Phoronix Test Suite 0.9.0 Released

Phoronix Test Suite 0.8.0 was released just four days but this afternoon we are announcing the release of Phoronix Test Suite 0.9.0. If all goes well, this will be the last development release prior to the release of Phoronix Test Suite 1.0. While just four days have passed, there is quite a bit of churn within the test profiles and test suites. In fact, all test profiles have been updated in this release -- some have just consisted of validating the code and performing a version bump while other test profiles have had significant additions and other improvements. A few new profiles may be added in at the last minute, but the existing test profiles found within Phoronix Test Suite 0.9.0 should be finalized unless any bugs are to be found.

New test profiles in Phoronix Test Suite 0.9.0 include mencoder, ffmpeg, compliance-sensors, and compliance-acpi. The mencoder test uses the libavcodec family of codecs to measure the time needed to decode/encode an AVI video file and the ffmpeg test is also similar but is using FFmpeg with the libavcodec package. For checking system compatibility, the compliance-sensors test checks whether LM_Sensors is properly configured and specifically checks to see whether some critical sensors are properly working. Compliance-sensors will attempt to check the CPU core voltage, +3.3V / +5V / +12V line voltages, CPU fan speed, CPU temperature, and the system temperature. The compliance-acpi test is similar to compliance-sensors but is used for checking the available features of ACPI, the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface. This test will check if the monitor brightness control, CPU power management, thermal zones, and suspend (S3 and S4 modes) features are supported through ACPI. All of the compliance-* tests are now part of the system-compliance test suite.

Some of the noteworthy changes to the test suites include the gaming test suite being updated and then split into gaming-free and gaming-closed suites. The gaming-free suite consists of all PTS-profiled games under a free software license. On the opposite side, gaming-closed is for games that are closed-source but available for free (this includes retail games that offer a demo version). Games that aren't available for a free download aren't part of any of the gaming suites at present. The gaming test suite is a composite suite made up of the gaming-free and gaming-closed sets. New suites include pcqs-graphics, pcqs-desktop-graphics, system-compliance, and video-encoding.

A list-installed-tests option has also been added, which is similar to list-tests, but will list only the tests that are presently installed on the client system. The Phoronix Test Suite has also picked up file-system detection support and that information is reported in the PTS Results Viewer and PTS Global.

For those of you running Phoronix Test Suite in a batch mode (through the batch-benchmark option), if you are running a single test (as opposed to a suite), rather than prompting you for option(s) you wish to run, it will now automatically run the selected test multiple times with every possible combination.

Among other bug fixes, for those of you previously plagued by the PTS Global log-in bug, that is corrected with PTS 0.9.0. The default Phoronix Test Suite WAV audio file has also been finalized for the 1.0 release. The distribution profiles for PTS External Dependencies have also been updated with this release to correct a few glitches and filling in some missing packages.

We encourage all of you to try out Phoronix Test Suite 0.9.0 and provide your last minute thoughts -- bugs you may encounter, questions, or anything trivial you would like to see changed. If all goes according to plan, Phoronix Test Suite 1.0.0 will be released within the next two weeks. The only major plans between version 0.9 and 1.0 are bug fixes, some additional test/suite profile work, minor improvements to the PTS Results Viewer, and improved documentation. Head on over to Phoronix-Test-Suite.com for downloads.