So I had installed the latest version of OBS Studio (26.x) from the official channels but when I went to the output mode it only listed software encoding. In the logs it mentioned FFMPEG-VAAPI but wasn’t using it as any recording was using 30%-50% CPU on a low powered laptop.

In Settings -> Output change Outmode to Advanced (from Simple) then on Streaming -> Encoder change that to FFMPEG VAAPI (Recoding should just be set to use Streaming Encoder which is the default)

https://github.com/ulid/spec

https://github.com/segmentio/ksuid

PyCaret -> https://pycaret.org/

Special thanks to Scott Muc and S+C. Please post more links in the comments and I’ll add them in

Guides / Playbooks

Leading in crisis: Setting up for remote success
https://www.thoughtworks.com/remote-work-playbook

Remote First in Tes Technology
https://engineering.tes.com/how-we-work/remote/

How to Work Remotely and Still Be the Best
http://www.toptal.com/freelance/how-to-work-remotely-and-still-be-the-best

Smart Home: 10 Tips for Working Remotely - Postlight - Digital Product Studio
https://postlight.com/trackchanges/podcast/smart-home-10-tips-for-working-remotely

A guide to distributed work
https://jakemccrary.com/blog/2017/10/31/a-guide-to-distributed-work/

remote - Digital Digressions by Stuart Sierra
https://stuartsierra.com/tag/remote

47 Insanely Practical Work From Home Tips from Our 100% Remote Team
https://www.groovehq.com/blog/work-from-home

So I had my usual problem with screen tearing on Ubuntu 19.10 but instead of my usual switching to Metacity + Compton I wanted to try using Gnome Shell. However Gnome shell doesn’t support replacing the compositor.

First step is to allow the NVidia driver to support kernel mode setting:

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/zz-nvidia-modeset.conf

Adding

options nvidia-drm modeset=1

And then

sudo update-initramfs -u

Check with

sudo cat /sys/module/nvidia_drm/parameters/modeset

Then add a startup application

xrandr --output eDP-1-1 --set 'PRIME Synchronization' '1'

Finally switch from gdm3 to lightdm.

Probably the weakest element on the laptop is the Webcam which can output 720p@30fps. By default the low light performance is not that great but you can improve it considerably by trading frame rate for low light performance.

First install the Video 4 Linux utils:

sudo apt install v4l-utils

Now run the following command (the default is 0)

v4l2-ctl --set-ctrl=exposure_auto_priority=1

Now we have reduced the noise level considerably you can play with the sharpness levels 0-7 (the default is 3)

I was experiencing a loop where after suspending and resuming the laptop it would go back into suspend over and over again. To fix this just update /etc/default/grub and add button.lid_init_state=open to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash button.lid_init_state=open"

I also had to add the following to stop errors during the update

GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=true

Then update GRUB

sudo update-grub

Update:

I found that I actually needed to replace gdm3 with lightdm to fix a different issue and this also resolved the suspend problems

First install powertop and TLP . We use powertop to estimate power usage when unplugged and TLP to run as a service

sudo apt install powertop tlp

I then did a little tweaking in my /etc/rc.local

#!/bin/sh -e

# Temp disable bluetooth
modprobe -r btusb

# Autosuspend USB Razer Keyboard after 5 minutes 
echo '300000' > '/sys/bus/usb/devices/3-8/power/autosuspend_delay_ms'
echo 'auto' > '/sys/bus/usb/devices/3-8/power/control'

# VM writeback timeout
echo '1500' > '/proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs';

exit 0

Lastly switch from NVidia GTX 1650 to the Intel Iris Pro

Make sure you are running the latest firmware on the microbit

Create a new udev rule

sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/80-microbit.rules

With the following content

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="0d28", ATTR{idProduct}=="0204", MODE="0660", GROUP="plugdev"

Then if you want non-admin users to be able to use it (like your kids) run

sudo usermod -a -G plugdev non-admin-user

If you are admin you just need to unplug and replug the microbit (the udev rules run on hot-plug), if you are non-admin you will need to logout and back in to get the updated user groups

sudo nano /etc/systemd/user.conf

DefaultLimitNOFILE=65535

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system.conf

DefaultLimitNOFILE=65535

sudo nano /etc/security/limits.conf

* hard nofile 65535
* soft nofile 65535

Source