Summary of the week of February 1, 2021

cobito

Open GPU development

A group of enthusiasts has started designing a free graphics processor intended to be used with RISC-V processors.

Linux abandons support for Itanium

What was a promising architecture at the beginning of the century ended up being a fiasco. It needed a good enough compiler that never appeared. Linux will soon stop supporting these Intel processors.

Using HiDPI screens in Linux

If for any reason, you don't use Wayland and you have a screen with a high pixel density, this page gives tips so that specific programs and some libraries like QT, display things correctly scaled.

Ryzen 7 5800X

Bm4n brought us the first Zen 3 from the database a few days ago. It remains in first position in the generic test and in the single-threaded memory test as well as in the single-threaded overall ranking. In the multi-threaded ranking it remains in eighth position.

Firefox extension that simplifies the web

For now it only works with the main portals. The goal of this Firefox add-on is to eliminate all elements of the pages that distract and are useless.

First PCIe 5 interfaces appear

Microchip has developed the first switch for the new bus that allows rates of 4GB/s per line.

LibreOffice Community

The version 7.1 of the office suite has just appeared. Perhaps the most relevant thing this time is that the word "Community" has been added to the program. Apparently, this has been done to emphasize the fact that it is free software since, from the community of developers, they do not believe it is positive that large entities, both public and private, use the program without contributing to its development in any way.

DLSS in Unreal Engine 4.26

Someone has decided to try out the deep learning algorithm that allows images to be rescaled to have a definition similar to a higher resolution in Unreal Engine.

Why webcams are so bad

Apart from the fact that no one has a special interest in seeing their face in too much detail in a video conference, there are technical limitations related to the size of lenses and video post-processing.

Raspbian adds Microsoft repositories

The community surrounding the board is annoyed by the organization's decision to add the Microsoft repository without any notice. The problem comes from the fact that every time the operating system is installed, a call is made to Microsoft servers with which data of the use and IP of each board can be collected.