FOSS Advent Calendar - Door 24: The Ultimate Visual Playground for Generative AI

For the final reveal, this isn't just a tool, it's an entire ecosystem. Meet ComfyUI, the node-based powerhouse that has evolved far beyond a single use. It's the definitive visual interface for running Flux, SD3, SVD, and dozens of other cutting-edge models locally, handling images, videos, animations, and more.

ComfyUI turns complex AI workflows into visual diagrams. Create a consistent character across scenes by connecting a few nodes. Upscale a video with frame interpolation by adding another branch to the graph. Its modular nature keeps it at the frontier: when a new model drops, the community integrates it rapidly.

Pro tip: Explore the shared workflows on platforms like Civitai to find ready-to-use pipelines for character generation, animation, or custom music video tools. With ComfyUI, the process is about visually orchestrating the future of creation.

Link: https://github.com/comfyanonymous/ComfyUI

What gets built in this ultimate visual playground? A consistent animated short, a batch of product concepts, or a custom model-testing pipeline?

#AdventCalendar #FOSS #OpenSource #AI #GenerativeAI #ComfyUI #SD3 #SVD #VideoAI #Animation #NodeBased #Workflow #MachineLearning #CreativeAI #LocalAI #Research #FutureOfCreation #DigitalArt #Tech #Innovation #ChristmasEve #adventkalender #adventskalender #KI #FOSSAdvent #ArtificialIntelligence #KünstlicheIntelligenz

FOSS Advent Calendar - Door 23: Generating Text with Text-Generation-WebUI

Today we explore Text-Generation-WebUI, a FOSS tool that lets us run large language models locally through a simple web interface. For this demo, I am using 20B GPT-OSS from OpenAI in 4-bit quantization.

I tested it with a physics/chemistry prompt: "Derive the general formula for the energy levels of a particle confined in a 2D infinite square well potential (a 'quantum box') with side length L. Start from the time-independent Schrödinger equation and apply the appropriate boundary conditions." The model produced correct results, although LaTeX rendering had minor issues. You also get full access to its reasoning, so you can follow step by step how the model arrives at the solution.

Everything runs locally, so our data stays private and no cloud services are required. Text-Generation-WebUI is perfect for experimenting with AI, studying, or nerdy fun.

Pro tip: try giving the model a challenging physics, math, or coding problem and check its reasoning along with the answer.

Link: https://github.com/oobabooga/text-generation-webui

What problem would you test with your local language model, a math derivation, a story, or code snippet?

#FOSS #OpenSource #Linux #CLI #Terminal #TextGenerationWebUI #LocalAI #LanguageModels #GPTOSS #4bitQuant #NLP #NerdContent #AdventCalendar #OpenTools #FOSSAdvent #CommandLine #CreativeAI #AI #Fediverse #TechNerds #adventkalender #adventskalender #KI #ArtificialIntelligence #KünstlicheIntelligenz #llm

FOSS Advent Calendar - Door 22: Unleash AI Art with Automatic1111

Meet Automatic1111, the powerful and accessible open source web interface that brings cutting edge Stable Diffusion AI image generation to your local machine. It puts the full creative potential of text to image models directly into your hands, with no external services or restrictions required.

Built as a comprehensive Gradio web UI, it transforms complex AI model operations into an intuitive visual workflow. Its true strength lies in its extensive feature set: from basic text prompts and image to image translation, to advanced techniques like inpainting, outpainting, custom model merging, and detailed hyperparameter tuning. Everything runs on your own hardware, ensuring complete privacy, ownership of your creations, and freedom to experiment without limits.

Whether you're an artist exploring new visual styles, a designer generating concepts, or simply curious about AI creativity, Automatic1111 provides the tools to generate, modify, and refine images with granular control.

Pro tip: Dive into extensions like ControlNet for precise pose and composition control, or train your own DreamBooth model to generate images in a unique personal style.

Link: https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui

What will you create first? Concept art, character designs, or surreal landscapes from your imagination?

#FOSS #OpenSource #AIArt #Automatic1111 #GenerativeAI #TextToImage #LocalAI #Privacy #CreativeAI #MachineLearning #OpenSourceArt #Fediverse #TechNerds #DigitalArt #AdventCalendar #adventkalender #adventskalender #KI #FOSSAdvent #ArtificialIntelligence #KünstlicheIntelligenz

FOSS Advent Calendar - Door 21: See What AI Sees with BLIP

Meet BLIP, the versatile open source AI that bridges vision and language. It's not just another image recognition tool, it's a unified model that can understand images and generate human-like text about them, performing tasks like visual question answering, image captioning, and even searching images based on natural language queries.

