AMD, Wine & Valve Dominated August For Linux Users
Before getting to the most popular articles for August on Phoronix, thanks to those that continue supporting the site after the 10+ years of near single-handedly (most of the time) writing the thousands of Linux articles on the site.
The Sumo Omni Reloaded was one of the many reviews on Phoronix in August.
If you appreciate all of the work invested into Phoronix for enriching the Linux hardware experience by providing countless Linux hardware reviews, enthusiast-geared open-source news, and investing in the development of the Phoronix Test Suite, there's a few things you can do to help out:
1. Please refrain from using AdBlock or similar ad-blocking technologies while browsing the site as it's primarily ad supported.
2. If you don't like ads or wish to view multi-page articles on a single page, please subscribe to Phoronix Premium that goes a long way to supporting these costly and timely operations.
3. You can also consider a PayPal tip, using our Amazon.com affiliate link (also conveniently located on the home page of Phoronix), and/or Bitcoin contributions to 1HefBsdstoALrbV3a3cLsVv5b5YLPLLvWn.
4. Follow Phoronix on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. There's also our always trusty RSS.
Thanks for your support! Without further ado, here's the most popular news articles on Phoronix for August:
It's Now Possible To Play Netflix Natively On Linux Without Wine Plug-Ins
Going back for a few years it's been possible to play Netflix movies on Linux using some hacks like with running Microsoft Silverlight on a modified version of Wine. More recently, Pipelight has been working out well as a easy-to-use solution for getting Netflix movies to play on Linux web-browsers, albeit it's still not a native experience. Fortunately, times are quickly changing.
The Best Features Of Linux 3.16
The Linux 3.16 kernel could be released as soon as today with its development having calmed down but if you've refrained from reading up on this new kernel, here's the rundown on the new features and capabilities of this 2014 late-summer kernel debut.
14 Staging Drivers Get Nuked From Linux 3.17
Over 200,000 lines of code is being removed from the Linux 3.17 kernel in the staging subsystem due to the removal of a bunch of old, unmaintained drivers.
The Exciting Features Merged So Far For Linux 3.17
We're now around the half-way point of the Linux 3.17 merge window with at least another week expected before the 3.17-rc1 release depending upon Linus Torvalds' travel around LinuxCon and the Kernel Summit in Chicago. While we're only half-way through the merge window, there's already enough new functionality to warrant a summary article for those that haven't been keeping up with all the Linux 3.17 coverage.
Belkin's WRT54G Router Successor Is Crap On The Software Front So Far
Belkin revived the Linksys WRT54G in a new 802.11ac model earlier this year and one of its selling points has been the OpenWRT support as what made the WRT54G legendary. However, OpenWRT developers and fans are yet to be satisfied by this new router.
The Linux 3.16 Kernel Has Been Released
As anticipated, the Linux 3.16 kernel has been released this Sunday afternoon.
Valve Just Released A Big Linux Steam Client Update
Valve just pushed down a big Steam client update that has a number of Linux improvements along with other general improvements.
The GPLv3 GPU Is Now Available
The GPLGPU is now available, a GPLv3-licensed Verilog design for a 2D/3D graphics engine.
The Widely-Criticized New Commercial Linux Distro Is Now On Kickstarter
Back in July I wrote about a new Linux distribution based on Arch and Wayland that was aiming for commercial success and talked up being the "ultimate operating system" for users that could compete with the likes of Microsoft Windows. The distribution, Operating System U, was widely criticized by readers, but now the distribution is on Kickstarter to solicit funds.
XBMC Is Being Renamed To "Kodi"
The XBMC project has shared with us that they're renaming the project entirely to something very different in order to no longer reflect its past Xbox Media Center name.
And our most popular featured articles/reviews:
Radeon Gallium3D Is Running Increasingly Well Against AMD's Catalyst Driver
After last week running new Nouveau vs. NVIDIA proprietary Linux graphics benchmarks, here's the results when putting AMD's hardware on the test bench and running both their latest open and closed-source drivers. Up today are the results of using the latest Radeon Gallium3D graphics code and Linux kernel against the latest beta of the binary-only Catalyst driver.
AMD A10-7800 & A6-7400K APUs Run Great On Linux
At the end of July AMD launched new Kaveri APU models: the A10-7800, A8-7600, and A6-7400K. AMD graciously sent over review samples on their A10-7800 and A6-7400K Kaveri APUs, which we've been benchmarking and have some of the initial Linux performance results to share today.
20-Way Radeon Comparison With Open-Source Graphics For Steam On Linux Gaming
When it comes to Linux gamers wanting a discrete graphics card backed by open-source drivers, the only solution right now to truly recommend for those serious about performance and making use of the hardware is really AMD Radeon graphics. While Nouveau has been making much progress, until re-clocking and other issues are worked out the performance can be unbearably slow depending upon the particular graphics processor or run into other problems. (Of course, when talking about proprietary graphics drivers on Linux, the story is entirely different, or if considering integrated Intel HD Graphics.) For those pursuing a AMD Radeon GPU for their own Steam Box/Machine build and hope to use the open-source Gallium3D drivers, here's some Steam on Linux gaming benchmarks from almost two dozen different GPUs.
Preview: OS X 10.10 Yosemite vs. Ubuntu Linux GPU Performance
At the request of many Phoronix readers, here's our first tests of Apple's OS X 10.10 "Yosemite" operating system as we see how the OpenGL performance compares between it and Ubuntu Linux with an updated kernel and Mesa.
AMD Kaveri: Catalyst vs. RadeonSI Gallium3D On Linux
With the recently released AMD A10-7800 Kaveri APU I carried out some new benchmarks comparing the open and closed-source Linux GPU driver performance for AMD with their Catalyst and RadeonSI Gallium3D solutions. When running the open-source Ubuntu driver tests, multiple versions of Mesa and the Linux kernel were used.
AMD Radeon R9 290: Gallium3D vs. Catalyst Drivers
After yesterday delivering the first open-source benchmarks of the Radeon R9 290, here's the open-source driver (RadeonSI Gallium3D) vs. closed-source driver (Catalyst) Linux OpenGL benchmarks for this high-end AMD Hawaii graphics card.
Trying The Configurable 45 Watt TDP With AMD's A10-7800 / A6-7400K
AMD Kaveri APUs feature a configurable TDP whereby users can opt to run their A-Series APUs with a lower power consumption and operating temperature but at the cost of slightly reduced performance.
Linux OpenCL Performance With The Newest AMD & NVIDIA Drivers
The latest Linux GPU benchmarks at Phoronix for your viewing pleasure are looking at the OpenCL compute performance with the latest AMD and NVIDIA binary blobs while also marking down the performance efficiency and overall system power consumption.
Look forward to a very interesting September with a ton of benchmarks currently being run and a lot of interesting plans going forward.
20 Comments
