Phoronix News Archives

Due to the request of users on the Phoronix Forums, we now have a Phoronix IRC channel. On #phoronix at FreeNode.net you can discuss the latest Linux articles, hardware compatibility, the Phoronix Test Suite, and more. We'll have a web-based IRC chat log viewer on Phoronix in a few days. Enjoy!

It was on June 5, 2004 that Phoronix.com was started. Now 1,100+ articles and 1,400+ news postings later, Phoronix is now four years old! Today's date will now also be remembered by Phoronix Test Suite v1.0 being released (in just a few hours from now). Cheers!

If you're interested in supporting our Linux and open-source efforts at Phoronix while having the advantage of being able to browse this website without any advertisements and being able to view multi-page articles on a single "print view" page, be sure to check out Phoronix Premium. Phoronix Premium subscriptions go for as low as $2.50 USD per month! We appreciate it if you at least consider this option.

Following last Thursday's release of Phoronix Test Suite 0.5.0, this morning version 0.5.1 has been released. This release that brewed in just four days has one dozen official changes with some of them warranting this version bump.

For those interested in technical discussions surrounding the Phoronix Test Suite, a public mailing list has now been setup. This mailing list is named trondheim-pts and its mailman information page can be found here. The Phoronix Test Suite Forum will still be used and the primary place for those seeking technical support or how-to information. However, this mailing list has been setup for those more comfortable with mailing-list-style discussions and for information surrounding the software road-map, feature requests, and similar topics. Register for the PTS mailing list.

Following yesterday's release of Phoronix Test Suite 0.3.1, users can now register at global.phoronix-test-suite.com for a free account so that when uploading results from the Phoronix Test Suite they will be associated with you. This will make it easy to organize all of your results as well as sharing results with friends and co-workers (coming soon will be the PTS Global pages for browsing all entries from a specific user, RSS support, etc). Alternatively, you can continue to upload results anonymously.

Yesterday Phoronix Test Suite 0.3.0 was released, but due to a simple naming regression a noticeable bug had wound up in that release. A number of those running the compilation test suite within PTS 0.3.0 had experienced system crashes due to an infinite number of jobs being allowed by GCC -- instead of the number of CPU cores in the system plus one. This regression has been fixed in the git tree so that all test profiles are using the proper number of CPU cores through the NUM_CPU_JOBS environmental variable. As a result, Phoronix Test Suite 0.3.1 is now available.

If you're interested in supporting our Linux hardware efforts while browsing Phoronix.com (and the Phoronix Forums) without any contextual or graphic advertisements and even viewing entire articles on a single "print view" page, Phoronix Premium is just for you! In addition to all Phoronix pages being ad-free to premium subscribers, you'll also have access to an exclusive area on the Phoronix Forums. Right now in fact we're running an incredible Phoronix Pre-Birthday Deal where you can be a Phoronix Premium subscriber for just $2.50 USD per month. This is almost a 50% discount.

Earlier this week Phoronix Test Suite 0.2.0 was released, and in the speedy development cycle towards the first stable release of PTS, version 0.2.1 has been pushed out this morning. Phoronix Test Suite 0.2.1 includes a few new profiles, support for using the distribution's package management system for some tasks, and a few fixes since the 0.2.0 release.

For almost two months now we've been talking about the Phoronix Test Suite with much planning and development going on. The Phoronix Test Suite will be a platform for enabling next-generation Linux benchmarking and is based upon the process we've been using internally for about the past four years, but with greater automation, a standardized profile architecture, and many other features we'll share with the Linux community shortly. A written Phoronix Test Suite specification will come later.

With Phoronix.com turning four years old in about two and a half months, we're offering a pre-birthday deal for new Phoronix Premium subscribers. We've dramatically lowered the subscription rates for this deal where you can be a premium subscriber for only $2.50 USD per month. That's just $30 a year, compared to the normal going rate of $48! Rates for three and six month subscriptions have also been dramatically slashed for this deal.

The first alpha build of the Phoronix Test Suite is slowly progressing to a state where it will be ready for public release. In the meantime, however, the "Phoronix Test Suite - Results Viewer" is now out in its GPLv3 state. The results viewer is the browser-based component for easily viewing the results generated by the Phoronix Test Suite and automatically generates the graphs. The PTS Results Viewer is written using XML, XSL, and CSS. By itself, the code that has been pushed out today to Phorogit isn't of much use unless you want to look at the XML+XSL design for educational purposes or are interested in sprucing up its appearance (patches will always be welcome!).In addition, Phx-Grapher, which had its code dump last week, has been renamed to pts-grapher in order to abide by a single naming convention. pts-grapher is the graphing component to the Phoronix Test Suite, which can be ran locally or remotely over the web. Currently it supports both line and bar graphs, but can easily be extended and customized. This graphing utility is licensed by Phoronix under the GPLv3 license, so feel free to adapt this code as well if you're in need of generating graphs for other uses. The pts-grapher git repository is also on Phorogit.com. For those without git, source packages of both pts-results-viewer and pts-grapher are available at Phoronix-Test-Suite.com.

