant with the Gnome desktop installed (rolling support status). The official Radxa distributions will not have 3D support and I don’t care about whatever other flavor of Linux you are running either. I’m not going to install your preferred flavor of Linux and try to figure out how to do this on there nor am I interested in troubleshooting it. Please don’t ask.

With all of that being said let’s get started!

Radxa Rock 5B Steam Installation Guide for Armbian Read More »

Installing Steam on the Orange Pi 5 with Armbian

Orange Pi 5 running Steam and Stardew Valley

The new RK3588/RK3588S boards have much more power than we’ve typically had available to us in the past on ARM boards. With a whopping 8 CPU cores and a Mali 610 GPU the Orange Pi 5 is capable of running Steam using Box64/Box86. It’s even able to play basic games pretty well (with some tinkering usually).

In this guide I’ll show you how to set up Steam on the Orange Pi 5 and run Stardew Valley on it. You should keep your expectations in line though because there is no native ARM client for Steam. We are using emulation and instruction translation. You will also likely be missing libraries for most games you try which will require some fiddling.

This guide is only for Armbian running the Ubuntu Jammy variant with the Gnome desktop installed only (platinum support status). The Orange Pi official distributions will not have 3D support and I don’t care about whatever other flavor of Linux you are running either. I’m not going to install your preferred flavor of Linux and try to figure out how to do this on there nor am I interested in troubleshooting it. Please don’t ask.

With all of that being said let’s get started!

Installing Steam on the Orange Pi 5 with Armbian Read More »

Using E-Key M.2 WiFi Adapters with Orange Pi 5

Orange Pi 5 E-Key to M-Key WiFi Adapter Guide

Orange Pi has not released the WiFi module for the Orange Pi 5 yet which has left some people in a difficult position. While working on this problem I discovered an adapter that claimed to be able to let me use normal E-keyed WiFi adapters (commonly found in laptops and tablets) with the Orange Pi 5 using an adapter.

I received and tested the adapter and I am pleased to report it works perfectly! There are some caveats though such as you need a driver for your WiFi card within your OS (and often firmware as well).

In this guide I’ll show you how to get this working with the Orange Pi 5 using Linux. Let’s get started!

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Using Corsair Mice / Keyboards on Linux without iCUE

Using Corsair Mice / Keyboards in Linux without iCUE - ckb-next

When I replaced my old keyboard I decided to get a keyboard with Cherry MX Quiet switches as I love mechanical keyboards but wanted to cut down on the noise. It’s still fairly loud but it’s definitely much quieter than my non-quiet models I’ve used before.

I had used Corsair keyboards before in the past on Windows but not since I had switched my main desktop to Linux. Unfortunately when I connected the keyboard the RGB was stuck on a solid red with no way to change it.

Fortunately there is an amazing replacement in Linux called ckb-next that is available in most major Linux distribution’s repositories. In this guide we’ll cover how to get the utility and what it can do.

Let’s begin!

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Lichee RV 86 Panel Getting Started Guide

Lichee RV 86 Panel Getting Started Guide

The Lichee RV 86 Panel is a RISC-V powered Linux computer complete with screen! It comes as a low cost kit with everything you need including the Lichee RV module.

In this guide I’ll show you how to get going with the Lichee RV 86 panel including getting Linux on there and getting it connected to WiFi. Let’s get started!

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Mango Pi MQ Pro D1 Ubuntu (P)review

MangoPi MQ-Pro D1 w/ Ubuntu (P)review

Recently Ubuntu has received official preview images for some RISC-V boards. One of those boards is (indirectly) the MangoPi MQ Pro! RISC-V boards have been available for a while but the software support lags that of ARM substantially. It’s steadily catching up though with an official Ubuntu preview out as well as official OpenJDK support coming soon.

Today I wanted to review the MangoPi MQ Pro D1 (Revision 1.4) as well as look at the experience of the Ubuntu preview version on it acknowledging that this isn’t the final release of Ubuntu for RISC-V boards yet and is just a developer preview. My intent is to simply see what the experience is like and get an idea of what is already working and what isn’t ready yet.

Let’s get started!

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Legendary ODROID M1 Ubuntu 22.04.1 Images

Legendary ODROID M1 Images

Recently I reviewed the ODROID M1 and it’s a fantastic board. One problem with it though is that the image available for it is still only Ubuntu 20.04.

It’s possible to upgrade the server version to 22.04 and then install Ubuntu Desktop which I covered in my review. It’s painful though and takes a very long time especially if you want to install a desktop environment afterward.

I figured by now the updated image would be out and it still isn’t so today I’m releasing my Legendary ODROID M1 Ubuntu 22.04.1 images as well as the system I used to build the images!

Legendary ODROID M1 Ubuntu 22.04.1 Images Read More »

Fix Linux Ledger Live USB Connection

Ledger Live - "All Good"

When installing Ledger Live on Ubuntu 22.04 I ran into an issue where during the genuine check it would not find my device. It was not even prompting for a PIN or showing any activity and would simply time out eventually and fail the check.

