Every Physics Teacher (And Student) Should Try This Open Source Software

Open source software has always been a cornerstone in scientific applications.

From supercomputers to CERN labs, handling some of the greatest discoveries of humankind and accelerating particles beyond imagination, open source software has provided the framework for all necessary technological usage.

Bringing it down to a simpler level, KDE's Step provides you a platform to test out some of the most important basic concepts in physics, like simple motion, electrostatics and gravitation, and even things like spring (harmonic) motion.

Developing an intuition about these phenomena can finally bridge the knowledge gap that students need. So if you are a physics teacher (or student), KDE Step is worth your attention.

Interface and Experience

Using the basic KDE design kit, the application looks quite familiar as it is. It is arranged in a very efficient manner, with all the usable objects on a panel on the left side of the window, while the right side holds the panel that can be used to modify any of the attributes of those objects as well as a panel that shows the history of the steps (no pun intended) made by the user. On the top of the window, all the menus are present with the undo/redo buttons, and most importantly, the button that allows you to start the simulation.

To demonstrate the elements and how they're used in the best way possible, I'm going to show different simulations that incorporate said elements. It is the most efficient and vivid way, since it is, after all, a simulation app.

Simple Harmonic Motion

As a very famous quote from Sidney Coleman says, "The career of a young theoretical physicist consists of treating the harmonic oscillator in ever-increasing levels of abstraction." Keeping up with that sentiment, I will show a very basic demonstration of a simple harmonic motion.

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Simple Harmonic Motion

The elements used here are two particles, a spring, a graph, weight field and an anchor. Particles in Step are simple zero-dimensional point objects with modifiable position, color, velocity, mass, momentum and kinetic energy.

Springs are simple, you can attach both ends to objects, you can change the stiffness. Anchors are utilities that can be used to fix the position of an object to the scene. No matter what, it will not move from where it is placed.

A weight field simply simulates the gravitational force of earth for all the objects placed on the scene, but again, you can modify the gravitational acceleration to suit whatever kind of simulation you're trying to run (for example, trying to simulate the gravitational force on the moon).

Finally, the graph utility can be used to plot any property of any object on the scene against any other property.

Soft Body

While sounding like a promise made by a moisturizer, soft body is not that but a category of objects in physics that are not rigid but that deform and change shape according to the parameters set.

More accurate, and as shown in the app itself, it can be thought of as an object made of small particles connected to each other by springs that deform according to the force provided.

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Soft body simulation

Two new elements are used here, a soft body (that has already been described) and a box. A box is just that, a rectangle with modifiable dimensions, where apart from what you can already change in a particle, you can also change the angular velocity, angular momentum, inertia, and so on.

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If you're wondering why the soft body falls on the left even though it has been placed centrally on the screen, that is because nothing can be truly zero in this context. There's always a miniscule value left, and in this case, even when the value is defined as 0, it is some exponentially small value close to it on the left (negative).

Orbit

Another basic simulation that can really help is that of an orbit. Step provides a gravitational field simulation, in which the universal law of gravitation starts holding true and applying within the canvas.

In this simulation, I've modified the value of the gravitational constant to something that allows my particle to orbit the central particle (because I finally can), and I'm using a controller to change the mass of my central particle while the simulation is going on to show how that changes the velocity and distance of the revolving particle.

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Orbit simulation

As you can see, for the first part of the video, it is making a calm orbit but as soon as I start increasing the mass, the particle comes closer (as one would expect) and when I decrease it, the particle goes out the frame (a little dramatic, but still expected).

Compound Pendulum

Have you ever wondered what an oscillating lambda would look like? Well wonder no further because Step allows you to make any kind of polygon that you would like to make with the polygon tool, and then you can use a pin to fix the position of one point in that body to the canvas. And some weight force to the scene, and there you go. A lambda pendulum:

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Compound pendulum simulation

This kind of pendulum that isn't one concentrated mass but distributed instead is called a compound pendulum in physics, which can be quite difficult to visualize sometimes.

Linear-Angular Parallels

Students often struggle with the equations for the motion of a disk, or anything that has to do with rotating rigid bodies, but it is only a matter of translation of the values in the usual linear equations of motion into those that concern rotating bodies. For example, mass gets replaced with moment of inertia, velocity with angular velocity, same with acceleration and so on. In the following simulation, that's exactly what we're showing:

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Linear-rotating parallels.

In this simulation, the particle and the disk have mass and moment of inertia with the value 1, velocity and angular velocity with value 6, acceleration and angular acceleration -2 respectively.

As you can see, the changes happen hand-in-hand, making it clear how the equations work practically parallelly. I have used a linear motor to apply a linear force to the particle and a circular motor to apply a torque to the disk. The values on display can be shown using the meter utility.

Stable and Unstable Equilibrium Positions

In the first case, I've fixed two positive charges of equal magnitude on the canvas with anchors. Another positive charge was placed right in between them. The charge, of course, will be in equilibrium just by the virtue of being smackdab right in the middle of the positive charges. What happens if I slightly move the central charge from its position?

