Phoronix

Mono 2.6 Released, Supports LLVM Generation

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:14:28 CST

To end out 2009, Miguel de Icaza has announced the release of Mono 2.6 along with MonoDevelop 2.4. This major update to Mono delivers WCF client and server for what is exposed by Microsoft's Silverlight 2.0, a continuations framework, a new soft debugger, a verifier and security toolbox, more complete 3.5 coverage, and various other changes to this free software project to implement Microsoft's .NET on Linux...

Lenvik Alpha 2 Gets Ready For Unigine Heaven

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 09:26:24 CST

As of this morning the second alpha release for Phoronix Test Suite 2.4 "Lenvik" is available for PC benchmarking and testing. Phoronix Test Suite 2.4 Alpha 2 brings many changes, including but not limited to, GTK GUI improvements, test result merging improvements, new command options (analyze-image-delta and analyze-linear-tracker), support for soon-to-be-announced Phoromatic features, and many enhancements to bilde_renderer (our image rendering library that's used for generating the JPG/PNG/SVG/SWF graphs) and in particularly vastly improving the SVG renderer back-end. Outside of pts-core, new test profiles carried forward in this alpha release of Lenvik is vdrift-fps-monitor, which produces a line graph showing the vDrift frame-rate performance over the course of the test's run, etqw-demo-iqc for performing image quality comparisons with Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (see NVIDIA Anti-Aliasing, Linux and Lenvik), improvements to the tiobench test profile, an fs-mark test profile for greater disk testing, and the unigine-heaven test profile is now present...

The Linux Graphics Documentation That's Needed

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:09:39 CST

A week ago we shared that the first of the slides and videos from VMware's recent Gallium3D workshop were now posted on the Internet. This morning some more of this content is being published, which covers the VMware SVGA driver status, a Gallium3D state tracker overview, and the status of the OpenGL ES state tracker...

NVIDIA's Response To Recent Nouveau Work

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:32:30 CST

Last week after many DRM improvements went into the Linux 2.6.33 kernel Linus Torvalds got a bit upset and wanted Nouveau merged into the mainline kernel. After all, it's been in development for a few years and offers a vast feature-set compared to the xf86-video-nv DDX driver even if this driver is still somewhat experimental...

New Ryan Gordon Game Port Goes Into Beta

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:20:10 CST

A game that Ryan Gordon has been porting to Linux for some time has just went into an open beta testing process. However, it's not Unreal Tournament 3 that went from being potentially one of the greatest games for Linux to an uncertain future to now being dead, but it's a much smaller game...

Gallium3D Gets A Blitter Module

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:37:49 CST

Gallium3D has been a topic we have talked about a lot lately from the OpenCL state tracker to VMware's virtual GPU driver, but this graphics driver architecture keeps on advancing. The most recent module for Gallium3D is one written by Marek Olšák that provides a blitter. Once the core blitter support is merged into Gallium3D, Marek has already implementing patches for the ATI r300g driver that are able to take advantage of this blitter work...

With Linux 2.6.32, Btrfs Gains As EXT4 Recedes

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 04:00:02 CST

We have published articles containing EXT4 benchmarks many times now going back to our original real world benchmarks of EXT4 to when Ubuntu 9.04 received EXT4 support and when we ran a variety of file-system benchmarks on an Intel X25-E SSD. We had also thrown in EXT4 numbers when benchmarking Btrfs (and again with Btrfs 0.19) along with NILFS2 benchmarks. Each time has been with a different kernel and the performance of the different Linux file-systems continue to change as each file-system matures and picks up different features. Though with the Linux 2.6.32 kernel the EXT4 performance had changed a great deal due to a change that provides better data integrity on writes but at a significant performance cost. To see how this changes the Linux file-system landscape, atop the latest Linux kernel we have a fresh set of benchmarks for EXT3, EXT4, XFS, ReiserFS, and Btrfs.

A Few Reminders For This Holiday

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 18:29:14 CST

When shopping online this holiday season, don't forget to use our shopping links (always available from the home-page) for NewEgg and Amazon. Additionally, if you want to get yourself something, consider a Phoronix Premium subscription for yourself that will let you view Phoronix and the Phoronix Forums without any advertisements, are able to view multi-page articles on a single page, and this is also a gift to us (or you can also make a tip/donation in being able to better support all of our Linux hardware efforts (we have some exciting announcements planned for this week!). You can also stay up to date with all of our latest content using Facebook, Twitter, or RSS. That's all for now, thanks...

