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Binary Blobs
In the context of free and open-source software, proprietary software only available as a binary executable is referred to as a blob or binary blob. The term usually refers to a device driver module loaded into the kernel of an open-source operating system, and is sometimes also applied to code running outside the kernel, such as system firmware images, microcode updates, or userland programs. The term '' blob'' was first used in database management systems to describe a collection of binary data stored as a single entity. When computer hardware vendors provide complete technical documentation for their products, operating system developers are able to write hardware device drivers to be included in the operating system kernels. However, some vendors, such as Nvidia, do not provide complete documentation for some of their products and instead provide binary-only drivers. This practice is most common for accelerated graphics drivers, wireless networking devices, and hardware ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free And Open-source Software
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free software and open-source software. The rights guaranteed by FOSS originate from the "Four Essential Freedoms" of '' The Free Software Definition'' and the criteria of '' The Open Source Definition''. All FOSS can have publicly available source code, but not all source-available software is FOSS. FOSS is the opposite of proprietary software, which is licensed restrictively or has undisclosed source code. The historical precursor to FOSS was the hobbyist and academic public domain software ecosystem of the 1960s to 1980s. Free and open-source operating systems such as Linux distributions and descendants of BSD are widely used, powering millions of servers, desktops, smartphones, and other devices. Free-software licenses and open-so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nvidia
Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem, it designs and supplies graphics processing units (GPUs), application programming interfaces (APIs) for data science and high-performance computing, and system on a chip units (SoCs) for mobile computing and the automotive market. Nvidia is also a leading supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware and software. Nvidia outsources the manufacturing of the hardware it designs. Nvidia's professional line of GPUs are used for edge-to-cloud computing and in supercomputers and workstations for applications in fields such as architecture, engineering and construction, media and entertainment, automotive, scientific research, and manufacturing design. Its GeForce line of GPUs are aimed at the consumer market and are used in ap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parabola (software)
Parabola GNU/Linux-libre is a free and open-source Linux distribution based on Arch Linux and Arch Linux ARM for the x86-64, i686, and ARMv7 architectures. It is distinguished from other Arch-based distributions by offering only free software. It includes the GNU operating system components common to many Linux distributions and the Linux-libre kernel instead of the generic Linux kernel. Parabola is listed by the Free Software Foundation as a completely free operating system, true to their Free System Distribution Guidelines. Parabola uses a rolling release model like Arch, such that a regular system update is all that is needed to obtain the latest software. Development focuses on system simplicity, community involvement and use of the latest free software packages. History Parabola was originally proposed by members of the gNewSense IRC channel in 2009. Members of different Arch Linux communities, especially Spanish-speaking members, started the development and maintenanc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
FSFLA
Free Software Foundation Latin America (FSFLA) is the Latin American sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation. It is the fourth sister organisation of FSF, after Free Software Foundation Europe and Free Software Foundation India. It was launched on November 23, 2005 in Rosario, Argentina. The founding general assembly of FSFLA elected Federico Heinz as President, Alexandre Oliva as Secretary and Beatriz Busaniche as Treasurer. The Administrative Council consisted of them as well as Enrique A. Chaparro, Mario M. Bonilla, Fernanda G. Weiden and Juan José Ciarlante. In 2006, Beatriz Busaniche, Enrique A. Chaparro, Federico Heinz, Juan José Ciarlante and Mario M. Bonilla left the FSFLA's Council. After that the original directives were modified to the current ones. A new position of “Observer of the Council” was created in the organisation to allow other important people in the free software community to participate, observe and advise the Council. The current me ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linux-libre
According to the Free_Software_Foundation_Latin_America , Free Software Foundation Latin America, Linux-libre is a modified version of the Linux kernel that contains no binary blobs, Obfuscation (software), obfuscated code, or code released under proprietary licenses. In the Linux kernel, those types of code are mostly used for proprietary firmware images. While generally redistributable, they do not give the user the freedom to audit, modify, or, consequently, redistribute their modified versions. The GNU Project keeps Linux-libre in synchronization with the Mainline Linux, mainline Linux kernel. History The Linux kernel started to include binary blobs in 1996. The work to clear out the binary blobs began in 2006 with gNewSense's find-firmware and gen-kernel. This work was taken further by the BLAG Linux and GNU, BLAG Linux distribution in 2007 when deblob and Linux-libre was born.jebbaBLAG :: View topic - Linux Libre BLAG forums, 2008. Linux-libre was first released by th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Source Code
