http://www.phoronix.com/ GNU/Linux and Solaris news from Phoronix en-us http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjYwMQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjYwMQ Yesterday we shared that Dell has started shipping Ubuntu 8.04 PCs. Initially there are only three "Dellbuntu" PCs (two notebooks and one desktop) with this Long-Term Support (LTS) release of Ubuntu, but additional models will begin appearing as soon as next month. Sat, 19 Jul 2008 08:10:31 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjYwMA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjYwMA While AMD's financial outlook has been bleak with it closing down 12% today, if you're a Linux user -- particularly one with a quad-core Phenom processor -- there is good news to report from the AMD camp. The quad-core AMD Phenom processors were first introduced late last year, but its Linux support has been a rough ride. The AMD 790FX Motherboard Chipset had worked well with Linux using an older Athlon 64 X2 processor, but when it was paired with a Phenom and an older Linux kernel, we experienced all sorts of issues. Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:38:25 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU5OQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU5OQ Ubuntu 8.04 LTS had shipped back in April, but up until now owners of Dell PCs would have had to install this "Hardy Heron" update manually if they were interested in benefiting from the Linux 2.6.24 kernel, GNOME 2.22, and the other improvements within this desktop Linux distribution. Today, however, Dell has announced that they have begun shipping select desktops and notebooks with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. The first Dell consumer products with an option for Ubuntu 8.04 are the XPS M1330N, Inspiron 1525N, and Inspiron 530N. Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:57:59 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU5OA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU5OA If you're looking at running some Linux benchmarks over the weekend, you'll want to check out the latest release of the Phoronix Test Suite. We've released version 1.0.4 this morning and it contains mostly new suites and tests. The new tests in Phoronix Test Suite 1.0.4 are for fio, Triangle Slammer, and a video extensions test. Fri, 18 Jul 2008 08:46:19 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU5Nw http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU5Nw If you're using an older NVIDIA graphics card and haven't yet turned to the reverse-engineered Nouveau driver, you may want to check out the latest NVIDIA legacy drivers. NVIDIA has updated its two oldest legacy drivers -- the 71.xx.xx and 96.xx.xx series -- for Linux. Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:47:32 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU5Ng http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU5Ng The GIMP crew has been hard at work on their GIMP 2.4 replacement, which will be called GIMP 2.6. There's a number of new features already present within the GIMP 2.6 development tree and just yesterday was the GIMP 2.5.2 testing release. Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:07:52 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU5NQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU5NQ For those of you that have been using the open-source xf86-video-ati driver, need we remind you of its rapidly-improving state and feature set? One of the latest additions to this open-source ATI driver that supports the old ATI R100 graphics cards up through the new Radeon HD 4800 series (RV770) is tear-free acceleration. The current implementation of this tear-free acceleration is for EXA and Textured Video (X-Video) and should eliminate any "tearing" issues that some users experience. Wed, 16 Jul 2008 07:02:53 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU5NA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU5NA Back before ATI had acquired Macrosynergy from XGI, XGI Technology had a semi-hopeful future of producing low-to-mid-range graphics cards and presenting consumers with an additional choice. Their binary Linux drivers had sucked, and that's putting it in nice words. Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:37:03 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU5Mw http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU5Mw As the first major update to the KDE 4.0 code-base, KDE 4.1 is scheduled to be released later this month. The most recent development release was KDE 4.1 Beta 2, but arriving this afternoon is KDE 4.1 Release Candidate 1. Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:35:20 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU5Mg http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU5Mg This week Intel has unveiled its Centrino 2 platform that had been codenamed Montevina. The Centrino 2 notebook platform supports 45nm Penryn processors, GMA 4-Series graphics, up to DDR3-1333MHz support, DisplayPort/HDMI/DVI/VGA connectivity, 802.11g/n WiFi with an add-on card for 802.16 WiMax, and many other Intel innovations. Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:12:09 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU5MQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU5MQ This morning an embargo expired covering AMD's newest high-end graphics card, the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 (codenamed the "R700"). Like the Radeon HD 3870 X2, this new X2 variant just combines two of AMD's high-end GPUs on a single PCB and connected via CrossFire. Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:42:11 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU5MA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU5MA Over the past month we've seen three release candidates for ALSA 1.0.17, but arriving today is the final stable build. There are hundreds of changes between ALSA 1.0.16 and 1.0.17. Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:55:56 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU4OQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU4OQ The Linux 2.6.26 kernel was released just hours ago, but it's now time to look forward to the next update due out later this year, the Linux 2.6.27 kernel. As a prerequisite to kernel-based mode-setting and TTM / GEM memory managers entering the mainline Linux kernel, David Airlie has reorganized the DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) source-code tree to present in a much cleaner hierarchy. As described by David in his mailing list message, "This contains a moving around of a lot of the DRM into a more Linux like tree and makes it a lot nicer going forward for merging new features." Rather than having a lot of different source files in very few directories, these files have been reorganized and so that the driver-specific code each has its own sub-directory. Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:24:31 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU4OA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU4OA We were up to nine release candidates with the 2.6.26 branch but today the Linux 2.6.26 kernel has been released. Since 2.6.26-rc9 were mostly documentation updates and a few regression fixes. Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:49:46 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU4Nw http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU4Nw In some weekend Linux graphics news not related to the much belated X.Org 7.4 or the recent open ATI innovations, there is another interesting change to report on coming from the Nouveau developers who have been tediously reverse-engineering NVIDIA's binary X driver. Recently they began work on Kernel-based mode-setting and NV50 series EXA Composite / X-Video support, but this news is different. Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:57:09 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU4Ng http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU4Ng Earlier this week we reported on RadeonHD driver support for the RV770 with the Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4870 graphics cards. This support arrived within the RadeonHD driver's new AtomBIOS branch that relies upon ATI's video BIOS abstraction layer as opposed to "banging the registers" and interfacing with the hardware directly. Sat, 12 Jul 2008 16:50:50 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU4NQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU4NQ Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 1 arrived over two weeks late, but Alpha 2 has just been made available and its arriving only one day late. The development cycle for Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex" is still young and there isn't too much to interest the end-user at this time aside from what we had shared in our Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 1 preview. To recap some of the Alpha 1 changes, there is a new (non-final) theme, a massive package import from Debian, and the latest unstable packages from the GNOME 2.23/2.24 branch. Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:15:47 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU4NA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU4NA It was two weeks ago that WINE 1.1.0 was released as the first development version since WINE 1.0 was released. In their usual timed released cycles, WINE 1.1.1 is now out today. Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:40:31 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU4Mw http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU4Mw It's been 234 days (or just shy of eight months) since Unreal Tournament 3 had shipped for the PC. Most would have thought the Linux client for this title from Epic Games would have arrived by now, but sadly it hasn't and there is no sign of when it will arrive. Recently, Epic's Jeff "WarTourist" Morris has stopped by the Phoronix Forums. Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:58:36 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU4Mg http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU4Mg The K Desktop Environment community came out earlier this year with their brand new KDE 4.0 release that marked significant advancements to this open-source desktop environment compared to its KDE 3.5.x code-base. Meanwhile, the GNOME community has been living in a 2.0 cycle for quite some time with no signs of a major overhaul, but their six-month release cycles just continue to deliver new refinements and minor improvements. Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:10:26 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU4MQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU4MQ It's been about two weeks since the release of Phoronix Test Suite 1.0.2, and now version 1.0.3 has been released. This minor update to this Linux benchmarking and testing platform licensed under the GNU GPLv3 adds new test profiles, a new suite, and a couple fixes. The new test profiles in this release include byte, bonnie, and ut2004-demo. Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:45:48 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU4MA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU4MA In May we shared that Multi-Pointer X (or MPX for short) was entering the mainline X server. While it was merged to master that month, X Server 1.5 was already branched out and therefore it won't appear in X.Org 7.4, but it will appear in X Server 1.6 (X.Org 7.5) until next year. While it's now in the mainline branch, Peter Hutterer, the chief developer of MPX, hasn't stopped there. Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:22:30 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU3OQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU3OQ Mesa 7.1 Release Candidate 1 was released a month and a half ago, but arriving this afternoon was Mesa 7.1 RC2, which was quickly outdone by Mesa 7.1 RC3. The third release candidate for Mesa 7.1 added in some Makefiles that were missing from the earlier release as well as adding in a new function. Over the past six weeks since Mesa 7.1 RC1, the Mesa repository has had quite a number of changes -- mostly in the areas to do with the ATI R500 (as well as a modest chunk impacting the R300 series) support and the Nouveau and Intel drivers too. Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:33:02 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU3OA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU3OA One of the features that was introduced with Fedora 9 was support for Kernel-based Mode-Setting, which at the time is limited to Intel's X driver. However, later this year with Fedora 10 we will see greater kernel mode-setting adoption with the likely integration of the Nouveau KMS and possible support on the ATI Radeon side. Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:07:19 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU3Nw http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU3Nw One of Google's Summer of Code projects this year is to bring hardware-based video acceleration to Linux with Gallium3D. The advantage of this design is that the implementation is designed to be universal to any driver using Gallium3D, which for now is largely just the Nouveau driver and an experimental Intel version. With many of the open-source drivers currently lacking any form of GPU-based video decoding acceleration (such as XvMC or the forthcoming VA-API), this will be a terrific feature as it will provide this functionality once the drivers make the switch to Tungsten's Gallium3D as this method doesn't require any hardware/driver-specific work. Tue, 08 Jul 2008 08:59:36 CDT