July Was An Incredible Month For Linux Users

Written by Michael Larabel in Phoronix on 31 July 2013 at 10:25 PM EDT. 2 Comments
PHORONIX
With the end of the month comes our recap of the major Linux happenings for the past 31 days with our enthusiast, graphics, and hardware bent on the open-source operating system.

For the month of July 2013 on Phoronix there were 258 original news stories (an average of over eight articles per day) and 29 original featured-length articles (one per day). Nearly all of these articles were written by your's truly, including in the rush at the end of the month where just yesterday were 12 news postings and three featured articles. Even today there were 11 mews postings and two featured articles; there's no one else as prolifically writing as much about Linux on a constant basis.

All of this content continues to focus on Linux and other open-source operating systems with a focus on Linux graphics drivers and hardware in particular. I continue to devote insane amounts of time to Phoronix (and the Phoronix Test Suite / OpenBenchmarking.org) at a time when other Linux sites have (unfortunately) had to shutdown. It gets tiresome, but this is a process I am committed to seven days per week, 365 days per year. This year already on Phoronix I have written 1,596 news posting / short articles and 133 featured-length articles, including hardware reviews.

If you do appreciate the plethora of content I contribute day in and day out, please consider subscribing to Phoronix Premium and/or making a PayPal contribution. This goes towards making the work more worthwhile, continued open-source/public development of our benchmarking software, and costs associated with hardware reviews and testing. You can also follow us on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter with @Phoronix, @MichaelLarabel, and @OpenBenchmark. Thanks for any support.

With all of that said, of the more than 250 news stories written in July by myself, the most popular content included:

Apache Kills Off Its C++ Standard Library
The Apache Software Foundation has decided to end its Apache C++ Standard Library (stdcxx) project.

Direct3D 9 Support Released For Linux Via Gallium3D, Running Games
Linux desktop systems can now have working support for Microsoft's Direct3D 9 API via a new Gallium3D state tracker. Unlike the earlier Direct3D 10/11 state tracker for Gallium3D on Linux, this new code actually can run D3D9 games and at better performance than what's offered by Wine.

The New & Best Features Of The Linux 3.11 Kernel
Nearing the end of the Linux 3.11 kernel with most (if not all) of the interesting pull requests merged, here's a look at the exciting features that will premiere in this next Linux kernel release.

Razor & LXDE-Qt Desktop Projects To Merge
Developers behind the lightweight Qt-based Razor-qt and LXDE-Qt desktops met up at KDE's Akademy 2013 conference. During the annual KDE developer conference, the two lightweight desktops decided to merge their efforts around LXDE-Qt.

Linus Torvalds Calls For More Linux Kernel Patches
Linus Torvalds is usually complaining about too many pull requests during the Linux kernel development cycle when past its merge window, but this time around he's complaining about too few patches this week. He's also proclaimed himself the Goldilocks of kernel development.

Linux 3.11-rc1 Kernel Released With Glorious Features
Linus Torvalds announced the Linux 3.11-rc1 release on Sunday afternoon.

Wine 1.6 Released With 10,000+ Changes
After a slew of release candidates, Wine 1.6 was officially released today. The Wine 1.6 release comes just one year after the Wine 1.4 stable release but it packs in about 10,000 individual changes.

Ubuntu Edge: The First Ubuntu Smartphone Next Week?
On the Ubuntu web-site has been a teaser about "the line where two surfaces meet" and a 4-day countdown (ending 22 July). There's been wild speculation about this countdown and now it appears it will be an announcement of Ubuntu Edge, the first Ubuntu-powered smartphone.

Meanwhile, the most popular featured articles included:

Intel/NVIDIA/AMD Compete On Linux GPU Driver Performance
After recently delivering a 15-way open-source Intel/AMD/NVIDIA GPU comparison, here are the benchmarks when tossing in the proprietary AMD Catalyst and NVIDIA graphics drivers too. Besides comparing a diverse selection of graphics processors from the three main desktop GPU vendors, this comparison also shows how the current open-source Linux graphics drivers compare to the official proprietary drivers.

Intel Haswell Linux Virtualization: KVM vs. Xen vs. VirtualBox
The latest chapter to our lengthy Intel Haswell on Linux saga is virtualization benchmarks. From Fedora 19 with the very latest software components for Linux virtualization, the performance of KVM, Xen, and VirtualBox were benchmarked from the Intel Core i7 4770K "Haswell" CPU.

Ubuntu 13.10 32-bit vs. 64-bit Performance
While 64-bit Linux desktop support has been in good shape for years, it seems there's a surprising number of Intel/AMD Linux desktop users undecided whether to use the 32-bit or 64-bit installation images of their favorite Linux distribution. For the latest perspective on 32-bit versus 64-bit Linux performance, here are said benchmarks from the latest Ubuntu 13.10 development state.

NVIDIA's Linux Driver On Ubuntu Is Very Competitive With Windows 8
In recent days on Phoronix I have published benchmarks showing Windows 8 beating Ubuntu Linux for Intel Haswell performance and the Radeon Gallium3D driver losing to AMD Catalyst Legacy on Windows. As some good news for NVIDIA Linux users, the performance on Ubuntu Linux can beat out Microsoft Windows 8 on modern GPUs. However, the strong Linux performance can only be found if using the closed-source NVIDIA driver and not the open-source Nouveau alternative.

Linux 3.11 File-System Performance: EXT4, Btrfs, XFS, F2FS
Coming out today are our first Linux 3.11 kernel file-system benchmarks. Being benchmarked from a higher-end OCZ Vertex 3 SATA 3.0 SSD connected to an Intel Core i7 "Haswell" system are the EXT4, Btrfs, XFS, and F2FS file-systems.

Preview: Ubuntu's Performance Over The Past Two Years
Our latest look at the current development state of Ubuntu 13.10 is comparing the "Saucy Salamander" performance against that of Ubuntu 13.04, 12.10, 12.04.2 LTS, and 11.10. Testing was done with an Intel Sandy Bridge system to see how the Ubuntu Linux performance has evolved over the past two years in the road to the October release of Ubuntu 13.10.

15-Way Open-Source Intel/AMD/NVIDIA GPU Comparison
When running Fedora 19 with its updated open-source Linux graphics drivers, 15 different Intel, AMD Radeon, and NVIDIA GeForce GPUs were compared when looking at the open-source Linux OpenGL performance. The tested graphics processors span from the Intel HD Graphics 4600 "Haswell" integrated graphics to the AMD Radeon HD 7950 "Southern Islands" graphics card to the vintage Radeon X1800XL.

Windows 8 Beats Ubuntu Linux For Intel "Haswell" OpenGL
While we have published many Linux articles about Intel Haswell since the debut of the processors a month and a half ago, coming out now are our first benchmarks of the Microsoft Windows 8 performance against Ubuntu 13.10 Linux when using an Intel Core i7 4770K processor with HD Graphics 4600. Past Phoronix benchmarks have shown the Intel OpenGL performance to be superior on Windows over the Intel open-source Linux driver, but is this the case for Haswell?
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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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