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Stable equilibrium state for charges

The charge starts oscillating. In a real life scenario where there are losses due to friction and so on, this will return to the equilibrium position right in the middle. But what if my central charge is negative? What happens then?

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Unstable equilibrium state for charges

As you can see, the charge moves on to the side of movement, as you would expect. In this case, the equilibrium was unstable, meaning even the slight change in position on one side will result in absolute ruin of the equilibrium state. I've used charged particles, which are similar to normal particles but with the added option of adding a charge to them. Similar to how we did with gravitation, you need to add the Coulomb field to the canvas in order for the law of electrostatics to start applying.

Constraints

A lot of basic physics is based on constraints, which can be of different sorts. The most basic one is where the distance between two bodies is fixed, so that the motion of one of the bodies impacts that of the other. So in this simulation, I've done that exactly with a massless stick, which connects two bodies in Step. I've given a certain velocity to one of the particles, and you can see here how it impacts the other one:

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Usage of stick in Step

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It is important to note that sometimes the stick doesn't work really well. It is not supposed to be elastic, but it sometimes acts more like a spring than a stick if not configured exactly well.

Perfect Gas Simulation

Finally, Step has a tool that lets you simulate a perfect gas, following the basic principles of kinetic theory of gases. When applying it on the canvas, you can configure the area that the gas will exist in, the number of particles inside that area, the concentration, the temperature, particle mass and mean velocity. Sure, some of these things are dependent on each other and all of them being configurable individually does seem a little counter-intuitive, but if you change one of the values that another depends upon, it changes automatically. There's no disregard for the physics of it here.

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The gas particles are not configured to interact with any other bodies or walls/objects in the vicinity. If you put boxes or polygons to see how the gas interacts with them, Step will show an error saying it isn't possible.

Wrapping Up

There are some very obvious points at which Step breaks. Not even showing an error, it just breaks. For example, if you configure the mass of a particle to be 0 or very close to it, for any simulation that involves forces or collisions, the canvas just disappears. Obviously, massless particles are not in the scope of scenarios which Step can simulate.

Overall, Step has some excellent options that can really help students visualize their physics lesson up to an elementary undergraduate level.

As a student of Physics, I have been using it for years to clear my doubts, but it is only obvious that the simulation can only be as helpful and accurate as you are careful with setting it up. More than that, it helps you explore possibilities that aren't possible in the physical world, such as completely ideal conditions of zero friction, the ability to change fundamental and universal constants and so on.

On a related note, you may want to check out the list of distros for schools and education.

I hope this article was helpful and that you have fun seeing the answers to your physics doubts come to life. Cheers!

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Banking Apps, No Google, and a Locked Bootloader: How iodé Makes Privacy Android Work for Everyone

A few weeks back, I invited Brian from the iodé, a de-googled Android project, to have a quick discussion on the project, its achievements and the futuree challenges. I was meant to be in video/audio format but part of discussion suffered from poor audio quality and hence I switch it to nour usual text format.

I hope you enjoy this conversation.

It's FOSS: iodé sits at an interesting crossroads of privacy and sustainability. For those who haven't come across the project before, what is it and what is it trying to accomplish?

Brian: iodé is a project that is interested in making sure that there's a privacy-based Android distribution that is also very easy to use. Very easy for normal users to feel they can use it conveniently.

We also feature a tool which is a tracker blocker, so both your apps and your browser when you're browsing the internet have a sort of firewall that allows you to know exactly which connections your device is making, which connections the apps are making, the browser is making when you're visiting websites, and it prevents ads and trackers from following you around the internet.

That's the main goal and while it's not a Linux device in the classic sense of a Linux mobile device, it's an Android device, it gives you all the usability of an Android device.

It's FOSS: App compatibility is usually the first thing that worries someone considering a de-Googled phone, especially banking apps and anything they'd normally get from the Play Store. Since iodé doesn't ship with Google Play, how do you handle that?

Brian: We have two app stores. We have F-Droid, which is a free software app store that comes by default. And we also have Aurora Store, which is basically a front end for the Google Play Store.

So you can install any app that's on Google Play without Google knowing which apps you're installing it doesn't track you the same way Google Play does, but still gives you all the usability of Google Play.

And the difference is you can also spoof different devices. So if something is not available for your device, you don't have to go to some random APK store and risk downloading something that maybe is a dangerous file. You can just simply change the device settings and spoof another device and download that.

So it gives you all the usability of Google Play, maybe even more so. And like all of our pre-installed apps, you can uninstall any of them and install another app store if you want. You can even install the official Google Play if you want.

It's FOSS: If a non-technical person, someone who just wants their phone to work, switched to iodé tomorrow, what would their day-to-day experience actually look like?

Brian: There may be issues with some banking apps because Google has this integrity API, it's more about monopoly than it is about security.