NVIDIA 190.53 Pre-Release Linux Driver

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 08:17:00 CST

For those not interested in the Nouveau driver, head on over to NVIDIA's FTP server as a new 190.xx driver is available. Late last month NVIDIA released the 195.22 beta Linux driver as the first in this new driver series, and while there are new features and advancements going on there, NVIDIA is still maintaining the current 190.xx stable driver series...

Plymouth Running On Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 08:08:35 CST

A few days back we shared Plymouth is coming to Ubuntu 10.04 after this wonderful Red Hat creation was proposed to replace USplash last year, set to be integrated for Ubuntu 9.10, and then later dropped on the basis of improving Ubuntu's boot-time instead. The Plymouth graphical boot splash program that leverages kernel mode-setting is here for good with Ubuntu 10.04, but right at the moment in the daily builds of Lucid is not on there by default. For those looking to play with Plymouth on Ubuntu right away, it's as easy as sudo apt-get install plymouth when running on the Ubuntu 10.04 development branch...

The Nouveau Pony Is Pulled, Ctx_Voodoo Ignored

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 07:49:24 CST

As we shared yesterday morning, Nouveay would be entering the Linux 2.6.33 kernel as a staging driver. Last night Linus did indeed pull the drm-nouveau-pony branch...

What Will Happen To xf86-video-nv In 2010?

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:26:18 CST

Thanks to the surprise push this morning of the Nouveau driver for the Linux 2.6.33 kernel, this free software, reverse-engineered NVIDIA driver stack is on its way to being used in a lot more Linux systems and distributions. The xf86-video-nouveau X.Org driver will still need to have a release in the coming months, but in 2010 it looks like this driver stack will be working its way into many more Linux distributions...

X Server 1.7.4 RC1 Brings Few Fixes

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:24:02 CST

X Server 1.7.2 was released at the end of November and then X Server 1.7.3 was released at the start of this month to fix two show-stopping issues in the earlier point release. However, the first release candidate for X Server 1.7.4 has now been made available by Peter Hutterer. As all new development work is going into X Server 1.8, which will be released in March, these 1.7.x releases are just carrying various bug-fixes...

New xf86-video-intel 2.10 Testing Release

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 09:18:12 CST

Less than two weeks ago the first release candidate for the xf86-video-intel 2.10 driver was released, but now the second release candidate can be obtained from its Git repository. Not a whole lot of work has been committed to the Intel DDX driver since xf86-video-intel 2.9.99.901, but 2.9.99.902 is out there and testing is appreciated. The xf86-video-intel 2.10 driver completely drops support for user-space mode-setting support but relies entirely now upon kernel mode-setting for GPU initialization...

Nouveau To Go Into Linux 2.6.33 Kernel!

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 07:09:40 CST

Wow, the day has come, open-source fans with NVIDIA hardware that run Linux have quite the present this holiday season. Yesterday there was the first DRM pull request for the Linux 2.6.33 kernel that brought many changes to the ATI/AMD and Intel DRM along with other core DRM improvements (such as to the TTM memory manager)...

NVIDIA Anti-Aliasing, Linux & Lenvik

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:00:35 CST

Recently via email we were asked to run a comparison of the different anti-aliasing and image rendering options between the ATI/AMD and NVIDIA Linux drivers and hardware. Well, we have now run a few quantitative and qualitative tests at different anti-aliasing levels under Linux. For those that want to run the tests themselves with their own drivers and hardware, we also have provided instructions on how you can easily do so using the Phoronix Test Suite 2.4 "Lenvik" development build -- it is irresistibly easy.

Gosh, Our Test Farm Already Finds Big Regression

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 22:27:46 CST

Back in October we made it possible to autonomously find performance regressions in a project's code-base by leveraging the Phoronix Test Suite atop Git's bisect command. A new Phoronix Test Suite module was created that would automatically run a binary search on a defined code-base and keep running the specified test(s) on each revision and then traverse to the next using Git bisect until the lone commit causing the defined regression was located...

Plymouth Gets Pulled Into Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:22:02 CST

Plymouth is a Red Hat innovation that came around last year to provide a new, attractive boot graphical splash screen that went on to replace RHGB (Red Hat Graphical Boot) in Fedora 10. We have extensively talked about Plymouth as its interesting and provides a very clean boot interface thanks to it leveraging kernel mode-setting to offer a flicker-free experience and then providing tight integration with GDM and the X Server...

Part 2 Of Nouveau Saga: The Microcode

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:10:15 CST

Following a feature-packed DRM pull request this morning for the Linux 2.6.33 kernel, Linus Torvalds became frustrated that the Nouveau driver for supporting NVIDIA hardware was still not to be found in this most recent pull request. Linus wants Nouveau in the mainline kernel especially as Red Hat has already been shipping this free software driver in Fedora for two releases. Only a few hours have passed since that second news article, but more messages surrounding the Nouveau status have been sent on the kernel mailing list and dri-devel...

