http://www.phoronix.com/ GNU/Linux and Solaris news from Phoronix en-us http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY4MA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY4MA 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. Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:14:10 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY3OQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY3OQ 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. Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:51:54 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY3OA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY3OA ...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. Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:37:00 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY3Nw http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY3Nw 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. Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:29:51 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY3Ng http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY3Ng 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. Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:18:55 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY3NQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY3NQ 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. Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:47:24 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY3NA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY3NA 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. Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:55:13 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY3Mw http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY3Mw 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. Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:36:10 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY3Mg http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY3Mg 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. Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:20:59 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY3MQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY3MQ 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. Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:52:55 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY3MA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY3MA 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. Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:29:11 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2OQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2OQ 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. Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:47:37 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2OA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2OA 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. Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:27:20 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2Nw http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2Nw 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. Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:31:34 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2Ng http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2Ng 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. Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:18:34 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2NQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2NQ 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. Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:21:16 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2NA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2NA 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. Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:25:44 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2Mw http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2Mw 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. Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:25:10 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2Mg http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2Mg 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. Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:19:58 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2MQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2MQ 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. Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:17:20 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2MA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2MA 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. Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:06:24 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY1OQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY1OQ This week at Phoronix most of our articles and news postings were about... you guessed it! X.Org and Linux graphics, to no surprise. Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:30:10 CST http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY1OA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY1OA 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. Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:28:13 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY1Nw http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY1Nw Two weeks after the MythTV 0.22 RC1 release was made available, a second release candidate has arrived with more than 50 additional changes. Additionally, if no critical issues are discovered in MythTV 0.22 RC2, the final version of this popular free software project update will be out in roughly one week. MythTV 0.22 brings new features like VDPAU support, a new MythTV user-interface, support for the Hauppauge HD-PVR, and plenty of other changes. Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:55:36 CDT http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY1Ng http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY1Ng When running a modern Linux graphics driver stack in a composited environment there is a lot less tearing -- particularly with regard to video playback, but OpenGL applications too -- now than there was in the past, but there is still room for improvement. One of the ways to improve this is by properly controlling the display of buffers with how often the swaps occur and to sync them with the monitor's refresh rate or the rate at which the compositor is running. Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:13:00 CDT