How to stop screen tearing in CM4 units.
I was experiencing bad screen tearing in Firefox and Chromium, as well as GBA emulators and other games. To fix this, we need to run the following command in a terminal.
sudo raspi-config
go to “advanced options” with the arrow keys, select with enter, select xcompositor, and turn off the xcompositor.
hit tab to select “finish” and enter to exit.
For me, using Cinnamon as my DE, this got rid of all screen tearing issues.
How to comfortably overclock the CM4.
Even though the uConsole does not have a fan and is passively cooled, I have been able to run a slight overclock on mine without overheating. Open a terminal and run these commands.
sudo cd /boot
sudo nano config.txt
under the [pi4] section write
arm_freq=1800
gpu_freq=750
over_voltage=5
under the [all] section write
gpu-mem=256
use ctrl + o to write the changes, and ctrl+x to exit. Reboot the uConsole. I’ve noticed significant performance gains in gaming thanks to the GPU overclock, and 5-8c increase in temperature which I think is acceptable. You could probably take the CPU overclock further, to do so increase the over_voltage value to 6. Depending on if you won the silicone lottery or not, you can set arm_freq to 2000 or up to 2200. As well, the gpu_mem value can be set to 512, as this value is in megabytes though it doesn’t make much sense to do so. If your unit fails to boot, stick the SD card into a secondary computer and edit the same config.txt file in the /boot directory, lowering the arm_freq value by 100 until the uConsole boots.
How to change DE’s
I changed my DE because I was having issues with running packages I installed, so if you are having this issue I recommend you try this. Gnome is called Debian default or something in tasksel btw.
sudo tasksel
(note, if you get an error, run sudo apt update -y && sudo apt upgrade -y, and then run sudo tasksel)
select your DE of choice with the spacebar, then use tab to “ok” and hit enter.
Next you need a way to select your DE at boot, so we install a new Display Manager.
sudo apt-get install gdm3
after doing so you’ll be prompted to select which Display Manager you want to use. Select gdm3.
restart the uConsole
after you boot into gdm3, click your user, and then on the bottom right click the cog wheel, and select your new DE!