Its strength lies in its multifaceted design. Trained on web-scale image-text pairs, BLIP excels at both understanding the content of an image and generating accurate, nuanced descriptions. This makes it incredibly useful for creating accessible alt-text, organizing large photo libraries with intelligent search, or building interactive applications where AI can "see" and "talk" about visual content. Everything runs locally, keeping your visual data private.

Whether you're automating metadata generation, building an educational tool, or adding smart visual analysis to your project, BLIP provides a powerful, all-in-one solution to make your applications see and describe the world.

Pro tip: Use BLIP to automatically caption your image datasets, or combine it with a TTS model like Coqui to create a system that describes images out loud.

Link: https://github.com/salesforce/BLIP

How will you give your projects better vision? Automating alt-text, creating a visual Q&A chatbot, or organizing a decade of unsorted photos?

#FOSS #OpenSource #BLIP #ComputerVision #AI #Accessibility #AltText #ImageCaptioning #VQA #VisionAndLanguage #LocalAI #DeepLearning #MultimodalAI #Fediverse #TechNerds #AdventCalendar #adventkalender #adventskalender #KI #FOSSAdvent #Adventskalender #ArtificialIntelligence #KünstlicheIntelligenz

FOSS Advent Calendar - Door 19: Master Git from the Terminal with lazygit

Struggling with Git's arcane commands? Meet lazygit, the elegant terminal UI that turns Git complexity into visual intuition. It’s not a wrapper, it’s a full-featured Git client that lives in your terminal, giving you a bird’s-eye view of branches, commits, stashes, and diffs, all navigable with a keyboard.

With lazygit, you visually stage files, browse commit histories, resolve merge conflicts, and even cherry-pick commits through an interactive interface. Everything is local, fast, and designed for the power user who lives in the terminal. It reduces multi-step Git operations to a few keystrokes, making complex workflows simple.

Pro tip: Use lazygit for interactive rebasing (r then i) or to easily review and navigate the patch of every commit in your history. With lazygit, you're not just running Git commands, you're conducting your repository.

Link: https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit

What complex Git workflow would you tame with visual power? An interactive rebase, a tricky merge conflict, or just keeping your daily commits clean?

#AdventCalendar #FOSS #OpenSource #Git #VersionControl #Developer #CLI #Terminal #TUI #Productivity #Tools #VCS #Programming #Coding #DevTools #Workflow #Efficiency #Go #OpenSourceTool #Tech #SoftwareDevelopment #FOSSAdvent #Adventskalener #linux #unix

FOSS Advent Calendar - Door 17: Navigate Everything with Fuzzy Logic (fzf)

Tired of scrolling through endless lists in your terminal? Meet fzf, the command-line fuzzy finder that turns navigation into a superpower. It’s not just a search tool, it’s a universal filter that connects to everything: your command history, files, processes, Git branches, and more. Type a few fuzzy characters, and watch it find what you need in milliseconds.

Unlike rigid searches, fzf understands intent. Looking for a docker command you ran last week? Just press Ctrl+R and type "doc run ubuntu". Need to switch to a specific Git branch? A simple git branch | fzf lets you find it with partial words. It works locally, respects your privacy, and integrates seamlessly with your shell, editor, and custom scripts.

Pro tip: Combine fzf with tools like fd (fd | fzf) for file searches or z (z | fzf) for directory jumps to create your own lightning-fast navigation flows. With fzf, you're not just filtering lists, you're querying your entire digital workflow.

Link: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf

What would you find at the speed of thought? A forgotten one-liner from months ago, a deeply nested config file, or the perfect branch to merge?

#AdventCalendar #FOSS #OpenSource #CLI #Productivity #Terminal #Linux #Developer #Tools #FuzzyFinder #Navigation #Shell #Zsh #Bash #Vim #Neovim #Workflow #Efficiency #KeyboardDriven #Search #Unix #CommandLine #PowerUser #Automation #DevTools #Tech #Coding #Rust #Go #SystemTool #Adventskalender #FOSSAdvent

FOSS Advent Calendar - Door 15: See the Logic, Not Just the Lines with Difftastic

Forget confusing text diffs. Difftastic is a brilliant open-source tool that shows the true intent of your code changes. It understands programming syntax, ignores formatting noise, and highlights semantic differences in your commits, perfect for clear code reviews and complex refactorings. It acts like X-Ray for your code, detecting when you’ve moved a function or changed logic, not just edited text. By ignoring formatting changes, it shows what actually changed, not what your autoformatter did. Plus, it runs entirely offline, so your code never leaves your machine, and it supports over 50 languages and formats, from Python and Rust to JSON and Markdown.

Pro tip: Integrate it as your Git difftool to review pull requests with clarity and instantly grasp the developer’s intent.

Link: https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic

What would you clarify first with a diff tool that shows the intended change?

