Windows 10 & People Learning I'm Not A Robot Were The Most Popular Stories This Month

Written by Michael Larabel in Phoronix on 30 April 2016 at 04:06 PM EDT. 9 Comments
PHORONIX
There were many interesting open-source and Linux news stories delivered on Phoronix this month.

There were 248 original news stories on Phoronix this month and 18 featured articles / Linux hardware reviews. The most-viewed news item on Phoronix wasn't a Linux/open-source event this month but rather about being burned out and the underlying issue about ads. Thanks to those that did decide to become Phoronix Premium members this month to help support the site and those that did decide to provide a tip/donate or send over some Bitcoin.

While there were a number of tips around that article, unfortunately not enough to be a sustainable source for continuing to be ad-free permanently. If you'd like to help support Phoronix going forward, please consider joining Premium or making a tip if you're able to do so (if not, please don't block ads as they are the primary source of revenue and I try to keep them clean and relevant), as ad-blocking continues to be the biggest problem and limiting factor for being able to get more writers and other resources (e.g. investing in more hardware for Linux reviews and testing) for the site; it's still been more than three years since I went a full day without working with being the primary source of articles for the site. Thank you for those supporting the site via those means or at least sharing our content on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

The most viewed news items for April were:

I've Had Enough & Today Everyone Has The Phoronix Premium Experience
Notice something different about your viewing experience today of Phoronix...?

Some Early Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu Linux Vulkan Tests With NVIDIA Graphics
While waiting to test Ubuntu Bash on Windows, I decided to run some (manual) tests of Vulkan on Windows compared to some recent Ubuntu Linux figures with different NVIDIA graphics cards.

Is The Linux Kernel Scheduler Worse Than People Realize?
A number of Phoronix readers have been pointing out material to indicate that the Linux kernel scheduler isn't as good as most people would assume.

Some Distributions Are Already Making Changes To Linux's Scheduler
Already it's looking like the research from the recently covered The Linux Scheduler: a Decade of Wasted Cores that called out the Linux kernel in being a poor scheduler is having an impact.

Well Known Linux Kernel Developer Recommends Against Buying Skylake Systems
Well known Linux kernel developer Matthew Garrett who has led the charge for a number of years about UEFI/SecureBoot issues, poorly secured devices, and more, has taken aim now at Intel's latest-generation "Skylake" systems.

Early Radeon Vulkan Windows vs. AMDGPU PRO Linux Benchmarks
On Friday I posted Some Early Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu Linux Vulkan Tests With NVIDIA Graphics while today the tables have turned to show The Talos Principle on Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04 Linux under AMD Radeon graphics.

Other Linux Distributions Begin Analyzing Clear Linux's Performance Optimizations
Fedora developers appear to be among those analyzing Intel's Clear Linux distribution for the performance optimizations made.

NVIDIA Continues Discussing Their Controversial Wayland Plans With Developers
Two weeks ago NVIDIA released their 364 Linux driver with initial support for Wayland and Mir. Some have asked why there aren't benchmarks yet or if GNOME 3.20 on Wayland supports the NVIDIA driver, but the short answer is the NVIDIA developers are still debating their implementation preferences with upstream Wayland developers.

Google Chrome 50 Released With Wayland Support
The exciting day has continued of open-source/Linux news with Google now releasing Chrome 50.

A Stable Linux Kernel API/ABI? "The Most Insane Proposal" For Linux Development
For some lighthearted weekend reading and sure to make for some interesting discussions in the forums is what was volleyed today onto the kernel mailing list: "The most insane proposal in regard to the Linux kernel development." It's about shaking up the way the Linux kernel development happens, but almost surely the proposal won't end up resulting in changes.