So there are a few issues users may find with some apps not playing well with Play Integrity API. What we have is called MicroG. It's a Google Play Services emulator, and that usually works for almost any app. All the common apps that you would expect,Instagram, TikTok, all these things, they still work on iodé as you would expect.

So for the average user, unless you have problems with a banking app, and that's not that common, most banking apps continue to work. The only occasional thing I've seen is some apps that are from OEMs, like Samsung Watches, may not work. But in general, most users won't notice a big difference moving over from Android.

The difference you will notice is you don't get a lot of notifications and advertisements and just junk you get in a standard Android distribution, there's an incredible amount of bloatware and ads, especially if you're on something like Xiaomi or OPPO.

It's FOSS: Sustainability is something that sets iodé apart from a lot of other privacy-focused Android projects. You offer refurbished devices alongside new ones. Can you walk us through your thinking on that?

Brian: We're very interested in sustainability and so we encourage people to use refurbished devices when possible. Even some of the Fairphones we offer are refurbished. When you're using a very minimalistic image like iodé, it doesn't have a lot of the bloat and unnecessary software, things that you can't uninstall on a regular stock Android device, which is just running in the background and using up your CPU and using up your RAM.

The system itself is much bigger on stock because of Google Play Services and any other add-ons that OPPO or Xiaomi or any other manufacturer puts in. Because iodé is more minimal, it can run on older hardware, on hardware with lower specifications. So that's why we encourage people to use refurbished devices.

But people are asking, saying, "hey, we want new devices as well." So we have begun to add more new devices to our shop. Initially, we only wanted to work with Shift and Fairphone because they're sort of ethical manufacturers. They look at the entire supply chain, the conflict minerals that are involved in building the phones, and make sure that workers get paid well and that the materials are fairly sourced, and try to make a more sustainable model. Because obviously the best device you can always use is a device that's already been built, in terms of sustainability and ecology. So this is why we focused on refurbished.

It's FOSS: The privacy Android space isn't exactly crowded, but there are notable players like /e/OS, LineageOS, GrapheneOS. Do you see them as part of the same broader community, or more as competitors?

Brian: Honestly, I think anything that's good for any of these projects is going to help the other projects. Of all the Android hardware that's out there, there are very few devices to choose from, probably less than 1% of all Android devices can be de-Googled. There was more interest in custom ROMs back in the day when Android wasn't as useful and when people wanted to customize it. With Play Integrity and the Google Play APIs coming out that made it more difficult to use banking apps and things like that, there was a loss of interest. And also people began to see it as a security problem with unlocked bootloaders.

Now, we try to respect the locked bootloader, which makes us different from other projects like Lineage. Whenever we can relock the bootloader, we do. We have relocked bootloaders on four or five manufacturers. The rest of the manufacturers simply don't allow it. We're trying to work with these other operating systems. We have an agreement through the unified attestation to try to come up with an alternative to Google Play Integrity.

I think there's a big market for these devices. A lot of people just don't know that they can get a device that isn't spying on them, that isn't constantly sending data back to Google or to Apple. And just the fact that these devices exist and work out of the box, many people don't even know or realize this, or they think that it's going to be a huge amount of work to install it. That's why we have a shop, that's why we sell our devices. And if we can help these other projects, I think that's great.

I'd like to see more collaboration, and it would be really good if these groups didn't see each other as competitors. I think the same thing is true of Linux distributions. It would be very absurd for Fedora to be attacking SUSE Linux or Linux Mint. People often distro-hop, and I think the same will be true of privacy-based Android distributions.

It's FOSS: GrapheneOS has at times been quite critical of other projects in this space, including iodé, particularly on security grounds. How do you view that?

Brian: Graphene has been very vocal about saying that we've been attacking them. Actually, I don't think we have. This is probably the first time we'll ever say anything about Graphene. And I think the only thing I will say is that they have a great project, and that it's only available on Pixels. There are some people who want other devices. It is important to have a locked bootloader, but not all hardware manufacturers permit it. While we do lock bootloaders when possible on every system that allows bootloader re-locking, we also want to offer other hardware. And that can lead to security issues on those people's devices.

As for whether we also support end-of-life devices — we do. There's a billion people in the world who are running end-of-life devices, and those devices are vulnerable to attacks that have been found in the code base and aren't getting fixed by manufacturers. We continue to support those devices. I think people should know that if they are worried about security, they shouldn't be running end-of-life devices. But we also don't want people to throw them in the bin. They may have other uses for the device and they may not want that device to be constantly sending data back to Google. So there's a balance here.

There's also the question of the firmware. The firmware is updated by the manufacturer and a lot of those device drivers are actually closed source. We don't have access to be able to change it even if we wanted to. This is kind of one of the problems with the Android ecosystem. It's the same problem that the Linux mobile space is also facing.

We do want to support 60 devices; we don't just want to support Google Pixels. All power to them. I hope that Graphene can also make an agreement with Motorola to allow re-locking bootloaders on their devices. We've already begun to support Motorola devices. We do provide monthly security updates, and we're much more up to date than some of the other custom Android distributions out there. All of these projects are working with very limited resources, and it would be wise if we didn't do any sort of infighting. There's no custom ROM developer that has 30 developers. We're all working with very limited resources.

