Questions...

E

Ernst-Jan

Member
To play around with Ubuntu and planning to use the device as headless audio player, I bought the Z83-4U. Appears to work fine but...

1.
For some reason Ubuntu thinks it runs on battery? Battery icon is in the menu bar showing 94% charged... huh?

2.
5 Ghz Wifi only worked after deleting the ccode=CN in the broadcom config file... why does this thing not ask the user what region he/she is in at first boot?

3.
No sound from the headphone jack... no sound device in settings. Only when I hook up an HDMI monitor, a sound device (Intel) shows and the headphone works, but I was planning to use it headless with a dummy HDMI plug... how to enable the realtek audio chip by default?
Tried reloading the alsa drivers etc.... found loads of posts on "no audio" and "ubuntu"... none of the tips found worked for me.

BTW, I am a bit let down by the measly 1T1R wifi; maxes out at 433 Mbps...

I hope someone has an answer to point 1. and 3. above.
 
In the meantime I found that a different HDMI dummy plug does give me a sound device with sound on the headphone plug. The other dummy plug probably does not tell the system to enable sound. So that issue is more or less solved although it remains strange that headphone audio only works when a HDMI monitor or the proper dummy plug is connected.
 
Ernst said:
Nobody? Still looking for an answer why the device thinks it runs on battery....
Click to expand...
Hello.
I never tested ubuntu but maybe it is a bug in the software (i think it wont cause any problem , just "visual".... ).

One of this days maybe i will test Ubuntu.
I already tested Oracle virtual box before and now i installed again.
I will test some Operating systems, of course its not the same as physical (normal) OS, but we can had a idea.
 
notrui2 said:
Hello.
I never tested ubuntu but maybe it is a bug in the software (i think it wont cause any problem , just "visual".... ).

One of this days maybe i will test Ubuntu.
I already tested Oracle virtual box before and now i installed again.
I will test some Operating systems, of course its not the same as physical (normal) OS, but we can had a idea.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. It runs fine but it might now be optimized for battery, i.e. not running at full processor speed since it thinks it run on battery. Will try and find a Linux tool to assess this. In the Ubuntu power options nothing to this effect is found; it says the AC adapter is offline...

It is so weird that Minix sells a version of the Z83-4 specifically with Ubuntu but has not optimized the system for it. And they configured it incorrectly.
 
Ernst said:
Thanks for the reply. It runs fine but it might now be optimized for battery, i.e. not running at full processor speed since it thinks it run on battery. Will try and find a Linux tool to assess this. In the Ubuntu power options nothing to this effect is found; it says the AC adapter is offline...

It is so weird that Minix sells a version of the Z83-4 specifically with Ubuntu but has not optimized the system for it. And they configured it incorrectly.
Click to expand...
Software will always have bugs.
Some is more important to fix, others not.
We must live with that ☺
 
Aaarghhh... just what I thought. Found this... you can find out what the current power "governor" is, with :

$ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor

Guess what? Indeed, the standard setting is "powersave" instead of "performance". I set it to performance and the device is much snappier.

So Minix delivers a device specifically for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and not only configures its WLAN incorrectly so that it does not use 5Ghz, they also configured it for a laptop. Very, very silly.
 
Ok.
Linux command.
It is more difficult to work (than windows OS for example) but you have a more secure system.

I guess if i install ubuntu i will have to learn again (remember and train) about linux commands ☺
 
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Ernst said:
Aaarghhh... just what I thought. Found this... you can find out what the current power "governor" is, with :

$ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor

Guess what? Indeed, the standard setting is "powersave" instead of "performance". I set it to performance and the device is much snappier.

So Minix delivers a device specifically for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and not only configures its WLAN incorrectly so that it does not use 5Ghz, they also configured it for a laptop. Very, very silly.
Click to expand...
Do you think that change in the settings put the device faster?
Can you some tests? Or just navigating or browsing for example is faster.

The baterry icon should not appear because its not a mobile phone or for example a laptop.
 
I blacklisted the "axp288_fuel_gauge" module which disables the stupid battery gauge and info in system settings of the non-existing battery.
 
Is it possible that powersave is a design decision for the fanless design? Will setting to 'performance' cause overheating?
 
alandamper said:
Is it possible that powersave is a design decision for the fanless design? Will setting to 'performance' cause overheating?
Click to expand...

No as 'powersave' is set by default in Ubuntu (see '/lib/systemd/set-cpufreq') and throttlling should prevent overheating if it occurs when set to 'performance'.
 
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