Week 49 of 2019 summary

[cobito]

Gigabyte presents a USB 3.2 Gen2x2 card

Beyond the product itself (a card with USB ports), it's quite curious to see how the consortium that develops the communication bus has lost its way with the nomenclature.

Qualcomm's monopoly

The processor manufacturer is in court for monopolistic practices. If they win, the price of cars could go up according to this Reuters entry. For its part, Intel has denounced that it has been Qualcomm's practices (selling at a loss) that have caused the competition to disappear.

Kali Linux's stealth mode

Under a somewhat silly excuse (presenting stealth mode), the people at Kali Linux have published a theme for their distro that gives it a visual appearance quite similar to Windows 10.

Imagination releases new GPU

The creator of some of the most famous mobile processors of the last two decades is about to release what they call "the most important launch in the last 15 years". In this complete entry from Anandtech are all the details.

The PinePhone will cost €150

The Linux-powered phone will come with an Allwinner A64 processor, 2Gb of RAM and a 1440x720 screen. Although the specifications are not great, the price is quite reasonable given the niche it is aimed at. Pine64 is also the developer of alternative SBC boards to Raspberry Pi and the profits from this mobile will be donated to the free software community.

Windows 10 vs Linux with a Zen 2

On Phoronix they have published a comparison between both operating systems when they run on a Ryzen Threadripper 3970X. They have tested many distros and the result is that Windows 10 comes in first place in 20% of the tests while it comes in last place in 55% of the tests.

AMD wants to enter the NUC market

Mini PCs, once the exclusive domain of VIA, have been monopolized by Intel. This situation could change with AMD's intention to put its Zen in this reduced format.

Huawei presents its motherboard

It is a motherboard with an integrated ARM processor, 4 slots for DDR4 memory and with ATX power supply. It includes 6 SATA ports, 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports, 8 USB buses and everything you would expect from a conventional motherboard. The CPU it integrates has 8 cores at 2.6GHz,

Firefox 71 available

The new version of Mozilla's browser comes with improvements in the password manager and additional information in the anti-tracking protection system. In addition, Windows users will now be able to watch miniaturized videos while browsing other tabs.

Apple sued over its keyboards

In a country (USA) where lawsuits are the order of the day, a group of users has come together against Apple for its Butterfly keyboard. The problems come because sometimes the keys don't respond or get stuck.

The Qt application store

The Qt development framework has launched its space for creators to publish their software. Remember that Qt is the framework used in KDE, one of the most widespread Linux desktops.

Firefox activates its VPN

For now it is in the testing phase. In this beta there are two possibilities: use the VPN only in the browser, which is free or in the whole computer, which costs €5 per month. This last option is only available for Windows at the moment.