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> a POWERVR SGX video accellerator.
Great. It looks like ARM is competing with Intel not only on the front of small CPUs, but also on the reliance on crappy closed-source drivers for PowerVR chips...

Exactly, the new X.org drivers support 3D so you can enable compiz. You can see them in effect here. Remember that they are still experimental.

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18833

The Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) Daemon is becoming obsolete, starting with Karmic Koala. Apparently the plan is to augment udev.

This is what they should have done all along. HAL was always a case of running another instance of udev when, in most cases, there was of course already one running; it doesn't do anything new, and simply adds complexity and extra resource usage, unnecessarily.

Ubuntu still needs to change a lot (scrap Upstart/clone FreeBSD init, get rid of DKMS, ideally get rid of crapt-get and clone ports, revert to OSS for sound, get rid of the insane scenario where GNOME is irremovably fused with virtually the entire rest of the system) in order to become a system I'd consider installing, but this is an important step in the right direction, and is a solution for what was truthfully, one of the major issues that I have traditionally had with Ubuntu.

A lot of PCs had a hard time playing unencrypted 8Mbps h.264 and VC1 in 1080p

So spring $30 for the fancy hardware.

DRM is the main thing keeping BluRay down. Without the DRM, people could play the discs and would therefore have reason to buy them. If the only way people can play the movies is to buy a proprietary program from Slysoft, clumsily runn it inside WINE, and cross their fingers and hope the movie isn't "too new", hen they will not buy them. As long as Bluray is DRMed, the most logical thing to do is let the warezd00ds go through all the player hassles and supply everyone else with files that work.

Once you've got your hands on the bits, playing it isn't a problem with modern hardware, and I'm talking about some fucking low end modern hardware. When watching videos, I sometimes forgot how ridiculously wimpy my Atom is. Then I start Firefox and get a reminder.

I see lots of claims there but no facts, #4 clearly shows you don't know the long history of Intel and AMD (AMD has trailed, especially in the top end, for most of that history), and #6 is downright hilarious, not only because the *whole world* is just now coming out of that economic crisis, not just the US, but also because neither AMD or Intel are somehow "US-only" companies (see the link below).

Intel fanboys have been predicting AMD's death for as long as I can remember, at least since their first x86 clone that outperformed what Intel provided at the time (an 80286 that was clocked higher). And just recently there was this thread: http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19633 which was what I was thinking of when I read your post.

So sorry if I don't take your word for it, but I'll wait for confirmation from Netcraft...

I installed mine manually using this as a guide:
http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17603

But if you run the command:
yum install mesa-dri-drivers-experimental
it should hopefully clear things up for you.

You can take your superior benchmarks and shove it. On older hardware, the difference in responsiveness with BFS is absolutely astounding.

Those tests are multi-processor multi-core runs, which is not what BFS was designed for. I would ask you to bench it on a single single-core, dual-core, tri-core, and quad-core CPU before making such statements.

In my own tests on a shitty VIA C7 with a horribly slow(10MB/sec) Quantum EIDE(I think) drive, BFS dropped the times to launch programs almost in half. I'd place a bet that CFQ is doing some stupid shit optimized for high performance servers.

And at least a few real-world tests heavily favour BFS. But I personally despise meaningless numerical benchmarks. I much prefer watching desktop responsiveness soar on old hardware.

Sure the radeon/radeonhd drivers are in need of help, but most radeon developement is being done by two non-ATI guys.
Sure the 3D rendering is behind the blobs, but not that far behind [1]
And the 2D drivers are faster
And in my experience way more stable (outside of KMS issues i have had 0 crashes under radeon, the same could not be said for catalyst or nvidia drivers)

The reality is that for everyday use*, ATI cards now work out of the box on linux with rock solid stability this is not the case for nvidia, and it's just a matter of time till the 3D support catches up with nvidia's and firmly place ATI cards as #1 choice for Linux users (if its not already)

*call me old fashioned, but i don't consider compositing part of that.

I download my Nvidia drivers from the Archlinux package repository. How many Linux users manually download them from Nvidia? The 0.5 percentage could be a big understatement...

According to an earlier Phoronix survey, only about 20% of users download the drivers directly from the vendor's website (across all vendors, not just Nvidia). All else being equal that'd suggest it's reasonable to say the overall Linux marketshare is ~2.5%, which seems low, but there's probably other factors at work (Windows users may download drivers more frequently, thus counting more hits, etc). The 20% number may also be higher or lower, especially if you consider that many people complain about the Nvidia drivers installer, whereas fewer complain about the ATI driver installer.

