Phoronix Test Suite 0.5.0 Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Phoronix Test Suite 0.5.0 Released

A week ago Phoronix Test Suite 0.4.0 was released and today Phoronix Test Suite 0.5.0 has outdone that. This release of the Phoronix Test Suite incorporates more than 40 major changes to this open-source Linux benchmarking platform! Among the changes are new test profiles, various clean up work, sensor monitoring support, and an improved PTS Results Viewer. Development of the Phoronix Test Suite is coming along quite nicely and by early June, the public should have its hands on version 1.0.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=12309

[Sacha]

Wow, you guys are making some great progress. I still think your version numbers are going up a bit fast though. Will 1.0 be functionally complete? I'm guessing it won't have a proper GUI at 1.0.

A real linux benchmarking system (like equivalent windows ones) with a GUI would be awesome. Being the only one in existence (that I know of), it is sure to get used in every linux review. Think it should look good before it is released as 1.0. Maybe that's just me.

[Michael]

1.0 will be functionality complete aside from the GUI. We're just not seeing much of a demand for a GUI at this point since it's already easy to use via the command line and all. I haven't heard about any usability complaints with the PTS CLI.

[Redeeman]

well.. i dont specifically want a gui, i do however find that some aspects of the UI could be improved.

when one runs benchmarks which isnt installed yet, it compiles, and then asks if one wants to save the results, that really really sounds like if one wants to save benchmarks results of the compilation stuff, and not whats coming.. this ought to be changed, you might want to also clear the screen after the compile..

[apaige]

Some test scripts have also had additional work done in this release, such as the audio encoding tests now using a much larger WAV file so more accurate results can be gathered.
From what I can see, they still use the same 45MB wav file. Or am I missing something?

[Michael]

Nope. If you still have a 45MB wav file, delete it and it should redownload the larger version due to a bug on my part of not renaming the new file.

[apaige]

Gotcha. But the new wav file (83 MB) is 16-bit, 22050 Hz mono audio, while audio codecs such as LAME, oggenc and FLAC are all tuned for CD-DA audio. I don't think that file is well suited for representative benchmarks.
Edit: also, it gets encoded twice as fast, so resulting encoding times aren't really more precise.

[Michael]

It's not finalized but just temporary pre-1.0.... Still haven't found a large CD quality Creative Commons (or another free license) WAV file. Do you know of any?

[apaige]

I'm uploading a 370MB FLAC file of the Wired CD to my ISP's free upload service. It decompresses to a 634MB WAV file.
Edit: here (http://dl.free.fr/giHFLWcYL/wiredcd.flac) it is. I also embedded the cue sheet in it, so that you can extract tracks separately with flac's --cue= option (see the man page). All you have to do is mention the credits (http://creativecommons.org/wired) in order to make its distribution legal. BTW, Nine Inch Nail's Ghosts I-IV (http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4061815/Nine_Inch_Nails_-_Ghosts_I-IV_%5B2008_FLAC_Lossless%5D) is also licensed (http://ghosts.nin.com/main/faq) under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/) license.