It's FOSS: Without tracking your users, getting a real picture of adoption must be tricky. What do you actually know about how many people are running iodé?

Brian: We do not really get any information on our user base. We don't keep any information. We just know what happens on the forum. We do know that in the last two years there's been a quarter of a million downloads. There's probably well over 10,000 people running iodé as a daily driver. It's almost doubled in the last year, we think, because there's been a great increase of users, including in the United States. We don't actually sell our devices in the US, so this is a bit of a surprise.

Basically the only thing we can see is the IP of the person downloading the file, and we log this in the sense that we just keep some statistics on which countries are downloading. We have people in the United States, in Germany, and France. And we wipe out these IPs. We just know which country it's coming from.

It's FOSS: To close, if someone is weighing iodé against other privacy-focused Android options, what's your pitch? What makes it worth choosing?

Brian: Aside from monthly security updates and the fact that you can install it on many different devices, we have over 60 devices supported now. I think one of the big things that's really going to interest people, like why to choose iodé over something like Lineage, is that you get an iodé blocker. So you get an integrated tracker blocker, and it's also not going to fill up your VPN slot. On most operating systems, if you install a DNS blocker or an ad blocker, those will usually take up your VPN slot and the VPN slot is also useful for your privacy. So you get kind of the best of both worlds.

One of the things we also focus on is we want there to be a complete suite of apps that's pre-installed, and we want all of those apps to be uninstallable. If you don't like our music player, you just uninstall it. If you don't like the default map app, we use Comaps as a default map app, you can install Google Maps if you want, you can have them both. And you still get all of the privacy advantages of Lineage, because our base is Lineage, with some more improvements. The standard Firefox browser doesn't have any connections back to Google, for instance. But if you wanted to use a different web view, you can also do that.

So you have a lot of choice. But for the average user who doesn't know anything about configuring a device besides "I want to install these four apps," it will still give you much better privacy than a standard stock Android, privacy by default, and the choice to do whatever you want to do with the phone.

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I would like to thank Brian for sharing interesting insights about the iodé project. I strongly recommending checking it out, who knows perhaps your next smartphone is powered by iodé.

iodé project

And if it interests you, you may checkout:

• List of Linux-based smartphons
• Other de-googled Android distros
• and choice of open source smartphone OS

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Getting More Out of KDE Plasma System Monitor

One of the biggest strengths of KDE Plasma is its customization, and the System Monitor is no exception.

I have shown this with KDE Konsole tweaks earlier and now I am here to do the same with KDE System Monitor.

Like most other parts of the Plasma desktop, the System Monitor offers plenty of customization options that are easy to overlook.

Let me show you how to transform the default KDE Plasma System Monitor into a clean and powerful system monitoring dashboard.

Understanding the System Monitor Layout

Before we start customizing the System Monitor, let's first understand how KDE Plasma System Monitor arranges sensors on the page.

Take a look at the sample layout diagram below.

KDE Plasma System Monitor Layout

This gives you a general idea of how different elements are organized inside the System Monitor.

At the top is the window layer, where everything is arranged in rows. Inside each row is a column layer, where items are arranged into columns.

Within each column, you'll find sections. These sections hold the individual widgets that display system information.

When you enter the System Monitor's edit mode, which we'll cover in the next section, you can hover over the layout to identify these different layers.

As you add or modify widgets, clicking on a particular layer only shows the options available for that layer.

For example, clicking the column layer lets you add more columns, but not sections.

Likewise, clicking the section layer lets you add additional sections, but not columns.

Keeping this layout in mind will make it much easier to customize the System Monitor without any confusion.

As mentioned earlier, KDE Plasma's default System Monitor includes a few pre-built pages that display essential system information.

If you look closely, you'll notice that each item on these pages is essentially a widget, similar to the widgets you can place on the Plasma desktop.

In other words, the System Monitor app works like a canvas where you can add widgets and configure them however you like.

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KDE System Monitor has the concept of "pages" and they are configured to display specific system information. If you look closely, you'll notice that each item on these pages is essentially a widget, similar to the widgets you can place on the Plasma desktop. In other words, the System Monitor app works like a canvas where you can add widgets and configure them however you like. This is what we are going to do.

Add a New Page

By default, the Plasma System Monitor includes four pages:

• Overview: A dashboard that displays multiple system statistics.
• Applications: A list of running applications and their resource usage.
• History: Live graphs for CPU, GPU, memory, and network activity.
• Processes: A list of running processes and their resource usage.

For this guide, we'll create a new page instead of modifying the existing ones.

Click the menu button in the top-left corner and select Add New Page.

Add a new page

In the dialog that appears, enter a name for the page and choose an icon.

Next, set Load this page to During application startup.

Finally, click Add.

