March 26, 2012 -- Earlier this month I benchmarked all the major Linux file-systems of Ubuntu 12.04: ReiserFS, JFS, EXT2, EXT3, EXT4, Btrfs, and XFS. While Btrfs performed well with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, it was not always the fastest although it does offer the most advanced feature-set. For those looking to tune a Btrfs file-system for performance, published now are some reference benchmarks showing the Linux Btrfs performance with varying mount options.

March 18, 2012 -- Back in January I wrote about how open-source compilers are quickly maturing for Intel Sandy Bridge CPUs and offering early support for Intel Ivy Bridge and Intel Haswell processors. Both GCC and LLVM have been quick to take advantage of the new instruction set extensions and other capabilities of these latest -- and very impressive -- Intel processors. With the release of GCC 4.7 quickly approaching, here is an updated set of GNU Compiler Collection Fortran/C/C++ benchmarks from the Intel Core i7 3960X Sandy Bridge Extreme Edition test-bed.

March 16, 2012 -- When running Linux file-system benchmarks at Phoronix it is most often a comparison of EXT4 vs. Btrfs, since they are the "hot" Linux file-systems at the moment. Sometimes others like ZFS, Reiser4, and XFS also join the party. In this article is a look at all of the Linux file-systems with install-time support under the forthcoming Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. When carrying out clean installations each time with changing out the root file-system and using the default mount options, ReiserFS, JFS, EXT2, EXT3, EXT4, Btrfs, and XFS are all being compared in this article.

March 02, 2012 -- It's that time of the Linux kernel development cycle again... Here are benchmarks of the EXT4 and Btrfs file-systems with the soon-to-be-released Linux 3.3 kernel.

February 27, 2012 -- It looks like the debacle concerning RC6 power-savings support for Intel Sandy Bridge hardware is finally behind us. Intel thinks everything is worked out and ready to be enabled upstream (again) with the next Linux 3.4 kernel cycle and Canonical has enabled RC6 by default in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Here are some tests showing the performance benefits and power-saving abilities of using the RC6 hardware feature on Sandy Bridge processors.

February 08, 2012 -- It is going on a year since showing how Unity, Compiz, GNOME Shell & KWin affect graphics/gaming performance, so here is an updated 2012 look. In this article are a variety of OpenGL benchmarks run under the current latest desktops as will be found in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS: Unity, Unity 2D, GNOME Shell, GNOME Classic, KDE Plasma, and Xfce. AMD and NVIDIA graphics were tested with both the latest closed and open-source drivers.

January 27, 2012 -- The leading open-source code compilers -- namely the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and LLVM/Clang -- now have maturing support for Intel's Sandy Bridge microarchitecture with further optimizations for the forthcoming Ivy Bridge successor. With the current and next-generation Intel support covered, open-source compiler developers have already moved onto beginning work for supporting Intel's Haswell microarchitecture that will not be launched until 2013.

January 23, 2012 -- For those that were interested by the CompuLab Trim-Slice, a desktop built around the ARM-based NVIDIA Tegra 2 platform, here are some more benchmarks. This time the numbers are looking at the performance of the dual-core ARM Cortex A9 system when using the Ubuntu 11.04, 11.10, and 12.04 packages.

January 13, 2012 -- The CompuLab Trim-Slice is quite an interesting dual-core ARM Tegra 2 device. This nettop/desktop-oriented system ships with Ubuntu 11.04 by default, but it is also well supported by Arch Linux. In this article are some tests of the dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 1.0GHz system running under Arch.

January 11, 2012 -- Following last week's release of the Linux 3.2 kernel, here is a round-up of Linux 3.2 kernel benchmarks. Also included are a new set of kernel benchmarks comparing the 3.2 kernel to older releases while running Intel's blazing fast Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition CPU.