After moving from GalliumOS to Xubuntu, I noticed that playing YouTube videos on both Firefox and Chromium would result in decent playback for a few minutes, but suddenly the audio would turn into a solid beeping tone while the YouTube video displayed the white loading circle on top of the video as it continued trying to play.
The beeping sound would continue until I paused the video for long enough for the beep to stop on its own, or just close the tab. According to some forums around the net, it seemed to be an audio codec or driver issue. After a bit of digging through posts of similar but not exact audio issues, I found one that seemed to match my situation exactly.
The Solution
Apparently this was an issue with running a kernel that didn’t support and/or didn’t have a Sound Open Firmware (SOF) driver installed. Someone brought up an issue on their Github page and a solution was found and shared. This solution was also referenced in a few other places, so I gave it a shot and it 100% worked.
You can install the drivers with this epic bash script (please check it out before running it):
I use Adobe CC on a Windows machine for my video production pipeline at work. I do video side work on the weekends, and have used Windows and Adobe for those projects as well, but I’ve always felt trapped. Like I’m a slave to Adobe or something. I’ve spent most of my professional career learning and using software like Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Photoshop.
Making the Switch
I’ve used Ubuntu a TON, as it’s a super popular distro, and it was my introduction to Linux. A few months back, I was checking out https://opendata.blender.org/ and noticed that a good chunk of data was coming from a distro called Manjaro, but I’d never heard of it. Shortly after seeing all that performance data, I decided to give Manjaro a shot. After some basic research, I discovered Manjaro is actually based on Arch (unlike Ubuntu, based on Debian).
I gotta say, installing Manjaro was a breeze (cursor theme). I will admit however, I have never known the pain of installing Arch. Like actual Arch. But I’m aware of the memes. So I’m sure it’s pretty involved. While I can’t exactly go around trolling like, “btw I use arch”, I was seriously surprised at the installation and how much was up and running right out of the box! Ubuntu is pretty straightforward, but depending on the hardware, you may need to find a few hacks or packages to get everything full up and running. For example, I couldn’t get the wifi working when I put Ubuntu on my 10 year old Macbook until I installed a special package that didn’t come with the default install.
Everything Works.
Immediately… Very first boot up. Everything works. Hardline network connection works. Wifi card works. GRAPHICS look great. Manjaro automatically grabs graphics drivers for you upon install! And I was actually impressed with the pre-installed software collection. Most of the time, in Ubuntu, I have to delete a bunch of crap software I’ll never use. But Manjaro… Like, I use Steam all the time. It’s pre-installed. Libre Office pre-installed. Tweaks pre-installed. Gparted pre-installed (this might be normal). But I was really surprised how little I actually had to do post-installation.
Smooth UI Experience
It’s a bunch of little things that add up to a massive amount of time saved. One of my pet peeves in Windows is switching apps on the task bar. If your app has multiple windows (like Blender, and a render window), you have to click once to reveal thumbnails, then click the thumbnail of the window you want. If they’re small or detailed windows like terminals, good luck. I love the single hot corner in the upper left to give you an expose-like look of all your running apps. I love the best-of-both worlds option to launch a full-screen app tray from the bottom left, or tap the drop-down xcfe-like ‘start menu’ from the upper left. It’s pretty awesome. Just gotta get used to typing pacman -S instead of apt-get
Haven’t logged a ton of hours on Manjaro just yet, still very much in the “moving in” phase. Feeling great so far. Looking forward to diving into my brand new postproduction workflow in Manjaro using Blender, Resolve, Gimp, Inkscape, and Ardour. More on that in the coming weeks! Peace
Well… I guess it’s time. I’ve been working on this animation for longer than I care to admit, but I’m definitely ready to release this thing into the wild, take my lessons and move on. And when I say ‘lessons’… I mean LOTS of lessons. And I’m so glad I tackled this project the way that I did. I had some triumphs and some failures, and best of all I learned more about 3D animation during this project that I have in a very long time. Lots of familiar concepts like cell fractures, rigid body physics and particle sims, as well as TONS of new stuff like character animation, rigging, and interactive cloth simulation, clothing stitching, procedural shaders and loads more. So here it is in all its glory, the intro animation for “Never Forgotten”:
Shoutout to @loranozor for requesting this walkthrough! I don’t do a blender smoke simulation every day, but one of the biggest takeaways that I got from learning my way through this project was the difference between the resolution divisions of the smoke domain and the resolution divisions under the “high resolution” checkbox.
Smoke Domain Resolution
Basically, as I understand it, the resolution of the smoke domain defines how many voxels are used in the simulation. The higher the voxel count, the more accurate the main body of smoke. Use domain resolution to shape the main look of your smoke sim. If I’m not mistaken, I believe the little cube in the corner of your smoke domain helps you visualize the size of a single voxel, so you can get rough idea of your simulation scale before you even bake it.
“High Resolution” Divisions
Once you’ve got the main shape and behavior of your simulation looking the way you want it, it’s time to enable the “high resolution” checkbox. This is essentially like applying the subsurf modifier to your smoke. It keeps it’s main general shape and behavior, but the high resolution divisions add that extra little bit of “whispiness” for added realism and resolution.
