Posted September 15, 2019
The last couple of days, two personal technical breakthroughs made me very very happy:
tl;dr: I figured out how to share PC desktop to TV with Chromecast wirelessly, and found working Linux drivers for my faster USB wifi adapter.
Longer version:
1. I bought a Chromecaster a couple of months ago, and after been using it and googling for its features, I was under the impression that it is not possible to stream your PC desktop to the TV, as I was hoping (not having to use e.g. a HDMI cable to connect your laptop to the PC etc.). It seemed that it is "merely" to be used with any mobile apps or PC programs that have built-in support for it (among the the Chrome web browser of course). So, yeah ok, it is nice you can "stream" videos and movies from Youtube or your Netflix app to your TV wirelessly,
VLC media player just got built-in Chromecast support too which is nice, so I tested it. Works otherwise great, but subtitles don't work. While I googled for it (the VLC authors said they are planning to add subtitle support, but it is technically a bit tricky to do with Chromecast), one of them also said "The workaround is to cast your whole desktop to Chromecast and watch the videos with subtitles like that".
Wait, what? Share the whole PC desktop to the TV with Chromecast? Turns out, yeah that was possible all along, with the Chrome web browser. In the Chrome browser, go to Menu => Cast and select "Desktop" as your source, and there you are! It works fine even from Linux desktop, when using the Chromium web browser.
And the graphics quality seemed very good too, it seemed quite as good as connecting the PC to the TV with the HDMI cable! Crisp and clear picture.
The only downside: there is quite a bit lag with the picture, so it is useless for e.g. realtime gaming. Even when you merely move the mouse on the desktop, there is like a half a second lag when you move the mouse and when it moves on the screen. So not quite a full replacement for a HDMI cable, but for some uses like watching videos or ripped movies) maybe work and generic desktop use too.
2. A couple of weeks ago I got the speed upgrade to my internet, 400 Mbit/s. The bad news was that my older gaming laptop's (which is my main PC at home) wifi doesn't support the faster 5GHz frequency to get to the top speeds, but only the lower 2.4GHz. With that lower frequency, I only get something like 45 Mbit/s max as the 2.4GHz frequency is apparently so congested already in this apartment house, everyone using it. My work laptop supports the 5GHz and can achieve like 380Mbit/s wirelessly.
So, I bought an USB wifi adapter (ASUS AC1300 USB-AC54) for my older laptop that supports the 5GHz speeds. Works fine... on Windows 7 (with the drivers that came on a CD with the adapter), but I increasingly use Linux Mint on that PC as I am going to switch Windows 7 permanently offline on it next January when MS stops supporting Windows 7, and use the Windows 7 partition only for semi-old Windows games that may have problems on Windows 10 (like my CD games with copy protection).
So, yeah, on Linux I only got those lower speeds like 45Mbit/s and so. I tried to find Linux drivers for the wifi adapter online, but it was all so confusing because apparently this same wifi adapter has different names/model numbers abroad.
So I checked what hardware ID this adapter has on Linux (with the "lsusb" command) and googled for that HW ID. Hmmm, some discussions were talking about "ASUS USB-AC57", so is that another name for the same adapter, or having simply the very same chipset etc., hence having the same hardware ID on Linux?
Either way, ASUS did indeed have 64bit Linux drivers for AC-57,,, but they were meant for older Linux cores than what I am using, so I didn't dare to try them. However, some guy was offering source drivers of his own, so I needed to compile and install them (make, sudo make install etc...)... and to my utter surprise, those drivers do indeed work.
So now I am enjoying the higher 5GHz frequency wifi speeds also on my home Linux, yay!
tl;dr: I figured out how to share PC desktop to TV with Chromecast wirelessly, and found working Linux drivers for my faster USB wifi adapter.
Longer version:
1. I bought a Chromecaster a couple of months ago, and after been using it and googling for its features, I was under the impression that it is not possible to stream your PC desktop to the TV, as I was hoping (not having to use e.g. a HDMI cable to connect your laptop to the PC etc.). It seemed that it is "merely" to be used with any mobile apps or PC programs that have built-in support for it (among the the Chrome web browser of course). So, yeah ok, it is nice you can "stream" videos and movies from Youtube or your Netflix app to your TV wirelessly,
VLC media player just got built-in Chromecast support too which is nice, so I tested it. Works otherwise great, but subtitles don't work. While I googled for it (the VLC authors said they are planning to add subtitle support, but it is technically a bit tricky to do with Chromecast), one of them also said "The workaround is to cast your whole desktop to Chromecast and watch the videos with subtitles like that".
Wait, what? Share the whole PC desktop to the TV with Chromecast? Turns out, yeah that was possible all along, with the Chrome web browser. In the Chrome browser, go to Menu => Cast and select "Desktop" as your source, and there you are! It works fine even from Linux desktop, when using the Chromium web browser.
And the graphics quality seemed very good too, it seemed quite as good as connecting the PC to the TV with the HDMI cable! Crisp and clear picture.
The only downside: there is quite a bit lag with the picture, so it is useless for e.g. realtime gaming. Even when you merely move the mouse on the desktop, there is like a half a second lag when you move the mouse and when it moves on the screen. So not quite a full replacement for a HDMI cable, but for some uses like watching videos or ripped movies) maybe work and generic desktop use too.
2. A couple of weeks ago I got the speed upgrade to my internet, 400 Mbit/s. The bad news was that my older gaming laptop's (which is my main PC at home) wifi doesn't support the faster 5GHz frequency to get to the top speeds, but only the lower 2.4GHz. With that lower frequency, I only get something like 45 Mbit/s max as the 2.4GHz frequency is apparently so congested already in this apartment house, everyone using it. My work laptop supports the 5GHz and can achieve like 380Mbit/s wirelessly.
So, I bought an USB wifi adapter (ASUS AC1300 USB-AC54) for my older laptop that supports the 5GHz speeds. Works fine... on Windows 7 (with the drivers that came on a CD with the adapter), but I increasingly use Linux Mint on that PC as I am going to switch Windows 7 permanently offline on it next January when MS stops supporting Windows 7, and use the Windows 7 partition only for semi-old Windows games that may have problems on Windows 10 (like my CD games with copy protection).
So, yeah, on Linux I only got those lower speeds like 45Mbit/s and so. I tried to find Linux drivers for the wifi adapter online, but it was all so confusing because apparently this same wifi adapter has different names/model numbers abroad.
So I checked what hardware ID this adapter has on Linux (with the "lsusb" command) and googled for that HW ID. Hmmm, some discussions were talking about "ASUS USB-AC57", so is that another name for the same adapter, or having simply the very same chipset etc., hence having the same hardware ID on Linux?
Either way, ASUS did indeed have 64bit Linux drivers for AC-57,,, but they were meant for older Linux cores than what I am using, so I didn't dare to try them. However, some guy was offering source drivers of his own, so I needed to compile and install them (make, sudo make install etc...)... and to my utter surprise, those drivers do indeed work.
So now I am enjoying the higher 5GHz frequency wifi speeds also on my home Linux, yay!
Post edited September 15, 2019 by timppu