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February 09, 2010 -- As we alluded to last week, we have been in the process of benchmarking many Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 series graphics cards using the open-source ATI Linux graphics stack with the Mesa R600/700 DRI driver. We have now carried out our first batch of R600/700 3D tests using this constantly evolving open-source driver to provide OpenGL acceleration and here are the results.

February 07, 2010 -- Yesterday Luc Verhaegen gave a talk at FOSDEM on reverse engineering a motherboard BIOS, but today we finally have X@FOSDEM for the last time. Luc has just begun his talk on unifying and simplifying the free software desktop's graphics driver stack. Here are his slides and we will be back with more updates and videos on Phoronix as the presentation progresses.

February 06, 2010 -- Since being let go by Novell last year where he worked on the RadeonHD Linux graphics driver and X.Org support within SuSE Linux, Luc Verhaegen has continued work on his VIA Unichrome DDX driver as well as other X.Org code and he has also become involved with the CoreBoot project that aims to create a free software BIOS for most chipsets and motherboards on the market. Luc has worked on support for flashing the BIOS on ATI graphics cards, native VGA text mode support, and other work to help the CoreBoot project. Today at FOSDEM in Brussels, Luc Verhaegen is about to give a talk on reverse engineering a motherboard BIOS.

February 04, 2010 -- Last week we delivered our first Linux benchmarks of Intel's Core i3 Clarkdale processor with a variety of computational tests through the Phoronix Test Suite. While the Core i3 packs a nice performance punch, that is not all it has to offer. Also found on the Clarkdale (and mobile Arrandale) processors is an integrated 45nm graphics processor that is supposed to offer a decent level of performance in comparison to earlier Intel IGPs normally found on the motherboard's Chipset. In this article are these first Intel benchmarks for the Clarkdale graphics processor as we see how its open-source Intel driver stack compares to that of AMD with their open-source Radeon stack up through the Radeon R700 series.

February 02, 2010 -- Phoronix Media has announced the immediate release of Phoronix Test Suite 2.4 (codenamed "Lenvik"), as the latest update to their open-source testing framework that delivers immediate and measurable advantages to its customers. The Phoronix Test Suite 2.4 software is compatible with a greater number of operating systems, introduces support for mobile platforms, offers a new range of test profiles, and other features to further solidify its premiere position within the computer benchmarking industry.

February 01, 2010 -- Over the years at Phoronix there have been reviews on many Tyan motherboards for desktops, servers, and workstations. The build quality of these motherboards have always been very good; after all, Tyan has been around for two decades and their workstation/server products must be very dependable if they wish to maintain their premiere position within the industry. The Linux compatibility with the motherboards has also been generally quite good due to its dominant use on their operating systems. As our first Tyan review for 2010 we are looking at the S2915 n6650W and S2927 n3600B motherboards. Both motherboards are designed for AMD's Opteron 2000 series processors and have a similar feature set, but there are a few key differences between these two high-end workstation motherboards.

January 29, 2010 -- Earlier this month Intel rolled out their new Clarkdale processors that are built on a 32nm process and making them rather unique is that integrated on the dual-core Westmere-based part is an integrated graphics processor. The Clarkdale CPUs launched under the Core i3 and Core i5 brands (along with a Pentium version) and since their launch have received favorable reviews, well, under Windows. We have now received our Core i3 processor and have carried out various processor benchmarks under Linux to see how well Clarkdale runs with the penguins.

January 27, 2010 -- Back in August we shared that Sun would be discontinuing SXCE, or formally known as Solaris Express Community Edition. Solaris Express Community Edition for the past five years has served as Sun's delivery mechanism for the latest and greatest Solaris code that will eventually make it into the next Solaris stable release, but earlier this month Sun Microsystems put out their last bi-weekly build of SXCE and as of the end of this week all downloads will cease. OpenSolaris has superseded Solaris Express Community Edition, but with this article, we are taking one last look at Build 130, the final version of Solaris Express Community Edition.

January 26, 2010 -- While we have a passion for Linux benchmarking, drivers, and delivering all sorts of performance metrics on Phoronix, once in a while it's enjoyable taking a break from that usual spin to look at other hardware components. In particular, checking out the latest computer cases from SilverStone Technology is usually the preferred choice. SilverStone has been around for seven years now yet they continue putting out some of the best and most innovative products on the market, with cases, power supplies, coolers, and other products. Their computer cases are among the best and the Temjin TJ10 and Raven RV02 have been personal favorites but they have dozens of other enclosures that range from low-profile SFF boxes to large towers. Back in October the Grandia GD03 was reviewed, but SilverStone has since sent out the Grandia GD04 to be tested, which is the focus of today's review.