Add page details

The new page will now appear in the sidebar. Select it to open it.

You'll be greeted with an empty page. This is where we'll build our custom system monitoring dashboard.

Edit the Page

Now that the new page is ready, it's time to customize its contents.

Open the new page and click the Edit Page button in the top-right corner.

Since the page currently contains only one system monitor widget, click on it. This opens a sidebar where you can configure the selected widget.

Let's turn it into a horizontal bar chart that displays the load on each CPU core.

In the sidebar, change the following settings:

• Title: CPU Load Graph (or any name you prefer)
• Display Style: Horizontal Bars
• Sensors: Select the usage percentage for all CPU cores, as shown in the clip below.

Editing the first KDE Plasma System Monitor widget.

Selecting Sensors

Choosing the right sensors is the most important part of building your dashboard. Most System Monitor widgets work similarly to Plasma desktop widgets and let you display different types of system information.

Depending on the widget, you'll usually find two sensor fields:

• Sensors: Displays the selected sensors as charts, graphs, or other visual elements. You can select multiple sensors.
• Text-only Sensors: Displays the selected sensors as plain text instead of charts or graphs.

Clicking either field opens a categorized list of available sensors.

For example, CPU-related sensors, such as usage percentage, per-core statistics, and CPU temperature, are available under the CPU category.

Likewise, RAM-related sensors are grouped under Memory → Physical Memory.

Here are some of the main sensor categories you'll come across:

• CPUs: CPU usage, per-core statistics, temperature, and related metrics.
• Disks: Disk usage, free space, read/write activity, and other storage information.
• GPU: GPU usage, temperature, video memory, and related statistics.
• Memory: RAM and swap usage.
• Network Devices: IP address, download and upload speed, and other network statistics.
• Operating System: Kernel version, hostname, uptime, and other system details.

The exact sensors available will depend on your hardware and system configuration.

Adding a New Row

Now that we've added the first widget, let's create a new row to add another one.

While still in edit mode, click Add Row. A new empty system monitor widget will appear below the existing one.

Add a row

This time, we'll configure it as a pie chart to display used and free physical memory (RAM).

If you'd like to see the complete process, check out the short clip below.

Otherwise, configure the widget with these settings:

• Title: RAM Usage
• Display Style: Pie Chart
• Sensors: Used Physical Memory Percentage and Free Physical Memory Percentage

Adding a RAM usage pie chart to the dashboard.

You can also customize the chart colors if you like, but we'll leave them at their default values for this guide.

Add a Column

If the first section looks a bit too wide, you can split the available space by adding another column.

While in edit mode, click the topmost layer of the widget. This opens the menu for that layer.

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Check the layout diagram to know the arrangements.

From there, select Add → Add Column. The process is shown in the clip below.

Adding a new column using the top layer menu.

A new system monitor widget will appear to the right of the existing one. At the same time, the original widget will automatically resize to make room for the new column.

Using the same editing process as before, I configured this new widget with the Color Grid display style to show additional system information.

Creating a Color Grid widget to display system information.

Change the Position of a Widget

After setting up the dashboard, I felt that the Color Grid would look better before the CPU Load graph.

To move it, I clicked the topmost part of the widget to open that layer's menu.

From there, I clicked on Move and simply dragged the widget to the left of the CPU Load graph.

Moving the column item.

That's all there is to it.

Organize Widgets with Sections

So far, we've added rows and columns and rearranged widgets.

There is one more organizational feature in the System Monitor called Sections.

Sections let you group related widgets together. For example, you can keep all hardware-related sensors in one section and system information in another.

Let's see how it works. I'll demonstrate this on a new page. By now, you should already know how to create one.

In edit mode, click the top part of the section layer, located just above the widget title.

From the layer menu, select Add → Add Section. A new widget will be added to the right of the existing one.

Both widgets now belong to the same section and share a single section header.

To separate them visually, click the section header and select Add → Add Separator.

Add items in sections.

Save Your Changes

Once you're happy with the layout, click the Save Changes button in the top bar.

Save Changes

This saves all your modifications and exits edit mode.

Your newly created pages and customized widgets will now be available whenever you open the System Monitor.

Start with Your Custom Page

After creating your custom dashboard, you may want the System Monitor to open with that page by default. Fortunately, that's easy to set up.

Click the menu button in the top-left corner and select Edit or Remove Pages.

In the Start with drop-down menu, select the page you created.

Click OK to save the changes.

Start with Custom Page

From now on, the System Monitor will open directly to your custom page every time you launch it.

Remove a Page

If you no longer need a page, you can remove it at any time.

Click the menu button in the top-left corner and select Edit or Remove Pages.

A dialog listing all available pages will appear. Click the Delete button next to the page you want to remove.

Remove a custom page from the System Monitor

Once you're done, click OK to save the changes.

If you don't want to delete a page completely, simply uncheck it in the list. This hides the page without removing it.

Download Community Pages

You don't have to build every dashboard from scratch. The KDE community has created many custom System Monitor pages that you can download and use.