Getting a bit off topic, but I like the direction ATI is taking recently with Open Source. Long term, I think they will be the better choice for Linux.
In a recent test at Phoronix (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_r600_r700_2d&num=1) the OS driver already offered better 2D performance over the binary one :-)

Yeah, but it's phoronix, they do that shit consistently. For example here: Benchmark of OSX and Ubuntu, using compilation of PHP and ImageMagick, but with different versions of GCC.
Honestly, all they do is vomit random statistics onto ad laden pages, and we slashdotters keep taking the bait, hoping somewhere in the noise there will be a couple meaningful numbers.

Yeah, but it's phoronix, they do that shit consistently. For example here: Benchmark of OSX and Ubuntu, using compilation of PHP and ImageMagick, but with different versions of GCC.
Honestly, all they do is vomit random statistics onto ad laden pages, and we slashdotters keep taking the bait, hoping somewhere in the noise there will be a couple meaningful numbers.

And today, they're running OpenGL 1.4 and lots of games work great (OpenArena, Nexuiz, Doom3), and waiting for Gallium3D to change the X acceleration architecture so they can get GLSL and such going. Check the Phoronix forums for the current state of affairs. Things change fast in open-source land.

Keep an eye on the radeon development. They just pushed OpenGL 1.4 acceleration to the Radeon driver for all ATI cards (including the current r600/700 cards, the 2xxx/3xxx/4xxx series), and it's just getting better. It'll really fly once Gallium3D drops and allows GLSL and other improvements. Most distros should be including it when they get the 2.6.32 kernels shipping with them. So, Fedora 12 alphas have it running, Ubuntu 9.10 should have 3D without the KMS for the new radeons, and things in general are just moving along smoothly. ATI has really committed to open-source drivers.

BTW, I'm just saying this as just a fan of their products and politics. I'm not an employee or paid by them in any way. If you want to see how things are going for yourself (and try out the bleeding-edge code), check out the Phoronix open-source ATI forums. The actual ATI devs post there pretty much daily.

or Eyefinity24s

exFAT sounds promising, but real question - is it protected by patents? Currently, AFAIK there is proof of concept Linux kernel implemenetation that can read exFAT: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzAzMg Patches: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/linux/kernel/1026144

Six monitors ? Heehee... Look at that: twenty-four monitors ! http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzUyNQ

This resolution also works on linux Phoronix coverage

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzUyNA

over 60 megapixels. (4 GPUs, multi-head mode, with X-plane.)

ATI's fglrx driver is awful. I'm hearing very good things about the open source drivers, though. They're moving very quickly forward, and it's proper open-source. If you don't mind compiling a bit, you can get Quake 3 and more (up to OpenGL 1.4 I believe) running on the latest 4xxx Radeons. Next steps from what I hear are GLSL and Gallium3D support, now that KMS is merged into the kernel and mesa is supporting the Radeon DRI.

Go check over at Phoronix if you're curious. The ATI employed open-source driver developers post and discuss things pretty much daily.

Linux support usually great .. however over at Phoronix, Lynnfield gets its arse handed to it a couple of times by a Phenom II X3 710. Perhaps a little early for Lynnfield on Linux ;)

Phoronix Lynnfield review

Here are a few more reviews for today: The Tech Report, Phoronix, AnandTech, X-bit labs, and Benchmark Reviews. It's all enough to make your eyes bleed. There's a list for the Core i7 870 at 0x6877.com

the fact that this "basic thing that everyone else takes for granted" doesn't work is is Adobe's fault, not the Linux community's fault.

I really wouldn't be so quick to say that. There are TONS of flaws in X11, and tons of projects underway to fix them. I link to Gallium3D because it's a big one and associated with more, not because it's the only one. Search phoronix for xorg as well, for instance, and start reading. X *is* ancient, after all. With work going on to fix basic things like that, saying it's "not our fault" that a major corporation hasn't managed to make their tried and tested tech work on your system is a bit arrogant.

Phoronix has published benchmarks of an ubuntu system with kernel 2.6.31-rc5

7-zip compression

http://www.phoronix.com/data/img/results/ubuntu_karmic_leopard/9.png

(same for gzip)

Tachyon (game):

http://www.phoronix.com/data/img/results/ubuntu_karmic_leopard/24.png

(same for other raytracing stuff)

7-zip compression

http://www.phoronix.com/data/img/results/ubuntu_karmic_leopard/9.png

(same for gzip)

Tachyon (game):

http://www.phoronix.com/data/img/results/ubuntu_karmic_leopard/24.png

(same for other raytracing stuff)

Do you mean something like this http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzQzOQ, or maybe this http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzAxNg?