January 25, 2010 -- Last week we published the first Debian GNU/kFreeBSD benchmarks that compared the 32-bit and 64-bit performance of this Debian port -- that straps the FreeBSD kernel underneath a Debian GNU user-land -- to Debian GNU/Linux. We have now extended that comparison to put many other operating systems in a direct performance comparison to these Debian GNU/Linux and Debian GNU/kFreeBSD snapshots of 6.0 Squeeze to Fedora 12, FreeBSD 7.2, FreeBSD 8.0, OpenBSD 4.6, and OpenSolaris 2009.06.

January 22, 2010 -- A month after NVIDIA launched the GeForce GT 220 graphics card they rolled out the GeForce GT 240, to further fill the performance void between the GT216-based GT 220 and the GeForce GTS 250 that had been around since March. The $100 GeForce GT 240 has received some praise for its low-power consumption while delivering a decent level of performance for being a mid-range graphics card, but of course, those reviews have been when tested under Microsoft Windows. We finally have our hands on a GeForce GT 240 graphics card from the folks over at ECS Elitegroup to see how this GT215 graphics card performs under Linux.

January 21, 2010 -- Earlier this week we published extensive benchmarks of EXT4 that looked at the performance of this Linux file-system under every major kernel release since it was declared stable in the Linux 2.6.28 release. EXT4 has encountered many significant performance losses over time as its developers batten up the data security, but there have been some improvements too. At the same time though the developers working on the still-experimental Btrfs file-system continue to move along and push forward changes with each kernel cycle. Just last month we delivered Btrfs comparative benchmarks using the Linux 2.6.32 kernel, but already out of our own personal interest and requests from readers, we have new tests atop the latest Linux 2.6.33 kernel.

January 19, 2010 -- Over the past week there has been a lot of talk about the EXT4 file-system following the announcement that Google is migrating their EXT2 file-systems to EXT4. Their reasons for this transition to EXT4 are attributed to the easy migration process and Google engineers are pleased with this file-system's performance. However, as we mentioned in that news post last week and in many other articles over the past weeks and months, EXT4 is not as great of a contender as it was in the past, well, for some tests at least. The performance of the EXT4 file-system commonly goes down with new kernel releases and not up, as kernel developers continue to introduce new safeguards to address potential data loss problems that initially plagued some EXT4 users. For our latest EXT4 benchmarks we have numbers that show this file-system's performance using a vanilla 2.6.28 kernel (when EXT4 was marked as stable) and then every major kernel release up through the latest Linux 2.6.33 release candidate.

January 18, 2010 -- There has been an effort underway within the Debian development community to pull the FreeBSD kernel within this distribution to provide an alternative to using the Linux kernel. In essence with this Debian GNU/kFreeBSD project you have the standard Debian package set providing a GNU user-land with a GNU C library, but the FreeBSD kernel is running underneath. The Debian project has also been working on Debian GNU/Hurd to effectively do the same thing but with the GNU Mach microkernel. But unlike Debian GNU/Hurd, with the release of Debian 6.0 "Squeeze", Debian GNU/kFreeBSD will reach a release status. With the Debian Squeeze release being just two months away we have decided to provide the first public set of benchmarks that compare the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD performance to that of Debian GNU/Linux. We have tested both the 32-bit and 64-bit builds of Debian with the Linux and FreeBSD kernels.

January 15, 2010 -- With Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha 2 having made it out yesterday, we couldn't resist but to run some new benchmarks of the Lucid Lynx after our original tests last month found Ubuntu 10.04 was off to a poor performance start. In some areas the performance of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Alpha 2 remains lower than in Ubuntu 9.10 -- largely due to performance regressions upstream in the Linux kernel -- but we have also included some very early performance numbers from Fedora 13.

January 13, 2010 -- Back in July of last year we were one of the first to review the ASRock NetTop ION 330, which was the first Atom-based "nettop" computer from this budget manufacturer that worked in conjunction with Pegatron Corp to assemble this compact computer. The original ASRock NetTop ION 330 worked out quite well and packed reasonable hardware (a dual-core Atom with NVIDIA ION graphics), but the latest computer in this series from ASRock is the ION 330HT-BD. This new nettop computer, which we are reviewing today under Linux, comes complete with a Blu-ray player along with 802.11 g/n WiFi, EuP 2.0 certification, and an MCE remote controller.