Hardware

Find all the guides about the best hardware and tech gadgets and reviews on new hardware and tech gadgets on SiliconGadget.com.

Format an USB pen drive on Linux

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Do you want to format an USB pen drive on Linux, but you do not know how to do it? GParted is the solution.
Format an USB pen drive on Linux is highly recommended because it offers several benefits:

  • it will erase all previous data – important if you stored sensitive data (that you don’t longer need);
  • it allow you to choose a file system that better suit your need;
  • it can reduce the file fragmentation on the disk and therefore improve the performances of the pen drive (this requires to copy the files elsewhere first and copy them back after the format).

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Enable Google Chrome hardware acceleration

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We have seen how to enable Mozilla Firefox hardware acceleration on Linux and this time we will see how to enable Google Chrome hardware acceleration; this guide will work on any major Operative System since the steps indicated are fully contained within Google Chrome’s settings.
Hardware acceleration is the use of specific computer hardware, like the graphic card for graphic related tasks, to perform some functions faster than is possible in “software-mode” running on the more general-purpose CPU. In order to benefit from hardware acceleration, the application must be programmed to support it and such support must be enabled at runtime (when the application is run by the user); the major browsers, like Mozilla Firefox and in this case Google Chrome, are programmed to support hardware acceleration, but not always they are enabled to use it.

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Enable Firefox hardware acceleration on Linux

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Despite its past, Mozilla Firefox browser is now as fast and agile as its rival Google Chrome, but there is one aspect where the open source browser still loses a few points: the GPU hardware acceleration support on GNU/Linux. With this guide we will see how to enable Firefox hardware acceleration on Linux and therefore improving its performances.
The guide has been tested on Ubuntu LTS 14:04 with the proprietary NVIDIA drivers and Mozilla Firefox 34.0, but it should be valid for all distribution of Linux and newer versions of Mozilla Firefox.

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