Ryzen, Linux 4.11, Windows 10 & Kabylake Were Among The Popular Topics In February

Written by Michael Larabel in Phoronix on 1 March 2017 at 03:15 AM EST. Add A Comment
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February 2017 was rather exciting for Linux enthusiasts with the big Vulkan update ahead of GDC, some fresh Windows 10 vs. Linux benchmarks, AMD Ryzen on the horizon, Intel Kabylake providing lots of testing fun, and other open-source advancements.

Last month on Phoronix there were 304 original news posts and 23 featured articles on Phoronix, all of which were written by your's truly. That continues to jive with my focus of roughly 10 original news articles per day and usually around one Linux hardware review / multi-page featured article each day, seven days per week and 365 days per year.

Below is a look at the most popular Phoronix content during the month of February. Before getting to that to, if you aren't already doing so, please consider viewing this site without ad-blockers as advertisements are the main reason why this site is able to exist now in its 13th year. You can also support the site by visiting subscribing to Phoronix Premium to view the site ad-free and multi-page articles on a single page, among other benefits. PayPal tips are also graciously accepted if you wish to support all of the Linux testing operations that happen.

In March on Phoronix there are AMD Ryzen Linux benchmarks in the days ahead, Feral is shipping DiRT Rally later this week, there are more Linux VR tests to happen, and much more. Anyhow, below are our most popular featured articles for February followed by the most popular news.

Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu Linux Gaming Performance With NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060/1080
It's been a while since last testing Windows 10 vs. Linux on different, newer Linux game ports with a variety of GPUs, but that changed this week. As mentioned this weekend, I've been working on a large, fresh Windows vs. Linux gaming performance comparison. The results available today are for NVIDIA with testing a GeForce GTX 1060 and GTX 1080 on Windows 10 Pro x64 and Ubuntu 16.10 x86_64 with the latest drivers and using a variety of newer Direct3D 11/12 / OpenGL / Vulkan games.

Radeon Windows 10 vs. Linux RadeonSI/RADV Gaming Performance
On Monday I published a Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu Linux gaming performance comparison with NVIDIA GeForce graphics while today the tables have turned and is a Windows vs. Linux gaming benchmark battle with AMD Radeon graphics.

Intel Core i3 2100 Sandy Bridge vs. Core i3 7100 Kabylake Performance
At the end of January I published my initial Core i3 7100 Linux benchmarks while for those still on older Sandy Bridge hardware and thinking of upgrading to a Core i3 Kabylake, here are some interesting comparative benchmarks. For these weekend tests are raw performance and performance-per-Watt metrics for the Core i3 2100 Sandy Bridge to the Core i3 7100 Kabylake processors.

NVIDIA/Radeon Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu Linux Relative Gaming Performance
Last week I published some Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu Linux Radeon benchmarks and Windows vs. Linux NVIDIA Pascal tests. Those results were published by themselves while for this article are the AMD and NVIDIA numbers merged together and normalized to get a look at the relative Windows vs. Linux gaming performance.

Mesa 13.0 vs. 17.0 Performance For RADV/RadeonSI: Big Gains For Vulkan, OpenGL Boosts
With Mesa 17.0 due to be released in the days ahead, I've been running fresh benchmarks of this latest user-space 3D driver stack on Intel, Radeon, and Nouveau. For your viewing pleasure this Thursday are the RadeonSI benchmarks comparing the Mesa 17.0 Git code to that of the latest Mesa 13.0 branch with a few different AMD graphics cards. There are also some tests of the RADV Vulkan driver.

Intel Celeron G3930 On Linux: A Dual-Core Kabylake CPU For $40
Earlier this week we posted Linux benchmarks of the Intel Pentium G4600 as a 3.6GHz processor for around $90 USD. It was an interesting processor for the value, but if your wallet is tighter, the Celeron G3930 is selling for about $40 as a dual-core sub-3GHz Kabylake processor. Here are those test results.

RadeonSI Mesa 17.1-dev vs. AMDGPU-PRO 16.60 OpenGL Linux Gaming
Yesterday I ran some fresh Vulkan RADV vs. AMDGPU-PRO benchmarks using the freshest AMD Linux drivers available. For getting your benchmarking fix today are some OpenGL benchmarks of RadeonSI Gallium3D on Mesa 17.1-devel plus Linux 4.10 compared to AMDGPU-PRO 16.60.

