Newsbytes
Kodi is a very popular piece of open source media playing software, and while it’s easy and free to download and install Kodi on a large number of devices, including the Raspberry Pi, there is also a growing market for set top boxes that are sold with Kodi pre-installed. The problem is, there are many third party add-ons that aren’t endorsed by the Kodi team, and are primarily used by people to stream and download subscription and pirated media for free. Boxes with Kodi and these add-ons pre-installed are being subject to a crackdown, and a shopkeeper from Middlesbrough is pleading not guilty in a landmark case that could determine the legality of selling ‘fully loaded’ Kodi boxes in the UK. The trial begins in May. http://bit.ly/LXF222kodi
Mesa 17, the latest release of the open source graphics driver for Linux, has been released after a short delay, but the latest benchmark results prove that the wait was well worth it. It brings OpenGL 4.5 support for Intel Haswell processors, better performance for many recent games, especially on AMD cards, and noticeably improved Vulkan performance. For a full run down of the benchmark results and improvements in performance, visit http://bit.ly/Mesa17Vulkan Benchmarks.
Fancy building your own open source laptop? If so, the TERES 1 laptop is the machine for you and everything you need to build it yourself is now available, including the building instructions (found at http://bit.ly/
TERESIPDF). Meanwhile the hardware CAD files and Linux build scripts are available on GitHub ( https://github.com/OLIMEX/DIYLAPTOP), and as the creators, OliMex LTD, explain on its website ( http://
bit.ly/TERESIDIY), the idea is that anyone can view, edit, modify and create their own versions of the laptop. If you don’t want to start completely from scratch, you can buy kits for €225 from https://www. olimex.com/Products/DIY%20 Laptop/KITS, though at the time of writing both kits are sold out.