Phoronix

ECS Elitegroup P55H-A

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:54:12 CST

Back in September we published a launch-day Linux preview of Intel's Lynnfield processors and provided Core i5 / Core i7 benchmarks. With that initial testing of the Lynnfield processors and the new Intel P55 Chipset we had used an Intel DP55KG "Kingsberg" motherboard, but since then many P55 motherboards from different vendors have flooded the market. One of the P55 motherboards to be introduced for the budget-conscious consumer is the P55H-A, which comes from ECS Elitegroup. This motherboard is very reasonably priced while offering support for up to DDR3-2200MHz memory (in an overclock mode), solid capacitors, dual PCI Express x16 slots, and S/PDIF audio support.

NVIDIA Prepares 195.xx Linux Driver, Carries Fermi Support

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:14:10 CST

It was just last week that NVIDIA had finally released a stable 190.xx Linux driver after this driver series had been in beta for months. The 190.xx driver series brought new hardware support, OpenGL 3.2 support, VDPAU improvements, and a fair amount of other changes...

X Server 1.7.2 Is A Step Closer To Release

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:51:54 CST

At the end of October X Server 1.7.1 was released and at that time Peter Hutterer had said that the 1.7.2 build should arrive in about five weeks. It hasn't been five weeks yet, but it looks like he's still on track to delivering this bug-fix release on time or earlier...

They Say A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:37:00 CST

...but what about two pictures? Yes, that is an early build of a future version of the Phoronix Test Suite running natively atop Microsoft Windows 7. Of course, the Phoronix Test Suite already runs atop OpenSolaris, *BSD, and Mac OS X too. How come? How will this benefit the Linux community? It will all be answered shortly, but for now you can chime in with your thoughts or ideas in the forums...

Fedora 12 vs. Ubuntu 9.10 Benchmarks

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:00:21 CST

Canonical released Ubuntu 9.10 last week, which introduced the Ubuntu Software Center and brought a wide variety of other improvements, while Red Hat is scheduled to release Fedora 12 in two weeks. With the impending release and the current development freeze, we took the compose release candidate for Fedora 12 x86_64 and have looked at how its performance compares to Ubuntu 9.10. In this article are our results, which actually show some rather large differences between Fedora and Ubuntu when it comes to the speed of the Linux desktop.

Moblin 2.1 Officially Released With Improvements

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:29:51 CST

In September during the Intel Developer Forum we learned that Moblin 2.1 would be coming in Q4'09 (just one quarter after the 2.0 release) and would present the Moblin Application Installer, Moblin Garage, and other improvements. Sure enough, Moblin 2.1 has arrived now and it's only the middle of the fourth quarter. Last month we provided a Moblin 2.1 preview, but to reiterate some of the key features there is the Moblin Garage (effectively an "app store" for this mobile-oriented distribution), Clutter 1.0 integration, Bluetooth device support, improved connection management, localization support, and even a much-improved web-browser. While Moblin has traditionally been focused for Atom-powered netbooks, Moblin 2.1 will also work with "nettops", or the less-portable, mini-desktop systems running with an Intel Atom processor and similar specifications to the netbooks...

More Developers Want GNOME 3.0 Delayed

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:18:55 CST

Yesterday we reported that the release of GNOME 3.0 could end up being delayed to the end of September after the Zeitgeist and GNOME Shell developers shared these key pieces of the GNOME 3.x desktop would likely not be ready in a stable state for the planned 3.0 release in March. Today more developers responsible for different parts of GNOME have voiced their views and the status of their code...

XvMC Comes To xf86-video-unichrome Driver

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:47:24 CST

Earlier this year Luc Verhaegen, one of the key contributors to the RadeonHD graphics driver, was laid off from Novell after a round of cutbacks at their German facility. While remaining unemployed, Luc has contributed to the CoreBoot project with ATI graphics card flashing support and native VGA text mode support, among other work...

Supporting Phoronix When Shopping At NewEgg

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:55:13 CST

Running Phoronix.com and developing the Phoronix Test Suite software consumes much time and is an enormous undertaking. You can support our Linux efforts already by joining Phoronix Premium, supporting our advertisers, making a donation, or using our Amazon.com affiliate link when shopping...

The State of State Trackers In Gallium3D

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:36:10 CST

With all of the talk earlier this week regarding the Poulsbo Gallium3D driver and its performance improvements along with the restarted efforts on the Intel 965 Gallium3D driver and then word that Mesa 7.7 may be out by Christmas, it's likely that many are wondering about the current state of the various Gallium3D state trackers that we have been talking about for the past months. Well, here's a few observations on the different state trackers at least where they are at in Git. The most recent Gallium3D state tracker we have talked about is the X.Org/X11 state tracker that really started coming around in September and provides EXA (2D) and X-Video acceleration...