As with any third-party content, install these pages with caution. They are community-created and may not have been tested by the KDE developers for security or stability.

To browse available pages, click the menu button in the top-left corner and select Get New Pages.

Browse available community created pages

This opens the online catalog, where you can click the Install button next to any page to download and add it to your System Monitor.

Export or Import Pages

If you frequently switch between systems, exporting and importing pages can save you from recreating your custom dashboards every time.

To export a page, first open the page you want to save. Then click Menu → Export Current Page. Choose a file name and click Save.

The page will be saved with the .page extension in your chosen location.

Export a page in KDE System Monitor

To use it on another system, open the System Monitor and select Menu → Import Page. Then choose the exported .page file to add it to your System Monitor.

Wrapping Up

KDE Plasma's System Monitor is much more than a tool for checking CPU and memory usage. It offers a level of customization that many graphical system monitors simply don't provide.

Despite being a GUI application, it gives you plenty of flexibility to build dashboards that suit your workflow.

Have you customized the KDE Plasma System Monitor before, or do you prefer a different system monitoring tool?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

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Terramaster F4-425 Pro: An Hardware Upgrade for an Already Solid NAS

Terramaster F4-425 Plus was the first NAS I ever used in my hoemlab setup. It's a solid device for a NAS. Not too expensive, silent and has a decent operating system. The hybrid HDD+SSD model along with TRAID and built-in backup tools makes it a good NAS choice.

Now Terramaster has refreshed their F4-425 series with a Pro model. The main thing that changes here is the CPU. There is also a revamped operating system in the form of TOS 7 but that should be available on previous F4-425 models, too.

20% off launch offer

The new F4-425 is still a solid device, hardware wise. Operating system has rough edges and hopefully it will improve in the future updates if Terramaster is serious on this product. They usually are.

I have used the device for a few days as it's a new device and I have been travelling to other cities for most of the past few weeks. So what I am sharing here are more of first impressions. A more thorough review with extended daily use will follow.

Still, there is enough here to give you a useful picture of where the F4-425 Pro stands right now.

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Just so that you know, Terramaster sent me the F4-425 Plus NAS. The views shared are my own, coming from my experience of using this device.

The hardware

Visually, the F4-425 Pro is identical to the Plus. Same aluminum chassis, same front layout with four HDD bays and a single USB-A port, same rear port arrangement. There is no design refresh here. You cannot distinguish between the two by just looking at them from the outside.

Find differences between the two models of F4-425

What changed is the processor primarily. The Plus had an Intel N150 with 4 cores. The Pro moves to the Intel Core 3 N350 with 8 cores and a 7W TDP. The integrated GPU gains 32 execution units versus 16 to 24 on the Plus, which matters for hardware-accelerated transcoding. My unit is the top configuration with the N350 and 16GB DDR5.

Component	F4-425 Pro (this unit)	F4-425 Plus
CPU	Intel Core 3 N350, 8-core (7W)	Intel N150, 4-core
RAM	16GB DDR5 (single SODIMM slot)	16GB DDR5
GPU (iGPU)	32 execution units	16–24 execution units
HDD Bays	4× SATA hot-swap	4× SATA hot-swap
M.2 Slots	3× NVMe (PCIe Gen3 x1)	3× NVMe (PCIe Gen3 x1)
Max Storage	152TB (32TB×4 HDD + 8TB×3 NVMe)	144TB
LAN	Dual 5GbE	Dual 5GbE
USB	3× USB-A + 1× USB-C (all 10Gbps)	3× USB-A + 1× USB-C (10Gbps)
OS	TOS 7	TOS 6 (upgradeable to TOS 7)
Price	$799.99	$599.99

The 8-core upgrade is meaningful for a NAS running multiple Docker containers, simultaneous services, and media transcoding. There is also a cheaper N305 variant at $699.99 with 8GB less RAM, but given how much a NAS tends to do in parallel, I would lean toward this configuration.

One constraint worth noting is that there is only one SODIMM slot. If you want to upgrade beyond 16GB later, you will need a single module of single-rank DDR5.

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I like the fact that Terramaster includes bunch of M2 screws and stickers to label the hard disks. It's a minor thing but worth appreciation.

First, a discovery that changed how I think about TerraMaster migration

Before the hardware rundown, I want to share something I stumbled into during setup that I did not know before and found genuinely useful.

Terrmaster's operating system, TOS, does not live on the NAS device itself. There is no onboard eMMC storage. The operating system is installed directly on one of the user-inserted disks.

When I moved some of my existing drives from the Plus into the Pro, it booted straight into TOS 6 with my old user credentials already present. The Pro just picked up where the Plus left off because the OS was on the drives, not the device.

If that was amusing, the story gets better.

I then inserted those same drives into my ZimaCube Pro as I wanted to format them. And the strangest thing happened. The ZimaCube started presenting itself as a TerraMaster NAS running TOS. The TOS installation on disk was only about 280 MB but that was enough to 'hijack' the boot process.