Do you mean something like this http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzQzOQ, or maybe this http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzAxNg?

Have you tried PowerTop? Discussed here. I haven't tried it myself, since my linux laptop is an ancient PPC. I have noticed a somewhat short battery life on my linux laptop though. Not sure why.

Very little piracy for Linux games?

That is absolutely false. The piracy even worse because the market is small enough as it is, a small percentage will push the product from barely profitable to absolute loss.

The problem has got so bad that Linux Game Publishing (Major porter of games to Linux and a successor of Loki) were forced to implement DRM for their releases:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=lgp_copy_protection&num=1

And they didn't like doing it one bit. Here is a quote from the above linked article by LGP's CEO Michael Simms:

When this game copy protection system became known with LGP's closed testing community, it had enraged some users. In response, the CEO of Linux Game Publishing, Michael Simms, had a few things to say. "Trust me, I don't like it, I'm not happy about it, but we HAVE to do this. I've fought for 6 years against the need for any kind of protection system and all that's happened is that for every legitimate copy of an LGP game out there, there are probably 3-4 pirated copies. That's the difference between success and failure."

Now I know everyone here buys their Linux games, but it is a drop in the ocean compared to the number of pirates out there that care not for it.

Unreal Tournament already had a Linux client on the original CD which worked fine as far as I recall.

I wish Epic would fulfill their original promise to eventually provide a Linux client for UT3. 2+ years and still waiting, (well I've given up hope really).

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzQzMw

On the Linux front, the GMA500 (Paulsbo) divers are unfortunately "A Bloody Mess".

What about XvbA from AMD?

Also, this ATI is close to release it a seen here.

Of course is not perfect yet and they have been pushing the release date but still, i don't see right now a big gap between NVIDIA and ATI.

Open source licensing is one of the most innovative ideas to come out of computers in a long time. Hell it's common place to use copyright to make sure other people can't use something, using copyright to make sure they CAN, however, practically flies in the face of the concept so much so that many people originally didn't believe it would hold up in court.

"You have a really short attention span, don't you?"

It's called disrespect.

Innovations:

Foss licensing
package management
3d desktop
tabbed browsing
proper user priviledges (innovation != invention. Windows XP ate shit on this one for years)
Modular build operating systems (windows 7 is copying this)
image based deployment on CD/DVD (windows vista copied this one, linux had it through mondo and others for a while)
an OS that supports more than three file systems

hell, for looser definitions of innovation you can go here.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=great_linux_innovations_2008&num=1

They are working on it. Look here or here. While linux xvba driver support seems almost finished, it might take a while before user space applications make use of the capability.

They are working on it. Look here or here. While linux xvba driver support seems almost finished, it might take a while before user space applications make use of the capability.

That's hilarious. Maybe you should quit buying nvidia hardware, then.

.

Maybe I should be a little clearer: you should have quit buying nvidia hardware in September of 2008 , because hardware acceleration for video on Linux has been available since then, with the official AMD/ATI driver.

You're in luck: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Njk1NA

Same sort of weirdness shows up in the Mac 10.5.5 versus Ubuntu tests. all the test fluctuate a small amount except for the SQL-lite test in which the Mac creams ubuntu.

why does SQL lite show such extreme behaviour in file systems.

Phoronix benchmarked JFS before:
* on a cheap SSD here: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_ext4&num=4
* on an expensive SSD here: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_x25e_filesystems&num=1
The results were less than impressive, but they could be different in a HDD benchmark.

Phoronix benchmarked JFS before:
* on a cheap SSD here: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_ext4&num=4
* on an expensive SSD here: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_x25e_filesystems&num=1
The results were less than impressive, but they could be different in a HDD benchmark.

Pretty sure VLC doesn't do hardware acceleration on any platform period. Nvidia supports VDPAU in linux which allows you to play HD flawlessly with practically any card as long as the video player supports it (and a number do, mplayer and XBMC are two that come to mind off the top of my head).

See: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_vdpau_gpu&num=1

You can get the absolute latest info from the horse's mouth (AKA the ATI dev's that are working on the open source driver) at the Phoronix open-source AMD forums

from this recent phoronix article : "There is also no kernel mode-setting at this time for the ATI Radeon R600/700 (HD 2000 series and later) hardware".

