Summary week 37 of 2019

[cobito]

Here is the first season summary.

Third-generation Fairphone distribution begins

The smartphone, self-proclaimed "ethical", has begun to be distributed in Europe. One of its advantages is that it can be repaired and updated in a simple way by the user. Despite everything, not all its components come from a more "ethical" source than a conventional phone

Celeron N3150

An anonymous person brings us this desktop processor with moderate performance and low consumption

Intel releases new graphics drivers

It is now possible to download version 100.7158 of Intel graphics drivers. Some of the new features is that it brings support for eFootball Pro Evolution Soccer 2020 and Greedfall among others. In addition, it is the driver that supports the tenth generation of Core processors.

New Nvidia driver

The Game Ready Driver 436.30 is now available for download. It is designed for the COD Modern Warfare Open Beta, Gears 5, and Borderlands 3. In addition, it adds G-SYNC support for 6 new screen models.

TLC demonstrates with Micro Led

The screen manufacturer has made a demonstration of a relatively new technology. It is a 132" screen with a 4K resolution that has 24 million individually controlled LEDs.

Librem 5 is about to be released

The smartphone that includes completely free software is about to start distribution. If you have ordered one of these phones, you may want to check the FAQ published by the people at Puri.sm.

Details of GNOME Games 3.34

A few days ago, the latest version of one of the most popular desktop environments for Linux appeared: GNOME 3.34. It includes the game package that hasn't been talked about much for months. Now an entry has been published detailing the specifics of this package.

Doom running on SerenityOS

Someone has made a port of the famous nineties shooter. Doom has already been seen running on all kinds of devices and seems to have become a kind of platform for testing alternative systems, as it is in this case with SerenityOS.

AMD's Fidelity FX improves the look of Borderlands 3

AMD's open-source algorithm aims to increase image clarity. Fidelity FX seems to have brought notable improvements in the graphic quality of Borderlands 3.

Scripts to undervolt Radeon VII

Someone has created a script that allows you to reduce the voltage of Radeon VII in Linux without using the graphical interface. The program has been published on GitHub and its use is really simple.

Security update for 32-bit Windows

Even though it is an endangered species, the Windows 7, 8.1, 2008 R2, and 2012 R2 builds for 32-bit processors continue to receive support. With the KB4516067 update, among other things, security issues related to speculative execution on 32-bit x86 processors are fixed.

Evolution of browser usage

Someone has published an interesting animation showing the evolution of the use of different web browsers from 1996 to the present. It is interesting how Internet Explorer went from being the dominant option to being just one more. In addition, the exponential growth of Chrome is seen, ending the leadership of Firefox.

RTX improves Minecraft textures

The people at Nvidia have published a video showing quite spectacular differences in the graphics of Minecraft when RTX is activated. The improvements mainly involve lighting although some filters are also appreciated.

AMD will improve Zen 2 boost frequencies

AMD has announced that in the next AGESA update (1003ABBA) a bug in the frequency calculation algorithm will be corrected. This correction will allow higher boost frequencies to be reached. In addition, changes will be made in the management of the idle frequency that will improve the transition to higher frequencies.

Krita for sale on Steam

Krita is a free, open-source artistic graphic creation program that can be installed in many ways: by downloading precompiled binaries, compiling the source code yourself, or even using the official repositories of different distributions. But it is also for sale for €10 on Steam. The developers have decided to make this move in order to finance the project. Curiously, at the same time as it is sold, it can still be obtained completely free of charge.

DoH is disabled by default on OpenBSD

Encrypting DNS traffic through HTTPS is not an option that everyone likes. The people at OpenBSD have decided to disable Firefox's DoH because it uses Cloudfare to provide the service. That intermediary seems to be the point of contention.

The biggest contributors to Linux 5.3

The people at LWN have published an article that includes a ranking of the community members who have contributed the most to the latest version of the Kernel. It also includes a history of the changes in the last ten versions where an increase is seen in both the number of developers and changes contributed.

IBM presents the Next-Gen Z mainframe

Unlike domestic processor manufacturers, IBM has made a special effort to increase performance per core of its processors. Currently, the trend is to increase the number of cores while maintaining the performance of each unit almost unchanged from generation to generation. In the Next-Gen Z, they have put cores with a larger physical size, with more cache (no less than 256Mb of L3 cache) and maintaining 5.2GHz.

Corsair releases DDR4-4866 CL18 26-26-46

The manufacturer will soon put the fastest kits to date on sale. These modules are designed for the X570 platform of the Zen 2, although there should be no problems in getting them to work on the Intel Z390 platform, now that is true, reduced to DDR4-4800.

AMD FX 8320

NakedCOOL left us a result a few days ago of this Piledriver from 2012 with a not very interesting performance in single-thread, although at the level of Intel's mid-range of the era in multi-thread.