Good news for Linux fans: Free support for Nvidia Turing
Since the appearance of the Turing graphics cards in autumn 2018, Linux developers at Nouveau – a collection of free Linux drivers for Nvidia graphics cards – have been using reverse engineering to obtain suitable drivers. The problem they were facing is: The firmware is signed and can only be provided by Nvidia. However, the graphics card manufacturer was not yet ready to share its data with the Nouveau developers. This has apparently changed now and the Linux team is working intensively on drivers for hardware acceleration. Why do we care about this? Quite a few spo-comm customers who rely on the KUMO series for high-end graphics applications work with Linux. And the latest model, the KUMO V with a dedicated Nvidia Turing graphics card, is ready to be presented at ISE in February.
No support: The end of Windows 7
As previously announced, Microsoft released the last security updates for Windows 7 SP1 systems on January 14, 2020. As a result, hardware and software manufacturers will no longer support the popular operating system in the future. If you continue to work with Windows 7, you and your applications are exposed to high security risks, so switching to Windows 10 or another operating system should be considered as soon as possible. If you are in a company environment and a software change is definitely not possible at the moment, Microsoft's Extended Security Update Program (ESU) offers an opportunity.
The interesting alternative: Windows 10 IoT Enterprise
If you are looking for the right operating system and are searching for a simple, inexpensive software solution that can be perfectly adapted to your needs, Windows 10 IoT Enterprise might be the one. spo-comm now offers this in three versions: BASIC, ON and OFF. With the BASIC package, which costs no surcharge, customers receive a raw image in the standard languages German and English. With the ON version, the display language is freely selectable and we update the update status quarterly so that the Mini-PC is ready for use immediately after delivery. If you want to make sure that your application runs smoothly and that no updates get in its way, you should choose the OFF package. Here the updates are completely deactivated. The language is also freely selectable. In addition, programs such as Cortana, OneDrive and XBOX-Network, which are not required for the majority of industrial applications, are removed in the latter two variants.