For those that may be new visitors to Phoronix or haven't heard of Phoronix Premium, this is a subscription-based service we launched in Q4'07. Phoronix Premium allows you to view Phoronix and the Phoronix Forums without any advertisements. All graphical and text/contextual-based advertisements are removed server-side once logging into your forum account. In addition to being able to browse all of our content without any advertisements, you have access to a "print view" / single-page version of all Phoronix articles. Whether it be a two or ten page article, with the click of a button you can view the entire article on a single page. Last but not least, by becoming a Phoronix Premium member it goes a long way in supporting our Linux hardware efforts and allows us to continue producing new content on a daily basis.

The Phoronix Test Suite software, which we will soon release in an alpha state, not only carries out the actual Linux benchmarking, but it will also provide an easy way to browse the results. A browser-based results viewer is already completed and the results will be graphed via the same system we have been using internally. While the test suite isn't yet ready to publish, tonight we have pushed out the code to our new graphing utility. This is the same code we use to generate bar graphs inside of our articles.

This morning we're pleased to announce that we've published our 1,000th article at Phoronix. The 1,000th article was on Measuring Ubuntu's Boot Performance. This is in addition to more than 1,300 news postings and over 21,000 posts in the forums. Phoronix.com will be turning four years old this June and we look forward to continuing to enrich the Linux hardware experience and our next 1,000 Linux articles.

Following last week's announcement surrounding the Phoronix Test Suite we have now created a new section in the Phoronix Forums devoted to this Linux benchmarking/testing suite. The Phoronix Test Suite Forum is dedicated to the support and discussion surrounding both the software and documentation that will made available in the coming weeks and months. You're free to also share any hopes or ideas you may have for this Linux benchmarking and compatibility suite as it's intended to be a collaborative standard.

With the start of a new month comes a new feature for Phoronix Premium members. If you're a premium subscriber, now when viewing multi-page articles you have the option of a "print version" / single-page copy. The ability to view an entire article from a single page has been a common request that we've now implemented. No matter if the article is two or ten pages long, there is now a button present at the top of each article for accessing the single-page version.

This is just a reminder that if you'd like to browse Phoronix and the Phoronix Forums without any advertisements on the pages, while still supporting our operations, you can do so by subscribing to Phoronix Premium. For as little as $4 USD per month you can be accessing the ad-free version of Phoronix which has zero advertisements and also loads noticeably faster. In addition, Premium members also have access to an exclusive area on the Phoronix Forums. For more information or to subscribe, check out this page.

Beginning next week we will be covering the 2008 International Consumer Electronic Show (CES) taking place in Las Vegas, Nevada. We'll be providing some highlights from the show as well as looking at the Linux-related products. We have a lot planned and for more information on the show check out the CES website. If there are any specific products you're interested in, be sure to let us know in the forums.

While we have already shared with you what we believe were the greatest Linux innovations of 2007, what were our most popular articles and news items? This year we have published 340 articles and 700 news items. Below is a list of the most popular pieces as ordered by hits.

For those looking to view Phoronix and the Phoronix Forums without any advertisements, this is just a reminder that you can do so by subscribing to Phoronix Premium. For as low as $4 USD per month you can view this site ad-free while supporting our Linux operations and also gain access to the premium section of the forums. Try it out today!

Many readers have asked us how they can support our Linux hardware efforts at Phoronix while avoiding advertisements. Taking the feedback of readers into consideration, we have launched a "Phoronix Premium" subscription-based service. For a nominal fee, you are able to view all Phoronix (and Phoronix Forums) pages without any advertisements. The Phoronix Premium subscription starts out at just $4 USD per month! Subscribers will also have access to an exclusive section on the Phoronix Forums. The revenue generated from this subscription service will help us continue our operations and producing Linux hardware content and offering other services. We hope that you will consider this ad-free option. More information is available on the Phoronix Premium page.

At Phoronix we are pleased to announce the creation of Phorogit. This site is a free software repository using the Git version control system. Phorogit is now the home to the fglrx-packaging scripts. For those that use the official ATI Linux driver installer and generate distribution packages using the --buildpkg command, that process relies upon scripts created by distribution maintainers on ATI's closed Linux beta program. Compared to the past where you'd have to wait at least a month for a new driver release to come out in order to get these updated scripts, they will now be freely available at anytime and developed openly. In fact, the packaging scripts for the next ATI driver release (8.43) are already available. The fglrx-packaging repository is where the Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, Red Flag, Slackware, SuSE, and Ubuntu maintainers will be hosting their fglrx installer code. This is also the location where AMD will be pulling the scripts from for each of their driver releases.