In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only understands machine code, source code must be Translator (computing), translated before a computer can Execution (computing), execute it. The translation process can be implemented three ways. Source code can be converted into machine code by a compiler or an assembler (computing), assembler. The resulting executable is machine code ready for the computer. Alternatively, source code can be executed without conversion via an interpreter (computing), interpreter. An interpreter loads the source code into memory. It simultaneously translates and executes each statement (computer science), statement. A method that combines compilation and interpretation is to first produce bytecode. Bytecode is an intermediate representation of source code tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Software Movement
The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for user (computing), software users, namely the freedoms to run, study, modify, and share copies of software. Software which meets these requirements, The Free Software Definition#The Four Essential Freedoms of Free Software, The Four Essential Freedoms of Free Software, is termed free software. Although drawing on traditions and philosophies among members of the 1970s hacker (programmer subculture), hacker culture and academia, Richard Stallman formally founded the movement in 1983 by launching the GNU Project. Stallman later established the Free Software Foundation in 1985 to support the movement. Philosophy The philosophy of the Free Software Movement is based on promoting collaboration between programmers and computer users. This process necessitates the rejection of proprietary software and the promotion of free software. Stallman notes that this action would not ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985. The organisation supports the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed under copyleft ("share alike") terms, such as with its own GNU General Public License. The FSF was incorporated in Boston where it is also based. From its founding until the mid-1990s, FSF's funds were mostly used to employ software developers to write free software for the GNU Project and its employees and volunteers have mostly worked on legal and structural issues for the free software movement and the free software community. Consistent with its goals, the FSF aims to use only free software on its own computers. The FSF holds the copyrights on many pieces of the GNU system, such as GNU Compiler Collection. As the holder of these copyrights, it has authority to enforce the copyleft requirements of the GNU General Public License (GPL ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable home-class hardware, and has since continuously been the most commonly used BSD-derived operating system. FreeBSD maintains a complete system, delivering a kernel, device drivers, userland utilities, and documentation, as opposed to Linux only delivering a kernel and drivers, and relying on third-parties such as GNU for system software. The FreeBSD source code is generally released under a permissive BSD license, as opposed to the copyleft GPL used by Linux. The project includes a security team overseeing all software shipped in the base distribution. Third-party applications may be installed using the pkg package management system or from source via FreeBSD Ports. The project is supported and promoted by the FreeBSD Foundation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ifconfig
ifconfig (short for ''interface config'') is a system administration utility in Unix-like operating systems for network interface configuration. The utility is a command-line interface A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via command (computing), commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user ... tool and is also used in the system startup scripts of many operating systems. It has features for configuring, controlling, and querying Internet protocol suite, TCP/IP network interface parameters. Ifconfig originally appeared in 4.2BSD as part of the Berkeley Software Distribution, BSD TCP/IP suite. Many Linux distributions have deprecated ifconfig in favor of tools from iproute2. Usage Common uses for ifconfig include setting the IP address and subnet mask of a network interface and disabling or enabling an interface. At boot time, many U ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Network Interface Controller
A network interface controller (NIC, also known as a network interface card, network adapter, LAN adapter and physical network interface) is a computer hardware component that connects a computer to a computer network. Early network interface controllers were commonly implemented on expansion cards that plugged into a computer bus. The low cost and ubiquity of the Ethernet standard means that most newer computers have a network interface built into the motherboard, or is contained into a USB-connected dongle, although network cards remain available. Modern network interface controllers offer advanced features such as interrupt and Direct memory access, DMA interfaces to the host processors, support for multiple receive and transmit queues, partitioning into multiple logical interfaces, and on-controller network traffic processing such as the TCP offload engine. Purpose The network controller implements the electronic circuitry required to communicate using a specific physica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
