The Most Popular Linux Articles This Year: Windows 10, OS X, Linux Graphics

Written by Michael Larabel in Phoronix on 19 December 2015 at 08:35 AM EST. 1 Comment
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With the year quickly coming to a close, last weekend I covered the most popular Linux/open-source news this year so far of the 3,100+ original articles written on Phoronix. Today at Phoronix we're looking at the most popular featured articles and Linux hardware reviews in 2015, of which there have been 251 so far this year.

Of the 251 featured articles/reviews on Phoronix in 2015 year-to-date, below is a look at the 20 most popular articles. Before getting to that though, as a friendly reminder if you appreciate all of the work invested in Phoronix.com as well as our open-source software at Phoronix Media (Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, etc), please consider joining Phoronix Premium to say thanks this holiday season.

Stay tuned for more year-end articles and our various large performance comparisons over the next two weeks.

Comparing Today's Modern CPUs To Intel's Socket 478 Celeron & Pentium 4 NetBurst CPUs
With Phoronix having turned 11 years old last week, there's been several interesting articles looking at the historical performance of Linux, large GPU/driver comparisons, etc. Today is arguably the most interesting birthday article yet. I dug out an old Intel Socket 478 system with the i875p Canterwood chipset and Pentium 4 and Celeron CPUs that still manage to power up. I compared the Linux performance of this 11+ year old system to a variety of today's x86 and ARM systems. Beyond looking at the raw performance, the performance-per-Watt was also measured to make for a very interesting look at how CPU performance has evolved over the past decade.

A Linux User's Review Of Microsoft Windows 10
When I first started to talk to Michael about working with him this summer, one of the things we agreed on is that I would do a review of Windows 10. While I vastly prefer Linux as my day-to-day operating system, I do use Windows for gaming, and I also support Windows clients as part of my job at my University.

Linux 4.0 Hard Drive Comparison With Six File-Systems
It's been a while since last running any Linux file-system tests on a hard drive considering all of the test systems around here are using solid-state storage and only a few systems commissioned in the Linux benchmarking test farm are using hard drives, but with Linux 4.0 around the corner, here's a six-way file-system comparison on Linux 4.0 with a HDD using EXT4, Btrfs, XFS, and even NTFS, NILFS2, and ReiserFS.

OS X 10.10 vs. Ubuntu 15.04 vs. Fedora 21 Tests: Linux Sweeps The Board
With having a new Apple Mac Mini in our testing labs this week, I ran some basic benchmarks comparing Mac OS X 10.10.2 to Ubuntu 15.04 to Fedora 21 in a few different configurations.

22-Way Comparison Of NVIDIA & AMD Graphics Cards On SteamOS For Steam Linux Gaming
With Steam Machines set to begin shipping next month and SteamOS beginning to interest more gamers as an alternative to Windows for building a living room gaming PC, in this article I've carried out a twenty-two graphics card comparison with various NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon GPUs while testing them on the Debian Linux-based SteamOS 2.0 "Brewmaster" operating system using a variety of Steam Linux games.

Fedora vs. openSUSE vs. Manjaro vs. Debian vs. Ubuntu vs. Mint Linux Benchmarks
Honoring the latest round of Phoronix Premium reader requests is a fresh six-way Linux distribution comparison. Tested were Manjaro 15.09 and Linux Mint 17.2 and then the latest development versions of Fedora 23, openSUSE 42.1 Leap, Debian Stretch Testing, and Ubuntu 15.10.

A Week With GNOME As My Linux Desktop: What They Get Right & Wrong
When I sent the Fedora 22 KDE Review off to Michael I did it with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. It wasn't because I didn't like KDE, or hadn't been enjoying Fedora, far from it. In fact, I started to transition my T450s over to Arch Linux but quickly decided against that, as I enjoyed the level of convenience that Fedora brings to me for many things.

NVIDIA's Tegra X1 Delivers Stunning Performance On Ubuntu Linux
NVIDIA's Tegra X1 64-bit ARM SoC running (non-Android) Linux is a beast! I was given access to a SHIELD Android TV that was configured to run Ubuntu Linux, which has led for some exciting benchmarks. In some workloads, the Tegra X1 comes up just shy of an Intel Core i3 "Broadwell" system. The Tegra X1 has me very excited about the future of ARMv8 hardware on Linux and NVIDIA's continued Tegra advancements.

Intel Broadwell HD Graphics 5500: Windows 8.1 vs. Linux
Linux graphics tests of Intel's Broadwell hardware are finally here! Going back to November of 2013 is when Intel began putting out open-source Broadwell HD Graphics code. Since the initial Broadwell code drop, I've written dozens of articles to date covering the Linux kernel work, Mesa DRI OpenGL driver progress, Beignet OpenCL compute support, and other key Linux components work on Intel Broadwell support. A few days ago I received the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon with Core i7 Broadwell CPU to finally see how the Linux support has panned out for this next-generation line-up succeeding Haswell.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Works Great As A Linux Ultrabook
Nearly one month ago I bought the third-generation Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon as one of the first laptops/ultrabooks shipping with a high-end Broadwell processor. I've been running Linux on the system since receiving it, including the past ~3 weeks as my main production system, and I remain very happy with this purchase.