No kernel modelsetting in 2.6.30 for anything but Intel chips.

There is some work in progress for ATI chips, but nothing in the mainline kernel.

In the meantime you can use uvesafb in the current kernel to get a framebuffer console if you like it. But you will get a bad vt switching experience.

Yeah. I'm not worrying about 3D right now in it... I'm using the open-source radeon driver that ships with 9.04 because it has tear-free xv in it. The fglrx/catalyst drivers suck donkey cock at doing video. If you're just looking for a media center or non-3D stuff, I highly recommend sticking with the open source drivers.

On the plus side, ATI is devoting some serious resources to open-source drivers. Take a peek over at the Phoronix forums for some ATI devs posting the latest and greatest, answering questions about what direction 3D is going, and so on. Good stuff, IMHO. I paid for a 4670 since I wanted to support a company that's doing open-source 3D better than Intel.

Phoronix has some Linux 2.6.30 Kernel Benchmarks, some on SSD. Not surprisingly they forgot to include comparison with Windows 7, as that HotHardware article forgot to include comparison with Linux. Are they both biased?

Anyhow, SSD is the future.

I don't know about these touch screens, but there are USB video adapters for full-size displays: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzI3NA

Maybe that says something about the platforms that you cite, rather than that the users need to be part of an elitist club. People use Mac because its fast, easy to use, the hardware is nice, and it doesn't get shitty over time unlike windows, AND I don't need to know how to sudo apt-get an old graphics driver because of all the regressions in my new one like ubuntu.

Let me correct that above statement for you.

1. Having discovered a few simple free tools like CCleaner and JKDefrag that I run on a regular basis, I have Windows XP machines that were built by me more than 18 months ago that I use daily, install and deinstall games and software on but have not suffered any noticeable slowdown. Yes, I prefer Linux but I must say that for an inherently flawed OS by design, XP has finally dispelled the "rebuild every 6 months" Windows myth for me.

2. I use "emerge" not "sudo apt-get" as a Gentoo, not Ubuntu, user. However, just like Apple designs its Macs with great care and attention, using only specific manufacturers of chipsets for graphics, network cards, etc., I too select my PC hardware for Linux machines with equal care. Ultimately, what that means is that every Linux box I build has kernel support for all of the hardware without any need to download or install external drivers - the only exception to that is if I'm building a Linux desktop machine, in which case I will "emerge nvidia-drivers" or "emerge ati-drivers" to support 3D acceleration on the appropriate graphics card inside the machine. Incidentally, the only reason I need to do that is because the graphics cards manufacturers refuse to publish their specifications openly meaning that an accelerated driver cannot be directly incorporated directly into the Linux kernel.

@1: I don't care what extra steps you have to take to keep whatever OS you use working properly. The fact is, I don't have to take them. It doesn't matter if they are free or easy or FOSS, its time I don't have to waste, period.

@2: I apologize if I have insulted your delicate sensibilities by implying you apt-get. But the point stands, as emerge is effectively the same as apt-get, which is effectively the same as rpm, which is effectively the same as yum, which is effectively the same as pacman, ad infinitum. A package manager by any other name is still a package manager. And frankly, time spent checking to make sure a potential GPU, CPU, mobo, monitor, printer, wifi chipset, or whatever works with my particular kernel/xorg configuration does not appeal to me. I would rather buy a computer that doesn't require any finagling just to make sure it works.

Also, since you don't seem to get the reference:

- http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_904_intel&num=1
- https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReinhardTartler/X/RevertingIntelDriverTo2.4

It just works. I know how to manage a windows computer without it getting all virus ridden and slow over time, and I know how to keep wifi/audio/video running on linux through updates and upgrades. I just don't want to. That's why I use a mac.

In that case, you have just confirmed my suspicions - namely that some Apple users are stupid enough to believe that they don't need to perform basic security & administration tasks on their machines, meaning that if and when Mac malware starts appearing in any great volume, they will almost certainly get it on their machines.

I actually laughed at this. Just as you really don't need to do any basic security and administration tasks on a Linux machine because there is no malware for the platform besides the ever so rare trojan, you really don't need to do any basic security and administration

Hell, I can't even upgrade to Ubuntu 9.04 because they've fucked up support for Intel graphics.

[citation needed], troll.

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15061#post59645
http://tinyurl.com/cboaqa