Prepare installation media
Base installation of Linux Mint
- Follow the standard Linux Mint installation procedure - choose timezone, partitions, username, password etc.
- Disconnect the installation media and reboot.
- Login using previously selected username and password.
ATI Catalyst video driver
- fglrx is a proprietary ATI Catalyst video driver for Linux
- fglrx drivers above the version 13.350 aren't compatible to fitlet. Don't use it!
RadeonSI open-source video driver
- RadeonSI exceed the ATI Catalyst video driver in many benchmark tests
- RadeonSI provides HW video acceleration for wider range of video codecs
$ apt-get install mesa-vdpau-drivers-lts-vivid vdpau-va-driver vainfo vdpauinfo
$ cd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/
$ ln -s vdpau_drv_video.so radeonsi_drv_video.so
- Run vainfo and vdpauinfo commands to view list of supported accelerated profiles
Kodi and VLC
- Kodi (formerly known as XBMC) and VLC are well known free and open-source multimedia players
- Both of them use HW accelerated video decoding and give excellent playback quality
- Both of them compatible with the most popular video formats
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install kodi vlc
- Kodi will support HW video acceleration out of the box
- In VLC you need to select Tools->Preferences->Input and Codecs->Hardware-accelerated decoding->Video Acceleration (VA) API
Aggressive Link Power Management (ALPM)
- It's a mechanism where a SATA controller can put the disk into a very low power mode during periods of zero I/O activity and into an active power state when work needs to be done. Tests show that this can save some power and decrease mSATA average temperature.
- Create text file /etc/pm/power.d/sata_alpm
#!/bin/sh
for i in /sys/class/scsi_host/host*/link_power_management_policy; do
echo min_power > $i
done
$ sudo chmod +x /etc/pm/power.d/sata_alpm
- Reboot, SATA power management policy has been changed
$ cat /sys/class/scsi_host/host*/link_power_management_policy
min_power
min_power