Everything under control with the TUXEDO Control Center - TUXEDO Computers

Augsburg (Germany), 20th of April 2020. For a long time TUXEDO Computers has been fine-tuning its own Control Center - now the time has come: In order for customers to be able to make their own personal favorite settings on the TUXEDO device, the specially programmed TUXEDO Control Center is now available.

Create your own profiles

“The TUXEDO Control Center is far from being fully developed. Version 1.0 shows the first basic functions and lays the technical foundation that shows where the journey still has to go”, explains Herbert Feiler, CEO. Nevertheless, the current version is ready for customers to use.

The first version of the Control Center already contains various functions: For example, customers can create their own profiles for their TUXEDO Book, in which the brightness of the screen as well as the processor properties and the fan settings can be stored or the webcam can be switched on and off.

Basically, different profiles can be fixed, which either have a performance mode or contain properties for energy saving - depending on the power required at the moment. This saves users time and allows them to easily switch from one mode to another without having to go to different areas of the computer and click several points.

Profiles for battery or mains operation

The dashboard provides an overview of system performance, temperature, fan speed and currently active profile settings. The profile overview is clearly laid out so that users have an immediate overview of the profiles and can create new ones or delete unused profiles immediately. It can also be differentiated whether the respective profile is to apply to battery or mains operation. “A continuous power supply causes different conditions than if I am only dependent on battery power for a longer period of time. Therefore we have created the possibility to proceed more finely in the selection”, says Christoffer Sandberg, developer at TUXEDO Computers.

Since this is an initial version of the Control Center, continuous optimization will follow. For subsequent versions, it is planned to add e.g. a keyboard illumination and to make some settings even more granular to be able to use the full potential of the respective TUXEDO computer. Herbert Feiler adds: “For the future, we plan to control additional security and comfort features, such as touchpad control and various time-dependent changes to the desktop and the performance of the device”.

Numerous settings possible

Above all, further energy or power settings should be made possible: The user should be able to control the maximum power consumption of both the CPU and the graphics card, in addition to the currently existing settings for the number of active CPU cores and their clock speed. The fan control will be extended so that users can create their own fan curves in addition to the currently preset, selectable profiles.

“The clever combination of power limit, throttling and fan control can turn a high-performance notebook into a passive device without fan noise, without having to compromise on performance or purchase multiple devices,” continued Herbert Feiler.

In principle, the customer can rely on TUXEDO Computers to develop security levels for all configuration options so that the TUXEDO Book cannot be damaged. The settings will only be set in a way that is safe for the hardware.

Availability and Open Source Development

TUXEDO Computers customers receive the Control Center directly from the software sources of their operating system. For TUXEDO_OS and Ubuntu as well as for openSUSE Linux, these are available immediately. TUXEDO Computers, as a provider of data protection friendly and security conscious hardware solutions, is also committed to the idea of open source. Therefore, in addition to the mentioned software packages, the entire source code is available on GitHub and for free use under the license GPLv3.