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" Alpha 1 Released

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:27:09 CST

Just as planned, the first alpha release for Ubuntu 10.04 (the "Lucid Lynx") has arrived. Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha 1 is running with the Linux 2.6.32 kernel, X Server 1.7, GNOME 2.29.3, KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta 1, and many other package upgrades since the release of Ubuntu 9.10 back in October. One item worth noting is that Ubuntu 10.04 has completely dropped support for HAL, which will speed up a few areas such as the boot process, but as our early Ubuntu 10.04 benchmarks show, there are some notable performance regressions...

Linus Wants Nouveau Merged Into Kernel

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:52:33 CST

This morning the first DRM pull request went in for the Linux 2.6.33 kernel that brings many nice graphics changes for Intel, ATI/AMD, and VMware users. Anything for NVIDIA hardware through Novueau was not mentioned as there is no readied support, but as we stated in our article this morning, its unlikely to see Nouveau's DRM in the mainline kernel before the Linux 2.6.34 kernel...

A Great Present In The Linux 2.6.33 Kernel

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 08:31:12 CST

David Airlie has just called upon Linus Torvalds to pull in the latest DRM patches for inclusion into the Linux 2.6.33 kernel. The Direct Rendering Manager improvements in this next kernel release will be particularly interesting and are perhaps as significant as earlier kernels that had introduced kernel mode-setting support for Intel and ATI/AMD hardware along with in-kernel memory management...

Unigine Engine Does Physical Force Fields

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 08:30:19 CST

We are still waiting on Unigine Corp to release Unigine Heaven for Linux -- their latest engine demo that shows off their latest improvements, including an OpenGL 3.2 renderer and other mighty impressive advancements. Unigine has the Linux version of Heaven completed (we have seen it and even benchmarked it, and it's amazingly great), but they are waiting on AMD to publicly release a Catalyst Linux driver that can even handle this demo as right now the Linux drivers out there simply don't work because this demo is absolutely gruesome on the driver stack and hardware...

Fedora Switching From CVS To Git

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:27:57 CST

Package source control for Fedora has relied upon CVS since the inception of this Red Hat Linux distribution, but it's soon going to switch over to using Git instead. At the FUDCon event this week in Toronto, Red Hat's Jesse Keating has laid out these plans to stop using CVS and switch over to Git for its benefits: distributed management, it's faster than CVS, better patch management, and many upstream projects using this revision control system. To ease in this transition, Jesse will be creating a helper script to conceal some of the complexities of Git while designing this script around the needs of Fedora and its contributors...

VMware Goes For Mainline Inclusion Of Its DRM

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:42:35 CST

VMware is preparing to propose that its "vmwgfx" DRM kernel driver be pushed into the mainline DRM tree and in turn will then be pulled into the mainline Linux kernel -- as soon as the Linux 2.6.33 kernel. VMware's Jakob Bornecrantz (formerly of Tungsten Graphics) is calling for comments on the two patches that introduce the vmwgfx C header file and then the Direct Rendering Manager code itself...

OpenCL Over Mesa, Gallium3D Discussion

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:26:40 CST

While NVIDIA and ATI/AMD have OpenCL support within their binary drivers, the open-source Mesa / Gallium3D stack is still lacking open-source support for the Open Computing Language on Linux. But the discussion surrounding OpenCL in Gallium3D has been renewed on the mailing list today. Since August there has been a branch that provides Clover, which is an OpenCL state tracker ("CL over [Gallium3D]"), but unlike other state trackers it hasn't been progressing at a brisk pace...

Mono's C# Compiler Now 4.0 Feature Complete

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:50:18 CST

For those interested in programming in C# on Linux or have interest in Mono for using Microsoft's .NET, you may be pleased to know that Mono's C# compiler is now C# 4.0 feature complete. Covariance and contravariance, optional parameters, dynamic binding, and other features of the C# 4.0 programming language have now been implemented within Mono...

Ubuntu 10.04 Is Off To A Poor Performance Start

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:00:08 CST

Tomorrow will mark the first alpha release of Ubuntu 10.04, and while there is still a long journey ahead for this Long-Term Support release before it officially makes its debut in April, we could not pass up the opportunity to provide some early benchmarks of the Lucid Lynx. Ubuntu 10.04 LTS has already pulled in X.Org 7.5 with X Server 1.7 and other updated graphics packages along with the Linux 2.6.32 kernel that it will be using in the final build, which already presents some core differences from the current stable release, Ubuntu 9.10.