#AdventCalendar #FOSS #OpenSource #DevTools #Programming #SoftwareEngineering #Git #VersionControl #CodeReview #Refactoring #Developer #CLITools #Productivity #Rust #Python #JavaScript #WebDev #Backend #Linux #Tech #Coding #ProgrammingTools #IDE #VSCode #Neovim #DeveloperProductivity #CleanCode #DevOps #FOSSadvent #adventskalender #Difftastic

FOSS Advent Calendar - Door 14: Bring Text to Life with Coqui TTS

Meet Coqui TTS, a powerful, open-source deep learning toolkit for cutting-edge Text-to-Speech. It turns written words into natural, expressive audio using state-of-the-art neural models, all while running completely offline on your own machine.

Coqui TTS supports a wide range of languages and voices, and its real strength lies in flexibility: you can use pre-trained models for instant results or train custom voices with your own datasets. Everything happens locally, your data stays private, no APIs or subscriptions required. Whether for accessibility tools, narration, creative projects, or research, Coqui gives you full control over synthetic speech, from tone and pace to emotional delivery.

Pro tip: Experiment with voice cloning or fine-tune a model for a unique vocal character. With Coqui, you’re not just generating speech you’re crafting it.

Link: https://github.com/coqui-ai/TTS

What would you create with open-source, local TTS-audiobooks, game dialogue, or your own custom assistant voice?

#AdventCalendar #AI #OpenSource #TTS #Python #MachineLearning #CoquiTTS #AIVoices #VoiceSynthesis #LocalAI #FOSS #Privacy #Accessibility #TextToSpeech #CreativeTech #VoiceTech #DeepLearning #ArtificialIntelligence #TechNerds #Innovation #FOSSAdvent #ContentCreation #EthicalAI #VoiceCloning #DevTools #FutureTech #AITools #SpeechAI #linux #ki #adventskalender

FOSS Advent Calendar - Door 13: Screen-Mirroring & Recording with scrcpy

Today’s tool is scrcpy, a powerful open-source utility that lets you mirror and control your Android device from your PC via ADB (Android Debug Bridge) over USB or Wi‑Fi.

With scrcpy, you can see your phone screen on your desktop and control it directly from your PC using your mouse and keyboard. You can also record screencasts from the mirrored session, perfect for tutorials, capturing gameplay, or streaming mobile apps, all without installing anything on your phone.

CLI-friendly and lightweight, scrcpy gives you full PC-based control over your device: navigate, type, launch apps, or record everything from your desktop. No bloated software, no intrusive permissions.

Link: https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy

As a developer, which part of your workflow would scrcpy improve the most? Testing, debugging, or presenting your app?

#ScreenMirror #AndroidToPC #DevProductivity #TechTools #FreeSoftware #AndroidDev #DeveloperTools #USBdebugging #TechHacks #ProductivityTools #CommandLine #TechTips #DIYTech #DigitalNomad #Workflow #TechCommunity #LinuxTools #CrossPlatform #adventkalender #adventskalender #AndroidScreen #MirroringTool #OpenSourceTools #TechFreedom #NoRoot #FOSSLove #FOSSAdvent #android #linux

FOSS Advent Calendar - Door 12: Plotting Like a Pro with Gnuplot

"Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."
This quote fits perfectly for Gnuplot, a classic FOSS plotting engine that’s still alive, powerful, and incredibly useful for creating beautiful scientific and mathematical visuals directly from the command line.

Gnuplot can generate 2D and 3D plots, animate datasets, visualize functions, and export to nearly any format you might need: PNG, SVG, PDF, EPS, and more. And one of its greatest strengths?
You don’t need a whole Python stack, dozens of libraries, or virtual environments just to make a graph. Gnuplot runs instantly, scriptable, lightweight, and beautifully minimal.

Whether you’re analyzing experimental results, visualizing parametric curves, or just plotting a weird math idea you had at 2 AM (we’ve all been there), Gnuplot gets it done fast and clean.

Pro tip: try rendering a dramatic 3D surface plot or a festive math figure, like a parametric Christmas tree. Gnuplot makes it surprisingly easy to turn equations into art.

Link: https://sourceforge.net/p/gnuplot/gnuplot-main/ci/master/tree/

What’s a plot you’d LOVE to generate with Gnuplot, serious or purely nerdy?

#FOSS #OpenSource #Linux #CLI #Terminal #Gnuplot #DataViz #Plotting #3DGraphics #MathArt #NerdContent #AdventCalendar #OpenTools #FOSSAdvent #CommandLine #ScienceTools #Fediverse #TechNerds #PlottingMagic #adventkalender #adventskalender #DataVisualization #Science #Python #Research #Engineering #AcademicChatter #STEM #Tech #Physics #Chemistry #Maths #SciComm #OpenScience #Research