It turns out that Ledger Live needs some udev rules to work correctly. In this quick guide I’ll cover how to set up and fix Ledger Live in Linux!

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HackRF Software Defined Radio Guide for Linux

Cubic SDR - Main Screen

The term “software defined radio” simply means that parts of a radio that were traditionally hardware are implemented in software. This means that functions that used to require knobs, dials or some kind of physical mechanism can now be controlled via software. Essentially this makes using computers/ software with radios much easier and more accessible (cheaper) than it had ever been traditionally.

Now with that background I can explain what the HackRF device is. The HackRF is a software defined radio device that is designed to let you access *all* of the radio spectrum all the way from 1 MHz up to 6 GHz! Think of it like a FM radio where the frequency controls don’t stop at 88 MHz or 108 MHz and you could turn it way below or above that. That is exactly what a HackRF is!

You are definitely not limited to listening to radio stations though. You can basically receive all types of signals with the HackRF (depending on your antenna) including video and data signals which can be processed by your computer. In this guide I’m going to cover how to get started with a device like this in Ubuntu Linux and give you an idea of what kind of things you can do with it!

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Benchmark Storage Performance on Linux

Linux Storage Benchmark

When attempting to determine storage performance on Linux there are common tests such as doing a DD write command and measuring the speed of that. These methods leave a lot to be desired and are especially bad at measuring random read/write performance (the most important for operating system / application performance).

I solved this problem for the Raspberry Pi by creating Pi Benchmarks. This is an open source benchmark that *does* measure random read/write performance as well as several other important factors (IOPS, etc.). We’ve collected many years worth of performance data across thousands of different drives including SSDs / HDDs / others. It’s enough information to be used to make important decisions about performance using hard data.

I’d like to announce that this exact same benchmark is now available for all devices! If you’d previously taken the benchmark on a PC or device other than a Raspberry Pi those results are now retroactively live on the site.

Benchmark Storage Performance on Linux Read More »

2022 – The Year of the Linux Desktop

Year of the Linux Desktop

It has been a long-running meme in the Linux community that each new year would be the “Year of the Linux Desktop” for decades now. This never happened. Why? A big reason is compatibility with gaming. Some titles worked on Linux but not very many of them.

ibility options they developed for the Steam Deck called “Steam Play”. Virtually every title I own in Steam plays flawlessly on Linux now as these options are available for all Steam Linux users and do not require owning a Steam deck to take advantage of.

Today let’s explore the things that have changed that up until this point had been preventing the year of the Linux desktop!

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PCIe 1x NVMe on Raspberry Pi?! Compute Module 4 Guide

CableCC Vertical Adapter in Compute Module 4 IO Board

I recently covered all the pieces you need for a complete setup to work with the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. Today I want to cover the whole reason I wanted to investigate the Compute Module 4: The PCI express capabilities!

In this guide I’ll cover a couple of 1x PCIe to NVMe adapters I picked up to try doing this with as well as full configuration and setup instructions. Let us begin!

PCIe 1x NVMe on Raspberry Pi?! Compute Module 4 Guide Read More »

Full Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 Setup / Imaging Guide

Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 mounted in IO Board

The Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 is primarily meant for embedded projects and didn’t catch my interest at first. That was until people started absolutely smashing previous records on my Pi storage benchmarking site pibenchmarks.com.

Upon further investigation it turns out that people are breaking these records using the Compute Module 4 since it allows running a NVMe drive through PCI express instead of having to use a USB adapter (the current bottleneck in other Pis).

Wanting to investigate these new capabilities for myself I got a hold of some gear and wanted to write a setup and configuration guide on everything you need for a full CM4 (Compute Module 4) setup and how to get it imaged and configured. Let’s get started!

Full Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 Setup / Imaging Guide Read More »

Ubertooth One Kali Linux Latest Tools / Firmware Setup Guide

Kismet Ubertooth One BTLE Capture

The world is full of devices communicating with Bluetooth even if (or maybe especially if) you don’t realize it. Most “smart” devices are advertising some Bluetooth services (some of them even publicly writable without a password!). Even my treadmill is advertising writeable Bluetooth endpoints!

The Ubertooth One is a bluetooth and bluetooth low-energy (BTLE) capture device intended for developers and security researchers/auditors. It has an external antenna and is able to communicate at much further distances than most BTLE devices by both transmitting more powerfully and having a more sensitive antenna to listen to the response. To find out what is nearby and happening over the air this is the device you want to have.

In this guide I’ll show you how to get the latest Ubertooth tools on Kali Linux as well as update the firmware for the Ubertooth device and actually use the device!

Ubertooth One Kali Linux Latest Tools / Firmware Setup Guide Read More »

Upgrade Java Past apt’s OpenJDK on Raspberry Pi OS

OpenJDK 16 on Raspberry Pi OS

The OpenJDK 11 version that comes in Raspberry Pi OS’s apt repositories is ancient. It’s so old that recently people using my Minecraft Java Server for Raspberry Pi script have started getting a warning that Minecraft 1.17 will *not* support anything below OpenJDK 16.

In this article I’m going to share a sneaky trick to update your Java to a newer version than is available in apt using snapd. Let’s begin!

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