A New, Unique Linux Hardware Blog

If you're a Linux enthusiast and/or a computer hardware enthusiast, a new blog has launched this morning that definitely should be of interest to you.

This new blog focuses upon benchmarks, performance testing, new hardware launches, computing trends, Linux software performance, etc. It's the OpenBenchmarking.org blog. But before wondering if it's just a Phoronix blog or something else mundane, it is not. In fact, it's based upon community content and test results. The blog's content, in fact, is mostly auto-generated.

With OpenBenchmarking.org we already have lots and lots of data. Just in terms of benchmark results, there's lots of data pouring in and it can be somewhat overwhelming to look over all of this data manually for anything that may be interesting or useful with dozens of new items in the RSS feed daily. The blog on OpenBenchmarking.org filters through this data to highlight only the most interesting test results based upon a variety of factors from the traffic to the test results, what is being compared, the results themselves, and other means to automatically calculate "featured" results.

From the blog you can then comment on these featured results and treat it just like any other blog. There's also the OpenBenchmark Twitter Feed.

Beyond thousands of test results, there's heaps of other data that is sorted through and then reported to the blog too. We have statistics on computer hardware configurations, component statistics, pricing-per-performance information, etc. In the end this should all make for one interesting and unique blog. As another example, thanks to indexing thousands of industry reviews, the blog is also able to notify readers of major new product launches in real-time with accompanying links to reviews, etc. As most of the posts are self-generated, there is also no writer's bias and the content is deemed interesting based upon what users on OpenBenchmarking.org are viewing.

There will also be announcements of new OpenBenchmarking.org features, new/updated test profiles, further analysis of interesting community tests, and other unannounced features are forthcoming. Again, while Linux may be our main focus, the content on the blog also applies to Mac OS X, BSD, Solaris, and Windows users too.

Here's the announcement from the blog this morning (the only manual post so far):

Welcome to the OpenBenchmarking.org Blog. This is a new, unique way to explore the vast collection of data on OpenBenchmarking.org that is already building just days after launching OpenBenchmarking.org and Phoronix Test Suite 3.0-Iveland. There is already tens of thousands of benchmark results, thousands of industry reviews, thousands of search queries being carried out, and statistics on hundreds of thousands hardware/software components. This blog through a variety of automated and manual means is a way to filter this data and provide it to the interested hardware/software enthusiasts in a passive, friendly manner.

Found on this blog right away you will find:

Featured Results: Every morning on OpenBenchmarking.org will be displayed a new featured result. There are dozens (soon, hundreds) of result files being uploaded on a daily basis that you can track from the latest results page and/or the latest results RSS feed. However, if you would like to see only the best of these results, you will find them listed on this blog.

One featured result will be shown per day. The featured result is automatically generated and is based upon a variety of factors using a proprietary algorithm. This includes monitoring the result files for the tests that are executed, how many tests were run, what is being compared, how many times the set of results have been viewed, the number of comments associated with that result set, and the user's authority, among other measurements to weight the results in determining what should be displayed.

Weekly Highlights: Once per week there is a blog post (also automated) that summarizes the activity on OpenBenchmarking.org over the past week, including popular search queries, hardware gaining popularity, and other interesting metrics.

Monthly Highlights: At the beginning of each month is another post -- similar to the weekly summaries -- that provides a recap of the popular software/hardware, popular search results for that month, and other data of interest to computer enthusiasts.

Hardware Launches: Phoronix Media's Cekora Engine for indexing independent reviews across the Internet for over the past seven years is used by OpenBenchmarking.org for providing relevant industry reviews within hardware search results. As this review database is growing daily, OpenBenchmarking.org is able to determine when major product launches occur based upon a sudden onslaught of reviews (i.e. the product's press embargo expiring). When OpenBenchmarking.org detects a major GPU/CPU/motherboard launch, you can be notified on the OpenBenchmarking.org Blog with links to these industry reviews.

Announcements: Word on new OpenBenchmarking.org features and other important Phoronix Test Suite capabilities will be shared.

This is what you will find on the blog right now, but much more is to come in the very near future. There will also be blog posts that we create where we further analyze and verify results from the OpenBenchmarking.org community, examine new test profiles and suite, talk of new site features, and much more.

Even for the original content that's automatically generated, with this blog you can still interact with the posts just like any other blog with user comments and other features from your OpenBenchmarking.org account.

This is a one-of-a-kind blog and can complement any enthusiast's daily online reading. For easy reading there is also the OpenBenchmarking.org Blog RSS Feed or simply visit openbenchmarking.org/blog. There is also the OpenBenchmarking.org Twitter. Thanks for reading.

Michael Larabel
Founder of Phoronix Media, Lead Developer Of The Phoronix Test Suite, OpenBenchmarking.org

To sum it up, this blog is mostly about sifting through the best and most interesting information on OpenBenchmarking.org in a friendly, efficient manner.

Follow the blog at openbenchmarking.org/blog. Other unique OpenBenchmarking.org features are on the way. Your feedback is also always welcome.