If you’re interested in learning more about blender smoke simulation, check out Mantaflow. It’s a great branch of blender pushing the boundaries of smoke and fluid sims!
Found a great game? Discover a new program? Only available on Windows? No Windows machine? Don’t want to bother dual booting? Running a virtual machine not an option? Me too! Using Mono makes all that a lot easier. Let’s talk about using mono to run .exe files on linux.
Mono, according to their website, is an open source project sponsored by Microsoft that implements the .NET framework across other platforms like Linux and Mac OS. It’s not a program. It’s a framework. Basically a sort of language used to run files. So how exactly do you go about using mono to run .exe files on linux?
Installation is pretty straightforward. Just install a few packages, add the PPA to your system, and run the install command. Done! Detailed instructions on how to do this can be found here.
In my case, I use KeePass to keep track of all my passwords, but that’s a software project that’s only available as an .exe file. Luckily, you can open it and run it on any OS using Mono. Just by dropping this command:
mono Location/Of/Your/EXE/File.exe
The only catch here is that Mono only works for certain .exe files. This is where it gets kinda deep, but it’s essentially dependent on how that .exe file was compiled and what elements of .NET it’s using or requires to run. A bit of googling can certainly point you in the right direction, and for more information on Mono compatibility, check this out.
Something I learned just recently: if you’re just trying to run KeePass, there’s a great chance that the package manager in your distro has some sort of KeePass equivalent, if not KeePass itself. I’ve started using Manjaro lately, and KeePass is just a one click install. Try it out!
Ranger is an open source Github project that aims to streamline and simplify directory navigation on any computer. If you’re relatively new to the terminal or only use it rarely, this may not be a big deal for you. However, if you use the terminal on a regular or even daily basis, this tool may be invaluable. Unlike a typical GUI layout found on Windows or Linux machines, Ranger gives you 3 columns of folders at once. This allows you to see one directory up, your current working directory, and one directory down.
Why is this Awesome?
If you’ve used Apple’s Finder, you’ll know there’s a file view called “Column View” that allows you to navigate in and out of folders with speed, just using the arrow keys. Ranger essentially brings this speed to every platform, inside the terminal.
Column view in Apple’s Finder window
If You’re New to Terminal
If you’re like me and just starting to use the terminal for the first time, there’s a good chance you know the commands “cd” and “ls” (on linux or mac) or “dir” for Windows. Those commands absolutely do work, and you can still use them if you like. However, it’s also nice to know of some nice alternatives! So instead of typing out long directory paths and risking typos, now you can just run “ranger”. In addition to fast file navigation, you can also get ASCII previews of image files, text previews of documents, and even look inside zipped files!
Just Scratching The Surface
Finally, this article is meant to be a very shallow, surface-level introduction to what Ranger is and what it does in a very general sense. Be sure to check out the full documentation to discover the VAST amount of control you can get out of Ranger. That’s all I’ve got for now. Thanks for reading!
Simple explanation: Golem is a bunch of connected computers that team up to become a giant rendering Megazord!
This is a really cool project. Recently I have found myself lacking computational power in a professional environment. The client loves this Blender animation, but I’ve got 1/13th of the power I need to render what they want by the time they need it. Traditional render farms are out of the question because on demand render pricing would be enough to just buy a render farm outright. Possible solution? Golem network.
Disclaimer: I have not used Golem in a professional setting. However, that doesn’t mean I’m not very interested in the project. The idea being: you can download a simple client for accessing the network, set up a few ports for your router to forward, and essentially “go online”. There were anywhere between 250-350 computers or “nodes” on the network at any given time (at the time of this writing). You can check this number now at stats.golem.network. It even gives you the collective number of CPU cores, RAM, and disk space available at any given time. Pretty cool!
There are two sides to Golem. First is the side where you can essentially put your computing resources ‘up for rent’. This allows others on the Golem network to use your computer to render projects. The other side is renting computing resources from the network. Got a huge project to render? You can pay to rent resources to finish your project way faster. A huge advantage is that this is much less expensive than using a traditional render farm. Here’s a promotional video that explains it quite well:
My Experience
I ran spent about 2 weeks on the Golem network just renting my unused compute power. Wasn’t sure what to expect. The Golem network is built on the Etherium blockchain and providers are paid in GNT or Golem Network Tokens. If you are buying compute power, you’ll be paying in ETH and also covering any transaction fees. As of now estimating how much you’ll need to render your job is kinda complex. You need to define a specific ‘timeout’ time for your job. So if a weaker node gets your job and takes longer than your ‘timeout’ time, you basically lose your money. In my experience, I rented out my AMD FX 8350 Black Edition and earned about $0.07 worth of GNT. I think it’s because the network is still so new. Even the client to connect to the netowork is still in beta. It could also be that not a lot of people are using the network just because it’s just so new.
Regardless, the Golem Network is an incredibly cool project to keep an eye on. Who knows, it could potentially be the only way we render our complex projects! It is also worth mentioning that Golem is compatable with Blender projects. I have yet to test out the capabilities of the network and discover what is and isn’t possible when rendering Blender projects with certain versions of Blender, different addons, plugins, etc. Will keep you posted! Thanks for reading.
