Software Linux Reviews & Articles

There have been 904 Linux hardware reviews and benchmark articles on Phoronix for software. Separately, check out our news section for related product news.

In this article is a look at the impact that compiler tuning has for the latest-generation Intel Ivy Bridge processors. Being tested is the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) while passing various architecture flags to look at the impact they have on the results.

As the latest Intel Ivy Bridge numbers to push out, here is a look at the Linux virtualization performance with the Core i7 3770K processor when comparing its raw/bare-metal performance to Linux KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) virtualization and Oracle VM VirtualBox under Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

From an Intel Core i7 3770K "Ivy Bridge" system here is an 11-way compiler comparison to look at the performance of these popular code compilers on the latest-generation Intel hardware. Among the compilers being compared on Intel's Ivy Bridge platform are multiple releases of GCC, LLVM/Clang, DragonEgg, PathScale EKOPath, and Open64.

Following the Linux 3.4 kernel benchmarks from last week, available now are the results from a three-way file-system comparison using the Linux 3.4 kernel as well as the Linux 3.2 and 3.3 kernels for reference. The three file-systems being pitted against each other are Btrfs, EXT4, and XFS.

As the latest Intel Ivy Bridge Linux graphics benchmarks to publish, here is a comparison of some of the different desktop environment options of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS when using the Intel Linux graphics driver on the Core i7 3770K with its HD 4000 graphics. The desktop environments being compared include Unity, Unity 2D, KDE, and Xfce. The default Ubuntu Unity desktop with Compiz continues to have problems for the open-source friendly company's drivers.

Here's a look at the performance of the Linux 3.4 kernel, which was recently released, compared to all major kernel releases going back to Linux 2.6.39. Multiple kernel sub-systems are being compared in this round of Intel Linux benchmarking.

It has been a while since last running any tests of PathScale's EKOPath compiler, but in this preview article are some AMD FX-8150 "Bulldozer" benchmarks of the EKOPath compiler compared to GCC 4.7.0, LLVM/Clang 3.1 SVN, and AMD Open64 4.5.1.

After looking recently at the impact on performance and power consumption of various Linux desktop environments running under Ubuntu 12.04 (Unity, Unity 2D, GNOME Shell, KDE, Xfce, LXDE, and Openbox), there were requests by many Phoronix readers to look at the impact of KDE on 3D gaming. KDE's KWin compositing window manager offers several options that can be easily changed that have a direct result on the Linux system's performance for full-screen OpenGL games.

After looking at how Intel's Sandy Bridge processor performance has evolved with the new GCC 4.7 compiler and Apple's forthcoming LLVM 3.1 with Clang, here are benchmark results from the AMD FX-8150 "Bulldozer" Eight-Core processor with GCC 4.7.0 and the latest LLVM/Clang 3.1 development code along with looking at the performance impact of various compiler tuning flags for this latest-generation AMD CPU. Making things even more interesting, AMD's Open64 4.5.1 compiler was also tossed into the testing mix.

While we have seen that Intel's Sandy Bridge is doing well on the new GCC 4.7 compiler, has AMD's Bulldozer CPU architecture advanced at all for this leading multi-platform compiler? Up today are benchmarks of GCC 4.7.0 -- with comparative benchmarks going back to GCC 4.4 -- from an AMD FX-8150 Eight-Core Bulldozer setup.

There's growing interest in being able to build the mainline Linux kernel with the LLVM/Clang compiler as an alternative to the kernel's long-standing love-affair with GCC.

After delivering benchmarks in March showing the performance gains of GCC 4.7 on Intel's Sandy Bridge processors, here's a look at how the latest LLVM/Clang 3.1 compiler from Apple is shaping up for these latest Intel CPUs.

Next week at the 6th annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in San Francisco, two Qualcomm Atheros engineers will be speaking about their Linux device driver development experiences and will go as far as calling for all proprietary drivers to be killed for good. They talk not just about killing proprietary drivers for Linux, but for all operating systems. Can the plans they lay out to kill all proprietary drivers work or is this just a big pipe-dream?