Building A Benchmarking Test Farm With Phoromatic

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:00:07 CST

There's the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoronix Global, and PTS Desktop Live as our family of free software products to provide extensive benchmarking and automated testing capabilities atop Linux, OpenSolaris, BSD, and Mac OS X operating systems. The Phoronix Test Suite has more than 120 test profiles and 50 test suites with new suites and tests continuing to come in through its extensible architecture, but for organizations with multiple test systems or entire testing farm(s) devoted to performance monitoring and regression tracking, they have had to strap the Phoronix Test Suite atop their own management systems or hack away at simple scripts to deploy our testing software across an array of systems. Today though we are announcing the public beta launch of Phoromatic. Phoromatic is a remote test management system that allows controlling any number of PTS-powered systems through a single web-based interface, which also allows all of the test results to be viewed from a central source. This article provides a first-look and guide for some of the possibilities of Phoromatic from those looking to build a benchmarking test farm or for individuals simply wanting to benchmark computers across the world. We also share in this article what may be coming next to our Linux-focused benchmarking empire.

Ryan Gordon Is Fed Up, FatELF Is Likely Dead

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:20:59 CST

The news just keeps rolling in today... Besides VIA trying again to submit their kernel DRM, learning about KDE 4.4 features, announcing AMD's UVD2-based XvBA finally does something on Linux, the release of the Linux 2.6.32-rc6 kernel, and GNOME 3.0 likely being delayed to next September, we also have news this evening from the well-known Linux game porter Ryan Gordon (a.k.a...

GNOME 3.0 May Not Come Until September 2010

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:52:55 CST

Back in July of 2008 we learned of GNOME 3.0 as plans were laid out during the GUADEC '08 conference to make the GNOME 2.30 release their "3.0" version. A art and user-interface followed months later and then this April the GNOME 3.0 road-map was laid out that put this release, which will overhaul the GNOME desktop in comparison to the usual incremental releases, to come in March of 2010...

Mandriva 2010.0 Released

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:29:11 CST

The 2010.0 release of Mandriva Linux is now available. This update to Mandriva brings KDE 4.3 (along with GNOME 2.28) along with options for Moblin and OLPC Sugar desktops...

Linux 2.6.32-rc6 Kernel Now Released

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:47:37 CST

The Linux 2.6.32-rc5 kernel was released over two weeks ago, but it was not until today that 2.6.32-rc6 was tagged. This is not because of Linus's affection towards Windows 7, but rather the Linux Kernel Summit that was taking place in Tokyo and a nasty data-loss-causing EXT4 regression had to be tracked down and addressed...

Mesa 7.7 May Be A Christmas Present

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:27:20 CST

The Mesa 3D graphics library on Linux has been moving along at a brisk pace lately with a frequent stream of new releases as many features arrive like new Gallium3D state trackers, maturing of new hardware support (particularly with the ATI Radeon graphics), and new OpenGL extension support. Mesa 7.6 was released in September, but now Intel's lead OpenGL contributor, Ian Romanick, has proposed a release schedule for Mesa 7.7. According to Ian's proposal, Mesa 7.7 would be released just in time for Christmas, on the 21st of December...

New Features For KDE 4.4 Desktop

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:31:34 CST

KDE 4.4 is scheduled to be released in early February of 2010 as the six-month feature update to KDE4 and now its feature plan has surfaced. KDE 4.4 is poised to pickup a number of exciting new features along with various bug-fixes and other updates...

VIA Keeps Trying For Kernel Inclusion Of Its DRM

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:18:34 CST

Last December the Linux folks at VIA Technologies had released their Chrome 9 series DRM code, which is needed for Linux 3D support with these newer-generation VIA IGPs, but this initial version ended up getting rejected from inclusion into the mainline kernel on the basis of the rest of VIA's 3D stack for the Chrome 9 being closed-source and some problems with the code itself. The situation was similar to that of Intel's Poulsbo DRM being rejected from reaching the mainline Linux kernel earlier this year. This July the Chrome 9 DRM was re-released with aspirations of getting it in the mainline Linux kernel, but it was virtually the same as December's version and it too got knocked down for inclusion on the basis of no open-source "clients" using this Direct Rendering Manager driver and security issues with the code itself. In August there was then another new VIA 2D driver released, but unlike the various other VIA Linux drivers out there, this one actually uses the new DRM code...