I formatted the SSDs by putting them in my Terramaster D1 SSD enclosure and connecting it to my Ubuntu laptop. I formatted the drives using GParted via my TerraMaster USB DAS, reinserted them in the Pro, and it initialized fresh with TOS 7.

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The upside of this design is that NAS migration is much simpler than you might expect. If the NAS unit dies, your OS, configuration, and data all survive on the drives. Move them to a new TerraMaster device and you pick up right where you left off.

The OS installation experience

No, I am not talking about installing an open source NAS OS on the Terramaster F4-425 Pro. I am talking about TOS itself.

Since the device doesn't come with on-board storage, the OS is installed when you boot (with fresh hard disks).

I used two SSDs to test the NAS. Only SSDs, no HDDs (don't judge me). I think in total, I have 8 SSDs of various size. I started buying them 2 years back when I started exploring homelab setup. My collection of disks would have grown as my interest and devices grew in my homelab but the increased price have put a stop on them for now. From what I see, the SSDs that I bought 2 years ago, cost 2 to 3 times more these days. I'll wait for the prices to come down.

Enough of my sob story. So, I used two disks and they were combined into one with TRAID.

The TOS 7 was downloaded and installed in 25 minutes or so.

Once it is installed, you get the option to create a "super user" locally:

And then you get the option to add an email account. You have to provide an email address and you may provide a fake or temporary one and skip verification, I think. However, this email address is used to send notification about certain events like NAS being rebooted, shutdown and more. You can also configure custom notification for when disks are full or they encounter issues.

Here's a video of the TNAS OS installation and initilization. It's a raw, unedited video of about 35 minutes. Mostly the first and last few minutes are of interest.

You'll notice some errors when I first log in to the TOS. Those errors went away after the reboot.

Using TOS 7: Improvement on TOS 6, but the "AI-native" label is not justified (yet)

TOS 7 is surely an improvement over the previous TOS 6. The interface is cleaner, navigation is more intuitive, and the storage management tools feel more coherent. The addition of system monitor in the sidebar is a good move and overall, the TOS seems to have a good user interface at first look.

The redesign is evident, sepecially if you have used TOS 6 in the past.

That said, TerraMaster is marketing TOS 7 as "the world's first AI-native NAS OS" and I think that's more of marketing than actual AI features.

The "Ai-native" tag needs a lot more work

The main AI feature is the inclusion of OpenClaw, which lets you interact with the NAS using natural language. Sounds compelling. But OpenClaw is an orchestration layer, not an AI model itself. It acts as a middleman between you and whatever LLM you connect it to, which could be a cloud service or a local model running on current or another device. The NAS itself is not doing any AI inference. So "AI-native" means "designed to connect to AI", which is a different thing.

The idea Terramaster showcased in their TOS7 video was that OpenClaw could be used to manage the NAS more easily by asking the AI to configure a few things instead of doing it all by yourself.

If that was the idea, it would have made more sense to include some open source model pretrained data on Terramaster docs or at least have some custom skills added to it (for the lack of good enough GPU for local AI). There is no scope for adding a GPU for more local AI capabilities.

Nanoclaw needs to be conncted to an LLM first

I tried pointing OpenClaw at Ollama running on my ZimaCube Pro. The configuration is not straightforward. There are networking details to sort out and Ollama's API endpoint format matters. It is doable (and I'll revisit this scenario later), but it is not the one-click experience the marketing implies.

Of course, OpenClaw can be connected with Claude and other cloud LLMs but then it won't be native, local AI. I also don't have Claude Max plan to connect it to OpenClaw.

Personally, I would not trust AI automation with my private data, especially when I plan to use this as my primary local data backup. That said, the idea of including AI assistance is not entirely bad. People are increasingly using AI and they want it built into the tools they already use, rather than switching to a browser tab or a terminal.

The other AI feature is in the Photos app. It scans your library to recognize faces, places, and scenes. This is useful but nothing new or revolutionary, it was already there in TOS version 6. Tools like Immich and PhotoPrism already do this, and they are both open source options you can install on the NAS itself. What would actually differentiate this is something like OCR on scanned documents, which neither Photos nor most self-hosted tools handle well. That opportunity is sitting right there.

Official Terramaster Photos apps has some AI features (that were in TOS 6 too)

The AI recognition in Photos is also not enabled by default. You have to go into settings and turn it on manually. Once enabled, it takes a while to process a large library.

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To give credit where it is due: TRAID for combining disks of different sizes works well and remains one of TOS' highlights. And Jellyfin had Intel QuickSync hardware transcoding enabled out of the box without any manual configuration on my part, which I appreciated.

There is a Linux terminal, too

TOS 7 provides terminal access to a Linux environment running underneath. I guess this is good for people who do not want to rely on the provided graphical user interface and want to take matters into their own hands by using the command line.