After performing a fresh Linux installation, most users are concerned with customizing their desktop or application set for their needs, but an increasing number of enthusiasts tend to be looking at their kernel. The Zen kernel was once very popular, but of increasing popularity amongst die-hard Linux enthusiasts is the Zen-related Liquorix kernel. While it claims to offer superior performance for common workloads, is this really the case? Here are some benchmarks of the stock Ubuntu 12.04 kernel versus the 3.2 kernel offered by Liquorix.

Earlier this month I benchmarked all the major Linux file-systems of Ubuntu 12.04: ReiserFS, JFS, EXT2, EXT3, EXT4, Btrfs, and XFS. While Btrfs performed well with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, it was not always the fastest although it does offer the most advanced feature-set. For those looking to tune a Btrfs file-system for performance, published now are some reference benchmarks showing the Linux Btrfs performance with varying mount options.

Back in January I wrote about how open-source compilers are quickly maturing for Intel Sandy Bridge CPUs and offering early support for Intel Ivy Bridge and Intel Haswell processors. Both GCC and LLVM have been quick to take advantage of the new instruction set extensions and other capabilities of these latest -- and very impressive -- Intel processors. With the release of GCC 4.7 quickly approaching, here is an updated set of GNU Compiler Collection Fortran/C/C++ benchmarks from the Intel Core i7 3960X Sandy Bridge Extreme Edition test-bed.

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.

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.

It looks like the debacle concerning RC6 power-savings support for Intel Sandy Bridge hardware is finally behind us. Intel thinks everything is worked out and ready to be enabled upstream (again) with the next Linux 3.4 kernel cycle and Canonical has enabled RC6 by default in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Here are some tests showing the performance benefits and power-saving abilities of using the RC6 hardware feature on Sandy Bridge processors.

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.

The leading open-source code compilers -- namely the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and LLVM/Clang -- now have maturing support for Intel's Sandy Bridge microarchitecture with further optimizations for the forthcoming Ivy Bridge successor. With the current and next-generation Intel support covered, open-source compiler developers have already moved onto beginning work for supporting Intel's Haswell microarchitecture that will not be launched until 2013.

For those that were interested by the CompuLab Trim-Slice, a desktop built around the ARM-based NVIDIA Tegra 2 platform, here are some more benchmarks. This time the numbers are looking at the performance of the dual-core ARM Cortex A9 system when using the Ubuntu 11.04, 11.10, and 12.04 packages.

The CompuLab Trim-Slice is quite an interesting dual-core ARM Tegra 2 device. This nettop/desktop-oriented system ships with Ubuntu 11.04 by default, but it is also well supported by Arch Linux. In this article are some tests of the dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 1.0GHz system running under Arch.

Following last week's release of the Linux 3.2 kernel, here is a round-up of Linux 3.2 kernel benchmarks. Also included are a new set of kernel benchmarks comparing the 3.2 kernel to older releases while running Intel's blazing fast Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition CPU.

Here's a quick look at running the LLVM/Clang compiler on the OMAP4460-based PandaBoard ES compared to the default GCC compiler.

It's been a while since last benchmarking NILFS2, a file-system that's been in the Linux kernel since 2.6.30, so in this article are some fresh NILFS2 benchmarks from the Linux 3.2 development kernel compared to the EXT4 and Btrfs file-systems.

Here are the much-anticipated results of the 2011 GNOME User Survey.

At the request of many Phoronix readers, here are some new Linux virtualization benchmarks. Being compared is the performance of KVM (the Kernel-based Virtual Machine) to that of HandelSpielVM on the Linux 3.0 kernel with a stock Ubuntu 11.10 for both the host and guest.

Here's the second to last batch of the 2011 GNOME User Survey feedback. The last dump of the GNOME feedback will come in the next day or two so that we can then move onto publishing the rest of the results of this survey for the other questions.

LLVM 3.0 was released last week as a major update to this increasingly popular open-source compiler infrastructure. With the release of LLVM 3.0 proper also came major updates to the Clang C/C++ compiler front-end and the DragonEgg GCC plug-in. In this article is a look at DragonEgg for LLVM 3.0 that plugs into GCC to replace its optimizers and code generators with those from LLVM.