Trying The SteamVR Beta On Linux Feels More Like An Early Alpha
This past week Valve brought SteamVR on Linux into public beta. With watching the constant hype around VR on Windows, I was quite excited to finally give VR a try with having lined up an HTC Vive for testing and currently Oculus or others not offering current Linux support. I was thinking that I would have some large GPU/driver comparisons and such completed this weekend, but once actually setting up the hardware and software, I realized that wasn't going to be feasible in such short time. So for those interested in the Linux VR space, here are some of my first impressions and why I would consider the current SteamVR more like an alpha release than beta, just yet another struggle Linux gamers face, and another obstacle to overcome if Linux is to be a more serious competitor to Windows in the gaming space.

Benchmarks Of Ubuntu 17.04 Beta vs. Antergos, Clear Linux, openSUSE Tumbleweed
For those curious how Ubuntu 17.04 is shaping up, considering this week was the "beta" release for participating flavors, I decided to take a fresh Ubuntu 17.04 x86_64 daily ISO and see how its performance compares to Ubuntu 17.10, Clear Linux 13600, Antergos 17.2, and openSUSE Tumbleweed.

Intel Celeron/Pentium/Core i3/i5/i7 - NVIDIA vs. AMD Linux Gaming Performance
Five AMD/NVIDIA graphics cards tested on five different Intel Kabylake processors from a low-end $40 Celeron CPU to a high-end Core i7 7700K is the focus of today's Linux benchmarking. Various OpenGL and Vulkan Linux gaming benchmarks were run to see how the RadeonSI and NVIDIA Linux performance evolves from a Celeron G3930 to Pentium G4600 to Core i3 7100 to Core i5 7600K to Core i7 7700K.

And the most popular news:

AMD's Ryzen Will Really Like A Newer Linux Kernel
AMD's Ryzen CPU is finally shipping in a few days! If you are planning to be an early adopter of AMD Ryzen processors, you will really want to be running a newer Linux kernel release for proper support and performance.

DRM Updates Submitted For Linux 4.11, Torvalds Explodes Over Code Quality
David Airlie submitted the main DRM driver updates for the Linux 4.11 kernel, but Linus Torvalds isn't happy about the code quality of a new addition and is considering not accepting the DRM changes for this next kernel release.

Ten Exciting Features Of The Linux 4.10 Kernel
The Linux 4.10 kernel didn't end up being released today, but was pushed back by an extra week. However, in looking forward to next weekend, here are ten of the features that excite us about Linux 4.10.

Ten Features You Will Not Find In The Mainline Linux 4.10 Kernel
With last weekend mentioning ten exciting features of Linux 4.10, the tables have turned and now we are looking at ten features not found in the mainline

NVIDIA Makes Huge Code Contribution To Qt, New Qt 3D Studio
The Qt Company today announced Qt 3D Studio, a new 3D UI authoring system, thanks to NVIDIA providing Qt with hundreds of thousands of lines of source code making up this application.

Valve Has Another Linux Graphics Driver Developer Working On Open-Source AMD
You may have noticed recently that Timothy Arceri has been working on AMD Mesa/Gallium3D improvements while previously he mostly focused on the Intel driver stack at Collabora. It turns out this change-over is due to Arceri having joined Valve to work on the open-source AMD Linux driver stack.

A GNOME Developer's Arguments On Vala Being A "Dead" Language
Longtime GNOME developer Emmanuele Bassi has pleaded his case that Vala is a "dead" language and that new applications/developers should look at alternatives or first work on improving this GNOME-centered language.

Debian 9.0 Stretch Is Now Frozen
Debian 9.0 "Stretch" is now frozen for its anticipated release later this year.

Gentoo Developer: Is The Linux Desktop Less Secure Than Windows 10?
Gentoo Linux developer Hanno Böck, who also writes for Golem and runs The Fuzzing Project as a software fuzzing initiative to find issues in software, presented today at FOSDEM 2017 over some Linux desktop security shortcomings and how Microsoft Windows 10 is arguably more secure out-of-the-box.

Linus Ends Up Accepting The DRM Changes For Linux 4.11
While Linus Torvalds yesterday was criticizing the DRM code quality using colorful language and threatening not to accept the DRM changes for Linux 4.11, he ended up merging the code to mainline.
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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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