Now, the Linux environment is Ubuntu. Ubuntu 22.04 specifically. That version reaches end of life in April 2027, almost a year from now. For a device just launched in mid-2026 and expected to run for years, shipping with a near-EOL Ubuntu base is not a good move. I would have expected 24.04 at minimum.

Another thing is that I could see pending updates in the terminal but it threw a warning when I tried to run apt upgrade.

I don't know why the screenshot is blurry. Still, you can see the upgrade results in warning

Which makes sense to some extent. Terramaster doesn't want you to upgrade the system on your own. Rather, they will provide OTA updates. If you install a package on your own, you can upgrade it with "apt install package_name" way. And of course, the terminal is at your disposal to configure docker, development tools etc from the command line because a few things are rather easy in the terminal than fiddling around in the GUI menu.

Easy remote access through

Terramaster also has this new feature (I think) calles TNAS.online remote access. So, if you register an account with Terramaster, you can enable remote acces to your NAS device. This makes it easier for you to access data when you are not on your home network.

Rough edges worth knowing about

These are not dealbreakers but they add up and are worth calling out early. I hope Terramaster team reads this and provides software updates to address these issues.

Global search has a scope problem. TOS 7 has a distinction between your personal space (home directory) and the shared public space. A global search only returns results from your home directory. Files stored elsewhere on the device did not appear. Even files I copied into the home directory did not show up in search results immediately, possibly due to indexing time. But the lack of clear guidance on what the two spaces mean, and which one search actually covers, will confuse new users.

Jellyfin cannot browse subdirectories inside the home directory. I set up a Movies folder inside my home directory but Jellyfin would not display subdirectories when I tried to add it as a media library. It wanted to use /Volume1/jellyfin by default, which means media gets tied to the application path. If Jellyfin gets uninstalled, the data location becomes a concern.

No keyboard navigation in Photos. Browsing photos requires mouse clicks throughout. You cannot use arrow keys to move between images in the viewer. The app search bar launched from the top bar also does not dismiss with Escape. These are minor but they signal a UI that was not fully tested for keyboard users.

Would make more sense to navigate through keys rather than mouse clicks

The absurd need to enable apps after each reboot. Unless Terramaster really want to discourage shutting down the NAS device, I see no reason why an installed application needs to be enabled again after rebooting the device. I noticed it with OpenClaw, Jellyfin and even Terramaster's Photos application. It makes no sense to me.

Still excellent hardware wise

I liked the previous F4-425 Plus device. This one is not much different other than a (needed) CPU upgrade. It's the same aluminium chasis, same small form factor and the same silent device.

Yes, F4-425 Pro is also a 'silent machine'. You'll probably won't notice it running even if it is sitting on your disk and its fan is running.

The hybrid model to include 4 HDDs and 3 SSDs is good. It's just that you need to pull out the outer casing to access the SSD compartment. HDDs can be easily accessed from the front.

It seems that TOS's software is capable of handling the hot swap. I could not test it for the lack of disks.

It measures 181 mm wide, 219 mm deep, and 150 mm tall. Basically a small form factor device that doesn't take much desk space.

The USB-C port is still at the back. I said this in my F4-425 Plus review, too. The single USB-C port is on the rear of the device. For quick external SSD connections, this is inconvenient for a lazy person like me.

I added around 125 GB of pictures and watched the resource consumption. It remained under 20% CPU and RAM load.

Similarly, I streamed a 4K movie in mkv format. The load remained under 10%. So the processor is quite capable here as a NAS and a casual media hub.

Resource utilization during 4k media streaming

I am not a professional and don't really run benchmark tests. Just sharing what I observed as a novice homelabber.

Verdict: promising hardware, software still maturing

Based on a few days of use, the F4-425 Pro is a capable device with a hardware upgrade that makes sense. The 8-core processor and improved iGPU are relevant improvements for anyone running multiple services. The TOS-on-disk design makes migration genuinely easier than it has any right to be.

TOS 7 is a better version of TOS 6 by a clear margin. But the AI features are far from a finished product. OpenClaw requires external configuration to work so the native AI part is not there yet.

I will be putting the Pro through more extensive use as a daily driver and sharing a full review a few month later perhaps. There is more to test, including sustained performance under load, RAID behavior with multiple disks (if I can afford them), mobile apps and whether Ollama installed directly on the device makes OpenClaw actually useful. Stay tuned for that.

The NAS itself is $799.99 for this configuration. That is the entry point, not the total cost. If you do not already have drives, HDDs and SSDs have increased substantially in price over the past year. Building a usable NAS with populated bays is a meaningfully larger investment than the device price alone suggests. Factor that in before buying.

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The device is priced at $799.99 but due to Prime Day sale, it is available for just $639.99. That saves $160 for you. Official website link here.

If you already have the previous F4-425 model, I don't think you should upgrade just because there is a new model. If you are buying a NAS for the first time or upgrading your NAS for several years, F4-425 Pro is an option worth considering. Sure, the provided operating system may not be to everyone's liking but you can always install a different operating system. The hardware is solid.

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