Category: Free

Gnome 3.36 and Fractional Scaling

Top view of the SimplyNUC Hades Canyon 8i7HVK

My latest Intel NUC unit from SimplyNUC is a Hades Canyon 8i7HVK. I have written about the power and quiet nature of these NUC units before, but this unit is a break from all my previous NUCs. It comes packed with 64GB of DDR4 RAM, two 1TB SSD drives in RAID-1, four VR ready 4K video ports, dual GB NICs, four 3.1 USB ports and five USB 3.1 ports. It is a monster in a very small NUC package. The unit is about twice as wide as a normal NUC and about an inch and a half deeper at: 8.7″ x 5.6″ x 1.54″. It is slightly taller than the normal NUCs, but shorter than the “full height” versions.

Front ports on the Hades Canyon NUC

I received this unit in December 2019 with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS installed. The 3.28 version of Gnome running on the system did not support display “Fractional Scaling” – which made some applications much too small (or in 200% mode much too big) to read and use well. Some research showed that a newer version of Gnome would support Fractional Scaling with 125%, 150%, and 175% options available. The 20.04 LTS version Ubuntu includes Gnome 3.36 which does support Fractional Scaling.

Back ports of the Hades Canyon NUC

Right now Ubuntu 20.04 does not provide direct upgrades from the 18.04 LTS release until the 20.04.1 release arrives. I did download the ISO and ran it under virtualization and can see the Fractional Scaling option exists!

I will soon be moving my development environments over and moving from the Ubuntu Unity desktop to Gnome in this high-powered mini-PC with 64GB of RAM, a quad core i7 processor, and amazing video power.

Ted Cahall

Zoom – FREE P2P Video Conference

Scott Scazafavo and I have been working full time on our new start-up, WolkeWerks.com.  This often places me in my home office reaching out to colleagues for advice and collaboration.  My communication tool of choice has been free peer-to-peer (P2P) video conference tools.  Scott and I have used Skype and FaceTime, but experienced the common video lags and garbled voices.  These were frustrating experiences needless to say.

Zoom Logo

It only take a garage to fall on me

My dad used to say, “I don’t need an entire house to fall on me to learn something, it only takes a garage”.  I think he was telling me to learn from trends when they are still small – and even a garage hurts when it falls on you.

The second time someone (ok a nice recruiter) asked me connect with Zoom, I realized it was a high quality service in terms video choppiness and garbled voices.  I did not look into pricing as I figured it was another service used by larger corporations ala WebEx or BlueJeans.  When a colleague in Berlin sent an invite with it, I thought it was odd that he was willing to pay for a service just to chat with me.  This was on top of another colleague with a pending Zoom call scheduled.  Why does everyone want to see a bald guy on video when it is such a frustrating technology?

FREE Zoom P2P Video Conferencing

Because it really isn’t frustrating anymore.  At least from my sample set of 4 calls now. One to Boston, one for two hours to Berlin, and two to different people in Seattle now.  But the biggest surprise, it is FREE for 2 people for unlimited connectivity.  It is also free for 3 or more people for 40 or less minutes.  FREE is my favorite word as I am an unabashed open source bigot.  But FREE that really works well is amazing.

I love the idea of getting people to try something for free for personal use and then once they fall in love with it, they are happy to pay for it in other circumstances.  I have not tried a 3 or more participant call yet.  I suspect they have this technology so dialed in that once you do a 30 minute call with 3/4 people that runs long, you get hooked on how well it worked and add your credit card to the account.

Check out Zoom

The folks at Zoom also have connectivity modules and upgrades for H.323/SIP systems, LifeSize, Polycom, and Cisco gear in corporations. It is all on their website.  They seem like they really nailed the tech on this so far.

I have a call Monday to London with another colleague.  I would never have asked him to use video conferencing in the past.  Too clunky and messy.  But we are setup on Zoom and it will be good to see his face for the first time in a year – even though we catch up nearly every month.

Check out Zoom. All it takes is a laptop, iPad or a mobile phone.

Ted Cahall