Playing Red Alert 2 in full HD...

- Go to Red Alert 2 installation folder
- Open RA2.ini file
- Edit Video segment

[Video]
    ScreenWidth=1920
    ScreenHeight=1080
    StretchMovies=no

Enjoy!

RA2 gameplay

Playing Star Wars Rogue Squadron 3D in full HD...

Having to use modern OS such as Windows 10 means no classic games. I have an old game installer of Star Wars Rogue Squadron 3D.

Since I love the game so much, the solution:
Windows XP in VMWare.

Unfortunately, the game can be play on 1024x768 resolution max.

Luckily there's a patch for it.
Download it from here.

- Extract the zip file and run uniws.exe.
- Click Find it for me button, or you can search Rogue Squadron.EXE manually.
- Set New Resolution to 1920x1080 then click Patch button.
- Run Rogue Squadron, go to settings -> video and choose the custom resolution that has been patched.
- To revert back the patch, click Undo Patch button.
- Done! Enjoy the game.

UniWS patcher

Rogue Squadron 3D video settings

Game play screen

Note:

Since this is a virtual machine we're talking about, theoretically it should be fine in Ubuntu as host OS. However after installing VMWare Tools especially SVGA driver, Windows XP loads on blank screen with sound. For now, I just have the virtual machine under Windows 10.

Update - 21/09/2019:
I'm able to solve the VMWare Tools installation after run the command below on Ubuntu host OS.

sudo apt install libncursesw5

How to change Linux swap partition to different disk...

The scenario:
I have two hard disks on my laptop,
- 256 GB SSD (nvmeOn1)
- 1 TB HDD (sda)

Installed Ubuntu, below is how my partition table looks like:

nvmeOn1
        EFI                                  100 MB
        Microsoft reserved partition          16 MB
        Basic data partition              217.35 GB
        /                                     20 GB
        Recovery                               1 GB
        Unallocated                        14.34 MB

    sda
        Basic data partition              465.76 GB
        /opt                                9.54 GB
        /usr                               37.96 GB
        linux-swap                             6 GB
        /home                             412.26 GB

I want to change swap partition from HDD to SSD. Here's the steps:
1. Boot the machine with Ubuntu Live USB
2. Delete existing linux-swap partition on HDD (Resize any existing partition to make use this new unallocated partition)
3. Resize / partition on SSD to make space for new swap partition
4. Create new swap partition
5. Shutdown, remove Ubuntu Live USB and restart the machine
6. Now in Ubuntu, open terminal and run the command below

$ sudo blkid

    # output would be something like this
    /dev/nvme0n1p6: UUID="581446b5-7fab-46b0-ba3a-569c0fc42be3" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="646e1aba-ebff-40e7-86c2-155211f485d5"

7. Look for "swap" and copy UUID from the newly created swap partition
8. Edit /etc/fstab file by running command below (don't forget to backup first)

$ sudo nano /etc/fstab

9. Replace the old UUID for swap with the new one.
10. Save the file and reboot the machine.

To verify, we can use free command

$ free

    # output
                  total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
    Mem:       32774452     1315660    30136320       34844     1322472    31009776
    Swap:       6292476           0     6292476

Or swapon -s command

$ swapon 0s

    # output
    Filename    Type  Size Used Priority
    /dev/nvme0n1p6                          partition 6292476 0 -2

This is how my new partition table looks like:

nvmeOn1
        EFI                                  100 MB
        Microsoft reserved partition          16 MB
        Basic data partition              217.35 GB
        /                                     14 GB
        linux-swap                             6 GB
        Recovery                               1 GB
        Unallocated                        14.34 MB

    sda
        Basic data partition              465.76 GB
        /opt                                9.54 GB
        /usr                               43.96 GB
        /home                             412.26 GB

Hello Disco Dingo, I'm back!

It's been a while since I last play around with Linux. Last version I used was Linux Mint 17.1. My Dell Studio XPS 16 overheated while my son played games on it. It's gone for good.

Last year, I bought an Acer Predator Helios 300 Special Edition. It's a nice laptop. I'm glad that it play nice with Linux. Found out that Canonical has ditched Unity and revert back to Gnome Shell.

It's a bit of a challenge to install Linux on this machine configuration at first, but once done everything is history. I will write how to's in my coming post. Stay tune.