While the most viewed featured-length articles were:

The Performance Of Ubuntu Software Running On Windows 10 With The New Linux Subsystem
At the end of March was the surprising news about Microsoft bringing Bash and Ubuntu's user-space to Windows 10 via a new "Linux subsystem" for natively dealing with Linux ELF binaries atop Windows. Since last week the latest Windows Insider update now ships with said support for being able to run Bash and other Ubuntu user-space programs on Windows 10. I've been benchmarking the performance of Ubuntu/Linux software on Windows 10 and have some results to share comparing it to a clean Ubuntu installation.

Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu 16.04 NVIDIA OpenGL Performance
With having a clean Windows 10 installation around for the benchmarking of Ubuntu Bash on Windows 10 and Windows vs. Linux Vulkan benchmarking, I also took the opportunity to run a number of OpenGL benchmarks on both Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04 Linux with the same hardware and set of graphics cards. In this article are benchmarks of Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu 16.04 with various NVIDIA GeForce GTX 900 series graphics cards.

Windows 10 Radeon Software vs. AMDGPU On Ubuntu Linux
Last week I posted results of Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu 16.04 when looking at NVIDIA's OpenGL performance. As those results were quite interesting, the next installment of our Windows vs. Linux benchmarking are some numbers for AMD Radeon graphics. Tested here were Radeon Software Crimson Edition on Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu 16.04 with AMDGPU vs. Ubuntu 16.04 with the new AMDGPU PRO driver stack.

Nouveau "Boost" Patches Show Much Performance Potential
Karol Herbst has been one of the independent developers leading the charge to improve Nouveau re-clocking support. Within his Git tree he's been queuing up re-clocking and voltage handling improvements for this reverse-engineered NVIDIA Linux driver. He's hoping the improved re-clocking code will be ready for the Linux 4.7~4.8 kernel, but I decided to try out his Git tree this week for some benchmarking of this experimental support.

Fedora 23/24 vs. Debian vs. Ubuntu 16.04 vs. CentOS 7 vs. Clear Linux Tests
For some extra benchmarks to toss out there tonight are some tests of Fedora 23 and Fedora 24 Alpha (while acknowledging it's still early in development and debug mode) compared to Debian testing, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS in its current development form, Intel Clear Linux, and CentOS 7.

Taking ZFS For A Test Drive On Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
One of the most recurring requests this week from Phoronix readers were for doing some ZFS file-system tests on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. Here are some basic results using a single SSD.

Ubuntu 16.04 Intel Graphics: Unity, Xfce, KDE, LXDE, GNOME, MATE, Openbox
Some Phoronix readers have been requesting fresh tests of OpenGL graphics/gaming performance on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with its different desktop environment options. For some brief results to share this Sunday, here are some Intel Skylake numbers when running Ubuntu 16.04 and testing out Unity, Xfce, KDE Plasma, LXDE, GNOME, MATE, and Openbox.

Nouveau With Boost Patches Are Now Competitive To Radeon/AMDGPU With RadeonSI
Last week I published benchmarks showing Nouveau's "boost" patches offering much performance potential compared to the current state of the open-source NVIDIA Linux graphics driver but generally still not enough performance to compete with NVIDIA's proprietary Linux graphics driver. I've since carried out some fresh open-source AMD Linux results for reference to see how the NVIDIA vs. AMD GPU open-source speeds are comparing.

$10 Orange Pi One Against The Raspberry Pi & Other ARM Boards
The folks at LoveRPi.com recently sent over an Orange Pi One when they had also sent over the ODROID-C2 $40 64-bit ARM development board for review. Here are some benchmarks of the Orange Pi One compared to several other ARM boards.

Intel's Clear Linux Shows Much Potential For Optimized Graphics Performance
When it comes to CPU workloads, stunning in our Linux distribution comparisons has been Intel's Clear Linux distribution. This Intel Open-Source Technology Center project has led many of our distribution / OS comparisons with Intel engineers investing heavily in performance optimizations via AutoFDO, LTO-optimized binaries, aggressive compiler flags by default, and more. But how does the OpenGL performance compare for Clear Linux? Here are some graphics benchmarks and in select cases the results are quite a surprise.
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About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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