Neil Bothwick tweaks your troublesome Tux to make it tick smoothly
Generally, installing software on Linux is easy. You open your distro’s package manager, find the package you want and hit the Install button. The package manager sorts out any dependencies or conflicts associated with the package. However, what happens when the software you want isn’t in your distro’s repository? You then have to download the source, install the dependencies and compile from scratch – and after all that you have to keep up with updates.
We’d love to try and answer any questions you send to lxf.answers@futurenet.com, no matter what the level. We’ve all been stuck before, so don’t be shy. However, we’re only human (although many suspect Jonni is a robot), so it’s important that you include as much information as you can. If something works on one distro but not another, then tell us. If you get an error message, please tell us the exact message and precisely what you did to invoke it.
Q MIN RAM & CPU 4 OBS
The good news is that an increasing number of projects are releasing their software as AppImages. This is a single file that contains not only the compiled application, but all of its dependencies too. You don’t even have to unpack the file, just set the executable bit and run it:
If you have, or suspect, a hardware problem, let us know about the hardware. Consider installing hardinfo or lshw. These programs list the hardware on your machine, so send us their output. If you’re unwilling, or unable, to install these, run the following commands in a root terminal and send us the system.txt file too.
I need to prepare a number of (identical) laptops for use in seminars.
They’ll be equipped with a webcam, a USB microphone, and an external monitor with speakers. The setup will be used to record role play exercises and play them back to the participants.
Software would be
OBS
and
VLC,
on a system running Fedora (mainly because I use it every day and thus know it).
$ chmod +x neatprogram.AppImage
Now, how much hardware is needed?
We can’t miss out on sound bits or get frame rate of one per second only, so sound 48k, 30fps at 1080 video stream.
But I can’t go out and buy a number
of laptops to try to figure out which stutters, and I can’t just blow the budget and buy the best. Do you have any guidance on minimum requirements, especially for processor and memory?
$ ./neatprogram.AppImage