What Else Would You Like To See On Phoronix This Spring?

[wizard69]

Way off topic so let's get the train back on track.

I'm very interested in low cost boards that can run Linux right now. This isn't for desktop replacement which I'm not even likely to buy this year but rather alternative uses.

Unfortunately in some cases these boards don't really exist yet. What I'm interested in is ARM based boards of which there are apparently many due to arrive this year. This for the most part is hardware generally priced below the AM1 style boards with generally cell phone style SoC powering the boards. The primary concern with these boards is drivers, especially video drivers where open source support or even Binary support is very thin. So maybe keeping an eye on how these boards develop and end up being supported is worthwhile.

I'm still interested in seeing how Linux compares to Apple hardware power usage wise. The current impression is that Linux sucks at power usage, however I know that much work has been out into the new kernels to improve the situation. Of course this implies buying an Apple laptop and installing Linux on it, but I think it is an interesting metric these days.

One of the reasons I went with a Mac as my primary workstation machine in 2008 was the nature or condition of the mainstream Linux desktop environments at the time. Basically GNome and KDE sucked royally. So a little research on light weight, reliable and high performance desktop environments would be interesting. I do not see KDE or Gnome fitting into this description at all. The question to be answered is which DE is the most reliable while delivering good performance and further doesn't require an update every week just to keep things going. Reliability (the lack of) and the need to update constantly where driving factors to leave Linux as my desktop platform, it would be nice to see an indication that this is no longer a huge factor and that at least one platform is stable for more than a few months.

[Azrael5]

Considering that many users use Lubuntu or any other light operating system because of legacy hardware (replacing or matching widows XP) would it be possible to make tests on legacy hardware provided by AGP videocards and Pentium 4 at least HD3850 HD4670 both AGP (latest major video cards on AGP)?

[Michael]

Considering that many users use Lubuntu or any other light operating system because of legacy hardware (replacing or matching widows XP) would it be possible to make tests on legacy hardware provided by AGP videocards and Pentium 4 at least HD3850 HD4670 both AGP (latest major video cards on AGP)?

No, I don't even have any operational AGP systems any longer, let alone any AGP graphics cards nor are they readily attainable.

[Azrael5]

No, I don't even have any operational AGP systems any longer, let alone any AGP graphics cards nor are they readily attainable.

Ok thanks... as to the systems I'm interested on wayland evolution and its incidence on operating systems and desktop environments as KDE, as well as the compatibility of the utilities with this server and the benefits in performance results.

[toyotabedzrock]

More about changes to the networking stack and the transition to nftables.

[Luke]

NSA is waking people up to the importance of privacy

I have to agree with the idea that this non-sense with ads won't go on forever, way to much money gets paid out for any economic benefit gained. So people's earnings from those ads will decline. However what does this have to do with the NSA?

Honestly I see getting paid by impression going out the window because most of those impressions generate no business at all. Really all that is accomplished is a waste of bandwidth.

The headline above this asked what the NSA has to do with it, well, when the NSA woke everyone up to the privacy issues, Google and facebook instantly realized their business models would also become subject to strict scrutiny. All those commercial databases combine and sell personal information, even names and addresses can often be found by them. Not just the NSA, but divorce lawyers and local police "red squads" have access to that kind of stuff. People know this and are quicker to block tracking and javascript.

I got ahead of that curve a decade ago when I noticed Google serving search suggestions even after all history was cleared. I stopped using Google and started using Scroogle. When Google blocked them I switched to Startpage and I will not continue any search I cannot do without using Google. Things like your Google search history are dangerous as well as moneymakers for malicious 3ed parties.

If you don't block 3ed party code, Google+,Twitter, and Facebook can get your surfing history from social network sharing buttons. This works even if you do not have an account with any of them, so long as you even once use a website from which you can be identified and they have a social sharing button. For obvious reasons I ban those from sites I control. Even NoScript requires additional hacks to block these, but ghostery shuts down sharing buttons when told to "block all." In this environment people think twice about whitelisting anything or anyone, that's what I meant about permitting ad-enabled views requiring junk hardware on a live disk, with no other session activity.

As for the NSA itself, all those 3ed party commercial servers are on US servers, and things like Facebook surfng histories, Google search histories, and surfing histories kept by Doubleclick are a gold mine for data miners like the NSA. As people become more aware of this, I do expect to see things like Youtube die out as the tracking and targetted ad gravy train gets locked out. Facebook I expect to lose their "product," which is all the data their users share, and they too should be gone within a decade.

Oh and one more point: I also expect to see all those newspapers that are putting up paywalls to go out of business as people get the same information from elsewhere. Who needs Mapquest's adwall when there is OpenStreetmap?

Phoronix is going to have to develop a business model that this coming wave won't swamp or capsize. An open site (for maximum viewers) but user/crowdfunding paid benchmarking and editorial direction might not only save Phoronix but set an example for how newspapers et all could keep having a real professional newsroom. The more people pay towards tests they want to see, the less they have to wait for contributions from elsewhere to come in.

[Spittie]

Guess I can write my opinion too?

