Showing headlines posted by tracyanne

Two weeks after the release of Catalyst 13.2 Beta 6 for Linux users, AMD has released the seventh beta of the forthcoming Catalyst 13.2 Linux graphics driver...

Intel's distribution of Apache Hadoop is optimised for its Xeon processors, SSD drives and 10GbE network connections and puts encryption at the heart of the distributed computing framework without sacrificing performance

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Firefox OS, Ubuntu for Phones and Tablets and Jolla's Sailfish OS have been getting attention. Mitchell Baker, Mark Shuttleworth and Marc Dillon represented their companies in a panel discussion about their products

If you subscribe to the view, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," perhaps Fuduntu is the Linux distro most ideal to your computing needs. Fuduntu was first released in 2010 as a Fedora-based Linux distribution. Its developers forked it the following year. The result is a Linux distro that has a user desktop experience somewhere between Fedora's functionality and Ubuntu's user-friendliness.

Most often when carrying out any Linux file-system benchmarks -- or really, any benchmarks in general -- on Phoronix it's using solid-state storage. SSDs are just too great to pass up with their incredible performance. However, for those still using rotating media, here's a collection of file-system benchmarks from the new Linux 3.8 kernel when tested on a Serial ATA 3.0 Western Digital hard drive.

There were huge SNA performance gains on Ironlake over UXA in the most recent testing that happened last night. Curious to see how the SNA 2D acceleration architecture is working for Sandy Bridge graphics hardware, for which it was originally intended, here are some new benchmarks...

Before you say anything, yes, I know Wireshark is available for Linux. This time, however, Windows and OS X users get to play too. Wireshark is an open-source network analyzation tool that is really an amazing tool for troubleshooting a network.

For those looking to purchase a low or mid-range graphics card for use with the open-source graphics drivers -- rather than being bound by NVIDIA's proprietary driver or AMD's Catalyst -- here's a comparison of nine different discrete graphics cards when benchmarked by the open-source drivers.

The federal state government of Baden-Württemberg in Germany is stopping in-house development of its Linux server solution paedML in favour of Univention's open source UCS@school product

Chris Wilson's continued work on the SNA acceleration architecture is really beginning to pay off. In the latest SNA vs. UXA benchmarks for this 2D acceleration back-end to Intel's Linux graphics driver, SNA is delivering some heavy advantages...

The OpenCourseWare Consortium organized Open Education Week to raise awareness about open source, open education, and open educational resources. Participants include open textbook organizations, academic institutions from around the world, and other valuable open education ogranizations. All events are free and open to everyone.

Just over a year ago, I wrote a column here on The H Open about the interesting points of contact between open source and science, especially as computers become an increasingly important tool for most scientists. Now it seems that other people are also beginning to see a connection.

Version 4.4 of the cross-platform open-source Phoronix Test Suite automated benchmarking software has been officially released. Developed under the "Forsand" codename, Phoronix Test Suite 4.4 brings many enhancements to furthering automated testing on Linux and other operating systems...

The EXT4 file-system in the forthcoming Linux 3.9 kernel will support using the previously-introduced punch hole functionality for inodes not using extent maps...

Last weekend there was a fair amount of chatter about Intel not planning to bring some OpenGL 3.0 functionality to Ironlake. The hardware supports some of GL3, but the Intel developers are more concerned about newer generations of Intel graphics hardware plus other driver features. How though is the Intel Ironlake (Clarkdale/Arrandale) performance with Mesa 9.1? Here's some benchmarks...

Discussion on Secure Boot is often a heated topic and it's one that has recently exploded on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML). It all started when developer David Howells asked Linus Torvalds for a GIT pull on signed PE binaries. Howells explained that the patchset provides a facility by which keys can be added dynamically to a kernel that is running in secure-boot mode.

Kristian Høgsberg has proposed patches to Wayland and the Weston compositor for implementing pointer locks. Pointer locks allow for applications to lock the pointer so they receive relative inputs, which can improve the handling of some games running on Wayland...

By now, active observers of the open source world will have heard of the trademark dispute between the Python Software Foundation (PSF) and Veber, a small hosting company in the UK. As reported by the PSF, Veber recently decided it wished to use "Python" in certain branding of its products and services. Veber filed an EU community trademark application, claiming the exclusive right to use the "Python" mark for software, servers, and web services throughout the EU. The PSF (which obtained a registered trademark for "Python" in the US in 2004) is opposing Veber's trademark application.

Are there any performance improvements in store for GCC 4.8 as it affects the ARMv7 Cortex-A15 processor on SoCs like the Samsung Exynos 5 Dual? Here's some benchmark results to find out...

I received an interesting message from Angela Kahealani with a challenge: "Here's what I'd like to see in Work the Shell: a full-blown shell script template. It should comply with all standards applicable to CLI programs.