AMD's UVD2-based XvBA Finally Does Something On Linux

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:44:55 CST

For a year now we have been talking about XvBA, which stands for X-Video Bitstream Acceleration and is designed to implement AMD's Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD2) engine on Linux systems for improving the video decoding and playback process on desktop systems. AMD has been shipping an XvBA library with their ATI Catalyst Linux driver since last year, but they have yet to release any documentation on the XvBA API or any patches to implement the support within any Linux media players. Heck, AMD has not even officially confirmed XvBA with Phoronix being the lone source of information for the past year. Today though, XvBA has finally become useful under Linux. But it is not what you may be thinking...

Bardu Picks Up Improvements, Phoromatic Is Ready

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:21:16 CST

It was just last week that Phoronix Test Suite 2.2 entered beta, but now the second beta of "Bardu" is ready and with the changes continuing to roll in for our multi-platform benchmarking / testing software. The official change-log for Phoronix Test Suite 2.2 Beta 2 is listed below, but some of the highlights include support for logging the test's installation script within the results file, more updates to the PTS module architecture, new test suites, various bug fixes in pts-core and Phodevi, and official support for the Phoromatic module. Phoromatic is a service for the Phoronix Test Suite that we have been working on since 2.0 Sandtorg, but within the next 24 hours the public beta for Phoromatic will finally begin! Again, as is described at Phoromatic.com, this server software provides the following: Phoromatic is a remote management system for the Phoronix Test Suite...

Clarifications On Poulsbo's Gallium3D Driver

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:25:44 CST

Yesterday we reported on a new Linux driver coming for Intel's Poulsbo chipset that is currently notorious on Linux. This graphics processor is found in many Atom-powered netbooks, but its binary driver is a mess...

Skype To Provide Open-Source Linux Client

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:25:10 CST

The very popular Skype VoIP service has provided a Linux client for some years now, but it's not nearly as full-featured as its Windows counterpart, and right now it's a binary-only application. However, things may be partially changing at this company that's in the process of being spun off from eBay...

CentOS 5.4 vs. OpenSuSE 11.2 vs. Ubuntu 9.10 Benchmarks

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:28:33 CST

With the release of CentOS 5.4 last month to bring this community enterprise operating system on par with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4, we decided it was a good time to see how the server / workstation performance between this new CentOS release compares to that of Ubuntu 9.10, which was released last week, and also how it performs up against the release candidate of OpenSuSE 11.2. In this article are these benchmarks.

Intel's Special Driver For Poulsbo Uses Gallium3D

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:19:58 CST

Yesterday afternoon we ran a story on a new Linux driver for the Intel Poulsbo chipset, which right now is known for being notorious with its troubling Linux support. However, Intel apparently had been working on a new "special driver" that the Linux Foundation was showing off recently in Munich at a mobile development camp...

A New Intel i965 Gallium3D Driver Is Coming

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:17:20 CST

While we are not sure yet what Intel's special Poulsbo driver means yet, we do have some firm information to report this weekend on another new Intel driver: a new Intel i965 driver for Gallium3D is coming. Keith Whitwell of VMware (formerly Tungsten Graphics) has been hacking away at a new i955 driver for this extremely promising graphics driver architecture. While the open-source ATI/AMD developers have been hard at work on Gallium3D support and the Nouveau developers are solely focusing on Gallium3D for their OpenGL support, the official Intel developers haven't dabbled too much with Gallium3D...

Is An Open-Source Poulsbo Driver Coming?

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:06:24 CST

Intel's Poulsbo Linux driver is a bloody mess. The Poulsbo chipset is known commercially as the GMA 500 that's found in many netbooks as of late, but it isn't actually an Intel design but the graphics processor design was licensed from PowerVR...

This Week: Ubuntu 9.10, AMD Changes, DRI2 Sync

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:30:10 CST

This week at Phoronix most of our articles and news postings were about... you guessed it! X.Org and Linux graphics, to no surprise...

Our Linux Graphics Survey Is Off With A Bang

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:28:13 CDT

Merely eight hours ago we launched our 2009 Linux Graphics Survey to collect some data about the popular graphics drivers and hardware being used by our Linux readers along with other metrics such as the common ways one goes about installing their driver, what X server is being used, etc. The results of this survey are interesting in their own right, but they also help developers better understand what their users are most interested in with regard to the Linux graphics stack / X.Org and provide other statistics...