At Phoronix.com we have rolled out an update this morning for PHXCMS, our in-house content management system. PHXCMS-7.1 includes a number of optimizations and a few improvements to enhance the reader experience at Phoronix. Most noticeable are a few alterations to the right column on the Phoronix homepage, which nows includes links to some of our most popular content and to more categories at Phoronix. On the individual news pages (example link), the "Related News" area should contain more accurate news listings for each individual post. A link has has been added to this area as well for displaying more news on a given topic (these topics can also be browsed via our news archives). PHXCMS-7.1 also integrates a few other minor changes. If you run into any problems when browsing Phoronix or there are other features you would like to see, please contact us or let us know in the Phoronix Forums.

While Linux desktop surveys are nothing new, no recent polls have looked specifically at Linux graphics when it comes to X.Org video drivers, hardware, and related video features. We, however, at Phoronix see a need for this information to be profiled and have launched the first-annual Linux graphics survey. This survey is intended to allow the development community to get a better understanding of the video hardware in use, what open-source and closed-source drivers are being used, and other relevant information.

This afternoon at Phoronix we have rolled out PHXCMS-7, our in-house content management system, onto our production server. This update provides new site functionality as well as a slightly revised appearance for the web site. There's still some tweaking and other improvements that will take place in the coming days and we have some additional expansions we will be announcing in the future -- expansions include new blogs, new forms of media, and other mediums for our readers to contribute to the Linux and Solaris communities. We value and appreciate any reader feedback on these changes by either emailing us or providing your thoughts in the Phoronix Forums. Check out the new site and let us know what you think!

Last week we made some updates to our content management system at Phoronix.com and over the weekend we made a few tweaks to the Phoronix Forums. Some of the styles were updated along with better organizing some of the threads. We ask for and welcome any feedback on these site changes by either contacting us or letting us know in the forums.

We have updated the RSS channels at Phoronix to redirect our old RSS locations to //www.phoronix.com/rss.php. This RSS feed contains the latest Phoronix articles and reviews as well as our front-page news. If you experience any technical problems as a result of these changes, please let us know.

This morning the Phoronix Forums have been upgraded to vBulletin 3.6.8, the latest forum package from Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd. This upgrade addresses some security vulnerabilities along with other fixes. The Phoronix Forums are now back online with vBulletin 3.6.8, but if you experience any technical glitches or other problems please let us know.

In the coming months we'll be announcing some major expansions at Phoronix, but before that we do that we would like to find out from our readers what features you would like next or what areas you would like to see improved. If you could head on over to this thread in the forums and let us know what you like and don't like, it would be much appreciated. Thanks!

We've offered independent RSS feeds for our news and articles/reviews for years now, but we've finally offered a "Phoronix Everything" RSS feed that contains the latest items both from our news and articles and reviews. You can subscribe to this combined feed at //www.phoronix.com/phoronix-rss.php. Optionally, you can subscribe to our other RSS feeds here.

What's next for the fglrx driver? Got a gander what will be the features in the next ATI/AMD driver release? There's a discussion and contest going on in the Phoronix Forums to see who can come up with the unofficial name for the next fglrx driver release.

The Phoronix Forums have moved from phoronix.net/forums/ to phoronix.com/forums/. Everything should be migrated and all traffic to the old location should be automatically forwarded. However, if you run into any technical difficulties with the new forum location or wish to provide other feedback, please let us know.

If you haven't yet picked up your pass to Ubuntu Live 2007, we are giving away a pass on the Phoronix Forums. See this thread for details.

Today we are celebrating Phoronix.com turning three years old! We have many things planned for the future, some of which can be read about in The Linux Hardware Puzzle. David Lin has also opened up a Phoronix Blog from Taipei, Taiwan while covering Computex 2007. Check out David's blog at //www.phoronix.com/blogs/david/. His blog will cover random happenings at Computex, JavaFX, Ubuntu, and much more in the coming months. Also stop by the Phoronix Forums to tell us what you would like to see from Phoronix in the coming year.

Earlier this morning Phoronix.com was relocated to a new web server. If you are reading this message, it means that you are now on our new server. The Phoronix Forums will be moved later in the day as well. If you have any questions or run into any technical difficulties please contact us.

If you're interested in seeing Phoronix offer Linux gaming servers head on over to this Phoronix thread to let us know what games you would like to see offered. From other readers requesting Phoronix offer such Linux gaming servers specifically for the lack of servers on the Internet with some open-source games, we are currently evaluating this possibility.

