LWDW 344: KDE Plasma for the bigscreen & homebrew IPMI

Nvidia releases some chonky toasters, Notes 2.0 learns how to theme, System76 body kits, and homebrew IPMI for the desktop.

Listen:

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
04:32 System76 Thelio accents
07:45 New Nvidia toasters
19:00 Plasma Bigscreen
23:05 Notes 2.0 with themes
34:20 Homebrew IMPI with BliKVM

Nvidia 40 series announcement

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/rtx-40-series-graphics-cards-announcements/

You knew it was coming and here it is, the new generation of hotness from big green.
We knew this was going to be an announcement for the high-end and they didn’t disappoint.
Both the 4090 and 4080 we brought out and we even got a few benchmarks.
While the Lovelace architecture is power hungry it does have quite the boost over last gen.
DLSS3 also showed up in the announcement.
New version of the NVENC along with dual AV1 encoders will be included in the 40 series.
AV1 support will be in Davinci Resolve and I’m guessing we will see it in OBS and on Twitch in the near future.
The AMD announcement is Nov 3rd and it will be interesting to see if they include AV1 as well.
4090 24GB $1599 & 4080 16GB $1199.
The 4090 looks like a 3.5/4-slot design and that’s a bit silly.

Wow! A hundred dollars higher than the 3000 series counterparts.
Sometimes Nvidia skimps on the memory.
I am looking forward to Portal with RTX on.

Plasma Jumbo

https://plasma-bigscreen.org/

KDE has done such a great job on Plasma Mobile, so a big screen version of Plasma makes a lot of sense.
I love the integration of the open source voice assistant Mycroft AI.
Maybe KDE can also integrate Mycroft in Plasma Mobile as well.
If I understand correctly it uses a RPi or other ARM device attached to the TV.
Does it have widevine for netflix etc al, and hardware media acceleration?
At first I thought this was something you could hack into an existing TV.
It’s more of an open-source Apple TV or Roku box.
It’s based on two different distros, KDE Neon for RPi4 and postmarketOS for other devices.
The website could use some clarification as to what Plasma Bigscreen is or aims to be.

Notes 2.0

https://github.com/nuttyartist/notes

I have used many note taking apps over the years on Linux, but now there is one that I will be using a lot more often since it now includes many new features that I need for my workflow.
That app is simply called Notes, and it is a free, open source, and cross-platform note-taking app written in Qt.
The new Notes 2.0 release adds a lot of new features, bug fixes, and UI improvements.
Including:
- The introduction of hierarchical organization using nested folders, and tags, which makes organization so much better, and is something that I can’t live without in any note taking app.
- You can also now pin notes to keep your most important thoughts/todos/ideas within reach.
- You can change the font size and width of text.
- And there is a new settings window that lets you choose from light, dark, or sepia themes.
- You can now change the database path to sync your notes via a cloud provider.
And a must have for me, there is markdown Support so you can format your text while you are typing.
The developer behind Notes was sick and tired of electron wrapped multi-gig note taking apps on Linux / mac / win.
Ruby decided to make Notes open-source and tracker-free.
It’s packaged as a Snap, Appimage, Deb, RPM and whatever Arch uses this week.
The AppImage clocks in at 30MB.

Thelio accents

https://system76.com/desktops?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social_post&utm_term&utm_content&utm_campaign=theli_you_launch

This is going to be a quick mention since it’s a cosmetics for an existing product.
Last week we talked about the release of the new version of the Thelio Mega with a Threadripper Pro and up to 4 GPUs, well yesterday System76 announced a new refresh to the whole Thelio series, but this time it’s a refresh of the case that can be customized!
Now you can customize the front of the case with swappable accent color panels.
You have your choice of Neptune Blue, Martian Red, a PCB circuit design, or my favorite, Farout Pink!
And, of course, your choice of their classic wood grain.
Yes, just like you can customize your software on your Thelio with Linux, now you can customize the hardware on the front of the case!
Overall, the systems have also been reengineered to be faster and quieter in this series.
A lot of this reengineering and customization is a result of customer feedback and suggestions.
I was very excited by the pink accent color, because after talking with Emma and chzbacon over at System76 for quite some time I have been requesting a pink option.
And it turns out that the idea for swappable accents came from chzbacon, the Media Relations Manager at System76 in our chat!
Thank you Cheezy for this, and for sending me the press release :-)

Slice of Pi

BliKVM PCIe

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2022/blikvm-pcie-puts-computer-your-computer

Cool! The BliKVM PCIe pinwheels the front panel power connectors, so you can power the computer on like you normally do, or power it on via Ethernet with PiKVM.
And at $100 to just over $200 dollars you can buy it at AliExpress, with or without a Pi Compute Module 4.
That is still cheaper than other external IP KVM options.
And in the box it comes with a VGA to HDMI adapter, an HDMI Sink for locking in an HDMI resolution, and an optional low profile bracket.
Homebrew IPMI is an interesting concept.
If you have ever found yourself draggin around a crash cart in a datacenter you’re probably familiar with it.
It has all the basic functionality.
Power control, onscreen keyboard, remote screenshots,
POE.
No internal sensor monitoring.
Low profile and only noms up 6w.
$114 without a Pi.
IPMI for the desktop.