The Most Popular Linux Stories Of Q1'2012

I had meant to post this at the beginning of the month, but due to the busy schedule, posting of the top Phoronix articles for Q1'2012 got pushed back. Regardless, it's better late than never, so here's a look at the top Linux news and articles for so far this year.

Ubuntu 11.10 vs. Mac OS X 10.7.2 Performance
After delivering benchmarks last week that were comparing the Intel Sandy Bridge performance of Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion" vs. Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" when it came to the Sandy Bridge OpenGL graphics performance, here's a comparative look at the performance of Ubuntu 11.10 against Mac OS X 10.7.2 from the Intel Sandy Bridge-based Mac.

Mac OS X 10.8 vs. Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Performance
Regardless of whether you're an Apple fan or not, by now you've likely heard the information about Mac OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion" that began making its rounds on the Internet since last week. But how's the performance of Mac OS X 10.8 and how will it compare to the competition on the Linux side, namely Ubuntu 12.04 LTS? In this article are our first benchmarks of the developer preview release of Mac OS X 10.8 compared to Mac OS X 10.7.3 and then Ubuntu 11.10 plus the latest Ubuntu 12.04 LTS development snapshot.

Linux 3.3 Kernel: Btrfs vs. EXT4
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.

ARM On Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Battling Intel x86?
In recent weeks I have shown how Ubuntu 12.04 is ARM-ing up for better performance on the ARMv7 architecture by enabling hard-float builds and how the TI OMAP4 support has come together resulting in significant performance gains. Nevertheless, how is modern ARM hardware now comparing to the low-end Intel x86 competition? In this article are some results from Ubuntu 12.04 comparing the ARM performance to some Intel Core, Pentium, and Atom hardware.

A First Look At The Ubuntu 12.04 Performance
While there's still two months left until Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" will be officially released, here are the first benchmarks of this forthcoming long-term support release. Included are desktop and workstation benchmarks along with a look at the boot performance and power consumption. The Ubuntu 12.04 LTS releases are compared to earlier Ubuntu Linux releases going back to the 10.10 release.

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS - Benchmarking All The Linux File-Systems
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.

Gaming/Graphics Performance On Unity, GNOME, KDE, Xfce
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.

Trim-Slice: Dual-Core ARM Tegra 2 Desktop
The Trim-Slice from CompuLab is a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 nettop based on the NVIDIA Tegra 2 platform. In this article are our first Ubuntu benchmarks of this low power, fan-less desktop with comparative figures to Intel's older platforms and the OMAP4660-based dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 PandaBoard ES.

Ubuntu 12.04 ARM Performance Becomes Very Compelling
Last week I delivered benchmarks showing how Ubuntu 12.04 is ARM-ing up for better performance with ARM-based hardware and detailed some of the plans Canonical has for this architecture going forward. While those benchmarks last week illustrated some significant performance improvements with the Ubuntu 12.04 stack -- in large part due to the switch to hard floating-point support -- the gains are not over. In fact, there are already some striking improvements if using the Texas Instruments OMAP4460 SoC as found on the PandaBoard ES.

It's quite surprising to see all the ARM related Linux stories dominating Q1'2012 in terms of traffic. Ubuntu 12.04 and Mac OS X were also popular themes. Here's a look at the most popular Linux news from the first quarter.

A Message From Valve's Gabe Newell
Gabe Newell of Valve, the company behind Steam and the Source Engine, has allegedly sent over a message to Phoronix.

NVIDIA Is Joining The Linux Foundation
NVIDIA will be joining the Linux Foundation, per an announcement coming out in the morning. But for open-source Linux fans, will this be a reason to rejoice about NVIDIA potentially moving forward with open-source drivers? Don't break out the champagne quite yet.

Wayland Preparing For 1.0 Stable Release
This weekend at FOSDEM 2012 what Kristian Høgsberg is expected to say in Brussels will surprise many of you: Wayland 1.0 is gearing up for release as their first -- stable -- release. Wayland is supposed to be ready to take on the Linux desktop world.

Wayland Is Almost Ready For Showing Off
If you haven't tried out the Wayland Display Server as of late, after there being a stream of new announcements, you probably should or at least check out the videos in this posting. The Wayland Display Server is becoming more lively and slowly reaching a point where it may be possible for some to use it on a day-to-day basis.

AMD Publishes Open-Source HD 7000, Trinity Code
AMD has finally released the open-source driver code to support the Radeon HD 7000 "Southern Islands" GPUs and next-generation Fusion "Trinity" APUs under Linux with their open-source driver.

Top Features Of The Linux 3.3 Kernel
With the final release of the Linux 3.3 kernel expected to happen in in a matter of days, here's a recap of some of the most prominent Linux 3.3 kernel features that were introduced this cycle.

How Ubuntu 12.04 Is Trying To Drop Power Usage
After illustrating Linux power regressions and other problems for months, with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS developers at Canonical are finally taking a serious look at Linux power management and how it can be bettered.

Adobe Announces Plans To Abandon Flash On Linux
Adobe has issued a statement this morning that they will effectively be abandoning Flash Player support on Linux. After Flash Player 11.2 they will no longer be providing updates for Linux users but just maintaining the 11.2 release.

Did Your System Take A Dive With Linux 3.2?
If you upgraded today to the just-released Linux 3.2 kernel and your Intel system is now having problems booting this new kernel release, you're not alone, but here's a possible workaround.

The most popular news story for Q1'2012 will also likely continue being the most popular for Q2'2012... Assuming Gabe Newell lets me speak next week. There's only six days until I'll be having lunch with him and at least one other of the developers on their Linux team out in Bellevue. Hopefully there will be some bomb shells permitted to be dropped at that time concerning the native Linux versions of the Steam client and Source Engine. :)

If you enjoyed the Phoronix articles from the past quarter (or the past eight years for that matter on Phoronix.com), please disable AdBlock when viewing Phoronix.com, subscribe to Phoronix Premium as the fair way to view Phoronix without advertisements and to also view entire articles on a single page, or make a PayPal tip. You can also follow Phoronix on Facebook and Twitter (I'll also be tweeting from Valve for whatever may be permitted for public sharing).