This week we've made a few minor upgrades to PHXCMS-6, our in-house content management system that powers Phoronix. A lot of maintenance changes / minor fixes and improvements make up this most recent upgrade. The drop-down menu for jumping between multi-page articles (example) has been moved back down to the bottom of the page, summaries returning back to the pages of Linux distribution screenshots, and some minor navigation improvements. When visiting the Phoronix homepage now, underneath "Reviews From Around The Web" on the left hand side of the Phoronix navigation is now "This Day in Phoronix History" -- this will simply list a couple reviews and news postings that were published on Phoronix on this day in past years (something interesting nevertheless). If you have any feedback on these latest changes or other site features you would like to see, contact us or post a message on the forums.

Yesterday the Phoronix Forums were upgraded to vBulletin 3.6.6, but today Jelsoft has pushed out vBulletin 3.6.7 to correct an XSS flaw along with a few bug fixes. As a result, the Phoronix Forums have now been upgraded to this latest version of vBulletin. If you experience any problems, please let us know.

This morning the Phoronix Forums were successfully upgraded to vBulletin 3.6.6 (from vBulletin 3.6.5). This forum upgrade addresses several bug fixes along with adding a number of new features. If you are interested, more information on vBulletin 3.6.6 is available here. The Phoronix Forums should now be at their normal operational status. If you run into any issues, please contact us.

This is a reminder that if you haven't yet subscribed to our RSS feeds, it is a perfect time to do so. Next week we will be covering Sun Microsystems' JavaOne 2007 conference live from San Francisco, California. There should be quite a bit of news coming out on Java (well, that's a given), Solaris, open-source software, and technology in general. We will be covering the conference all week and will be pushing out news as it happens in our Phoronix news feed and then nightly reports back in our articles feed. You can subscribe to both of our RSS feeds on the Phoronix about page. You can also find and share more information in our Linux and Solaris forums.

Outside of the minor CSS fixes and other tweaking we have been doing to Phoronix since implementing the PHXCMS-6 content management system, the integrated search engine has now experienced a makeover. Most notably, when performing a search it will now list relevant GNU/Linux and Solaris news entries in addition to the related articles/reviews. The formatting of the search results has also changed so that it will be listing each result as a link to the actual information along with displaying the date the information originally appeared on Phoronix and its category. Results for the articles and news are limited to the 100 most recent.

Phoronix's Michael Larabel has started a new blog where GNU/Linux hardware and software information will be covered, among other things. This blog (michaellarabel.com) is a side-project and will not effect the on going day-to-day operations of Phoronix. A variety of topics will be covered in this blog, in addition to being the new home for the Redblog. More information on this blog can be found in Michael's initial post, and can also be discussed in the Phoronix Forums.

To all those celebrating, Phoronix would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. We will be delivering a special article this afternoon on open-source 3D graphics. Operations at Phoronix.com will return to normal on December 27 with two additional articles to end off the year. However, the Phoronix Forums will certainly remain active during this time. See you all on the forums!

Happy Thanksgiving! Everyone involved with Phoronix hopes you have a safe and well celebrated holiday. Nothing new will be published at Phoronix today, but the Phoronix Forums will remain active. We will be back with new GNU/Linux coverage tomorrow on Black Friday.

With tomorrow's official launch of Mozilla Firefox 2.0, Phoronix and Phoronix Redblog have Microsummary support enabled through our PHXCMS content management system. More information on what a Microsummary is can be found in the Mozilla Wiki along with a how-to guide. The Phoronix.com Microsummary displays the latest hardware review while the Redblog provides the latest blog post. Be sure to update your bookmarks!

The Phoronix Forums have returned after being off-line for a few days due to the relocation of our server. If you continue to experience any problems please report them. The forums can be visited @ //www.phoronix.net/forums/

The Phoronix Forums are temporarily offline while we relocate that server. We hope that this move will be complete within the next couple of days, and sorry for any inconveniences. If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact us.

After a short break, the Phoronix Redblog is back and ready to roll! This comeback is due to the amount of messages received asking for the blog's return and the overwhelming help users continue to request. It will no longer be updated on a daily basis, but new blog entries will come along when there is information worth passing along. As this blog continues, I will continue to focus on areas for ATI's fglrx department to improve upon, successes/failures I encounter with my day-to-day usage of ATI's Linux drivers, etc...

The first set of updates to the Phoronix Content Management System v5 (PHXCMS5) have been merged with our live server. Most of these improvements are under the hood, but there are a few visible changes. A majority of the CSS has been re-written for improved browser compatibility, load-time/efficiency, and the basis for some future expansions. The site should appear correctly in all major browsers. If you notice any browsing problems please report them.