Intel Core i5 6500: A Great Skylake CPU For $200, Works Well On Linux
With Skylake's retail availability improving, we're starting to see more of the Skylake processors in stock besides just the i5-6600K and i7-6700K. One of the other processors now widely available is the Core i5 6500, which is a step down from the Core i5 6600K, but retails at just $199 USD -- making it an attractive offer for many building new PCs and trying to stick to a decent budget. I've been testing out an i5-6500 under Ubuntu Linux and so far this processor with HD Graphics 530 is running well and offers compelling CPU performance relative to older Intel hardware as well as AMD's APU/CPU competition.

Turning A Basement Into A Big Linux Server Room
This week I posted about my new server room, where there's Linux benchmarks constantly happening on the Linux kernel and other open-source code via the Phoronix Test Suite and Phoromatic. With many Phoronix readers having been interested in the basement makeover I did to turn a ugly, boring basement into a clean server room, here's more details and pictures on the month-long renovation along with various tips and product recommendations from the experience. This server room is now almost up to 50 systems and is complete with a drink bar and projector. There's plenty of pictures and details for those hoping to build their own personal basement server room, including a few tips for increasing the wife acceptance factor of the big project.

The AMD Radeon R9 Fury Is Currently A Disaster On Linux
When AMD announced the Radeon R9 Fury line-up powered by the "Fiji" GPU with High Bandwidth Memory, I was genuinely very excited to get my hands on this graphics card. The tech sounded great and offered up a lot of potential, and once finally finding an R9 Fury in stock, shelled out nearly $600 for this graphics card. Unfortunately though, thanks to the current state of the Catalyst Linux driver, the R9 Fury on Linux is a gigantic waste for OpenGL workloads. The R9 Fury results only exemplifies the hideous state of AMD's OpenGL support for their Catalyst Linux driver with a NVIDIA graphics card costing $200 less consistently delivering better gaming performance.

The Many New Features Of The Linux 4.2 Kernel
If all goes according to plan, the Linux 4.2 kernel merge window will close this afternoon followed by the immediate release of the Linux 4.2-rc1 test version. With all major pull requests having already been submitted for Linux 4.2, here's an overview of the exciting new features and changed functionality to look forward to with this kernel version to officially debut later this summer!

NVIDIA GeForce: Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu 15.04 Linux OpenGL Benchmarks
Earlier this week I ran some Windows 10 vs. Linux benchmarks of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, the latest AAA game that's been ported to Linux. Those results showed the Linux version of this game running much slower than Windows, so while having a Win10 installation around I decided to also run some fresh OpenGL Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu Linux benchmarks on some older titles. Here are those results.

Everything You Need To Know About The NVIDIA Jetson TX1 Performance
While last week we were able to write about the NVIDIA Jetson TX1 development board, at that time we weren't able to share any benchmarks or hands-on experience with this ARM board powered by NVIDIA's Tegra X1 SoC. The embargo on that has now expired and as such this morning there are a lot of benchmarks to share with you. There are many benchmarks looking at different areas of the Jetson TX1 including power consumption and thermal. For kicks I've also done some comparisons against the Tegra 2 and Tegra 3 as well as other ARM hardware like the now defunct Calxeda ARM server and Raspberry Pi 2.

Shadow of Mordor Performance: Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu Linux
Last week Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor was released for Linux after this AAA game premiered for Windows last year. Following its release I ran some Shadow of Mordor Linux benchmarks (and part two). Today are results on the same system when comparing the performance of this game under Ubuntu 15.04 to that of Windows 10 x64 Pro.

Intel Iris Pro 6200 Graphics Are A Dream Come True For Open-Source Linux Fans
The Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6200 (GT3e) as the fastest Broadwell GPU boasting an eDRAM cache and 48 execution units is a dream for open-source fans. Backed by a fully open-source Linux graphics driver, the Iris Pro Graphics 6200 found on the socketed Core i7 5775C is a dream come true that can compete with mid-range Radeon graphics cards on their open-source driver.

Performance-Per-Watt & How The Raspberry Pi 2 + Pi Zero Compare To Old NetBurst CPUs
After starting to run some Raspberry Pi Zero benchmarks this weekend, I'm back today with more benchmarks. In this article is also an interesting comparison showing the performance of the Raspberry Pi Zero and Raspberry Pi 2 against old "Northwood" Pentium 4 and Celeron processors from the Socket 478 NetBurst days. The many results in this article also include power consumption and performance-per-Watt metrics for this $5 ARM single board computer.

AMD FX-8320E Performance On Linux
Back in September AMD announced new FX CPUs that included the FX-8370, FX-8370E, and FX-8320E. Back then we reviewed the FX-8370/FX-8370E CPUs under Linux but at the time didn't have our hands on the more affordable FX-8320E processor. In December AMD sent over the FX-8320E and so for the past few weeks I've been happily using this new Vishera CPU.
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About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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