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Showing posts from January, 2020

Tesla Uses Coreboot Among Other Open Source Solutions

Tesla uses multiple open source projects in its soft- and hardware. One of these examples is the adoption of Coreboot, adding to the Linux Kernel , LMMS, and lots of other software. The full self-driving (FSD) chip is made by Samsung, Tesla's partner in that area. The source code of the Github repository shows Coreboot references to a "Turbo TRAV" SoC and also a "Turbo Sentinel" which seem to be new iterations of motherboards. You can find the repo here . It's interesting to see that this company uses open source software extensively. And it's nice to know that Mr. Musk and his company pay respect to the developers of projects used in the electrical cars. Self-driving cars are the future, so it seems. We'll see how Linux and other open source projects like Coreboot improve the Tesla ecosystem in the years ahead. There a many open source alternatives out there, and we're sure that Tesla continues to implement solutions based on free soft

The GIMP Roadmap In 2020

In a recent post on the offical GIMP news blog, the dev team explained what they did in 2019 and what they're planning for the coming years, especially 2020. Most importantly, the development is still in progress. Some think that The GIMP is dead , or that the developers may have given up on their beloved GNU image manipulation program. Nothing could be further from the truth, and according to the post linked here , the 2.99.x series is going to be released soon. Some of the noteworthy changes in the past year: - edit and display pixels outside the canvas - transformation tools can be adjusted after zooming in or out - free select has become more dynamic and flexible - improved curves tool - 32-bit parametric brushes - Bucket Fill is smarter now with colorization (finally) - lots of performance improvements - GEGL enhancements - improved file support - and lots of other stuff explained in detail in the blog post But whatever is coming to The GIMP, the software has

Boost Your Debian / Ubuntu Performance With The XanMod Kernel

If you haven't been a Linux user for a long time, you're probably on Ubuntu or any of the other "standard" Debian derivatives (Xubuntu, Kubuntu, or even Devuan). The standard kernel that ships with the LTS variants of Ubuntu operating systems is not optimized for performance but rather for compatibility. If you want to get more out of your hardware, it's recommended to install an optimized kernel for that purpose. There are several alternatives to the mainline kernel. The XanMod Kernel is one of these alternatives and relatively easy to install on your own Ubuntu / Debian machine. You can learn more about the XanMod Kernel here: https://xanmod.org The latest release by the XanMod developer team includes the following changes : - Preemptive Full Tickless Kernel at 500Hz w/ Tuned CPU Core Scheduler. - Tuned Multi-Queue Block Layer w/ Low-Latency BFQ I/O Scheduler. - Caching, Virtual Memory Manager and CPU Governor improvements. - RCU Boost for bett

SuperTuxKart 1.1 Released With iOS support

If you're born in the 90s or even earlier, you know about Mario Kart for the SNES or even N64. But do you know SuperTuxKart, the open source alternative to the popular racing game? It has come a long way since it was first created. Today, SuperTuxKart 1.1 was released with the following changes: * lots of UI improvements * brand-new arena called "Pumpkin Park" * mobile enhancements and even a iOS client available via Apple's testflight * emoji support * new "speedrunner mode" with story mode timer * lots of minor fixes and improvements You can read the full changelog here: https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-code/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md You can download the game here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/supertuxkart/files/SuperTuxKart/1.1 Or (if you're using one of the popular Linux distributions), you can just install it via your software center or whatever it's called in your distro. If you're still on the fence about downlo

Open Source Alternatives In 2020

Over at opensource.com I found a useful article outlining many open source alternatives for established software used by end users and professionals. Instead of focusing on just the typical comparisons (choice of office suite, operating system, etc.), the article goes deeper. There is a mention of alternatives to social media applications and networks, but also vegans can find something valuable in the article titled "10 open source software alternatives for the new year" Going forward in 2020, it's going to be interesting to see new open source technologies emerge.