First, let me take a moment to thanks you Michael. It doesn't matter how much I/we complain, we're here because Phoronix is a one-of-a-kind that's not replaceable by other sites.
I really appreciate your vast coverage of everything linux-related and more.

Then for the complains and stuff, I'd love to see more quality and less quantity, mostly when talking about reviews and such "big" articles (I'm fine with tons of short news posts where I can just read the headline and decide if I'm interested. Maybe add a "source" link to the bottom, so finding the original blog is not a pain?).
You do some good reviews, but others really feel just like a dump of PTS tests. I'm even fine with dumps like those, but treat them as a dump. I don't need to read the same as I've just saw in a graph. So maybe just post one/more pages with those, a link to OpenBenchmarking and call it a day? This way you should have more time for good reviews, but still put out the same amount of stuff.

I'd like to see you explore new ways to monetize other than having annoying ads everywhere and begging for a premium account every other post (In fact, please stop. You want to beg for premium accounts? Add a box at the bottom of every article saying "want to support Phoronix? Buy a premium account!", I'd like it more than the current solution).
You're always benchmarking gpu and cpu, so I wouldn't mind a link to Amazon/Newegg with your referrer when you're talking about those. But just a link please, let's not start with whole paragraphs like "If you're enjoying this article, you can always buy X card over Amazon with this link, and over Newegg with this other link".
Also, for premium accounts, you can think about a pay-what-you-want model with a minimum price and different tiers. I don't know what you could offer for the various tiers, but it could be something like "$2 or more - Access to the premium forum, $5 or more - Read articles in a single page, $10 or more - No ads". One of my favorite site (http://techreport.com/) is doing something like this, and it seems to be working out somewhat decently for them.

As for actual content, I'd love to see more BSD stuff. I'm not an huge fan of it, in fact I'm just a newcomer with no real opinion (yet), but it's interesting to see more platforms compared than just Linux and Windows.
I also love the open driver benchmarks, but only when done "right". I have no need for benchmarks of 13 gpus if I can't compare them to a previous release, catalyst on linux and/or catalyst on windows. I'd much rather see benchmarks of less gpus, but with more data.

Oh, as an addendum to the site suggestions, if you can, try to "standardize" a testbed. Having different hardware every time makes it hard to compare old benchmarks with newer, and so I'm much less likely to search/open old articles to compare (= less page view).
Oh x2, also tweak a bit the PTS graphs. Sometimes they just need a bit of manual love, for example when comparing older/newer releases of some gpu, place the old/new result of the same gpu near.

[asdfblah]

AMD APUs/GPUs running with LLVM 3.5 and kernel 3.15-rc vs, say, ubuntu defaults, with OpenCL (for VLIW and GCN APUs/GPUs) enabled.
Also, interesting things like hardware hacks (two very good examples: http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack , http://haxit.blogspot.ch/2013/08/hac...-sd-cards.html ), android hacks (I don't have many examples, but... I myself have a chroot in my phone. I'm not very creative, though TVs also come with android, I think). PS4/XBOne mods, too, if they exist at all (and other forums are forwarding people to this forum, too! http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtop...7cc0#p25104327 )... Cheap chinese hardware is nice to review, too, but I know there is a lot of competition... I don't know if all of these things are in the scope of this site.
As someone said, ubuntu trusy + LXDE-Qt would be very nice
And finally: I haven't tried it, so I don't know, but you should compare and share different configurations in PTS. say, for GPUs, test different configs for best performance, etc.
I'll add more things that I may find/remember.

[Michael]

More about changes to the networking stack and the transition to nftables.

Networking is the subsystem where I have the least experience and interest, thus will not bode any better for those that want quality over quantity. Plus that I tend to just write articles about what I'm interested/passionate about.

[Michael]

At the rate you are going here you are encouraging people to use adblockers. Today I'm getting two to three unwanted adds per page view that are the same damned thing I see on every other page view. Beyond that your pop ups and floating adds play hell with people's browsers.

It will come to the point where people will realize there is little content to be had and just say screw it, I will go someplace else or just turn on the ad lockers to reject everything. Content is what makes the embedded ads barable, if the the content is fluff and I just dismissed multiple adds to read it I'm not going to be a happy camper. I'm already skipping numerous articles because I don't want to deal with the floating crap.

I really think you have worked yourself into a situation where you think your only choice is to keep doing the same thing you have always done. Maybe you are right but I'm pretty sure experimentation with new ideas and approaches is worth a try.

On top of all of that take a day off once a week!! It might refresh your mind and change your perspective some.

Frankly I'd probably be better off financially just shutting down Phoronix.com. I can make more doing PTS/OB/Phoromatic development for enterprise customers and in some years a few weeks/months dedicated to that have outpaced a year of Phoronix.com ad revenues. But I'm passionate about Phoronix.com and in trying to deliver interesting Linux enthusiast-oriented news not readily found elsewhere, etc, so that's why I'll be a stubborn donkey and try to make it work out somehow to balance both. I already have a several hundred thousand line code drop of something else to do, but alas haven't found the time.