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After last week delivering a 21-way graphics card comparison on Linux using the open-source Intel, Radeon, and NVIDIA (Nouveau) graphics drivers, this week at Phoronix we have a 27-way graphics card. This time around all of the graphics cards were tested using the closed-source/proprietary AMD Catalyst and NVIDIA graphics drivers.

Recently, I needed to count open-close machine cycles for a customer. We couldn’t trust the machine readouts, so we needed an external device to count the cycles accurately. This device also needed to be built quickly and easily moved from machine to machine.

Linux Deepin is a desktop distribution that’s based on Ubuntu Desktop. But it has localization problems, so the developers have launched a project to get more hands on deck. The goal is to help make one of the finest desktop distributions available in your local language.

MSC Embedded announced a Linux-ready COM Express Type 6 computer-on-module built around AMD’s Embedded G-Series system-on-chip, ranging from a quad-core 2GHz SoC to a dual-core 1GHz processor that runs on only 9 Watts.

In this slide show, eWEEK takes a look at some of the new features in Linux Mint 16.

While Linux gaming is quickly gaining ground, it seems not many are interested this year in speaking about open-source game development...

CentOS 6.5 is based on the upstream release EL 6.5 and includes packages from all variants. There are many fundamental changes in this release, compared with the past CentOS 6 releases and we highly recommend everyone study the release notes as well as the upstream technical notes about the changes and how they might impact your installation.

This release introduces the video metadata support added by Abhinav Badola for GSoC 2012, and lots of makernote updates, especially added lenses. This is also the first release that includes the (still experimental) CMake build files. (Video metadata support means that Digikam will be able to manage video files -- ed.)

The Ubuntu operating system has been spotted in an Lockheed Martin video about a humanoid robot they're building, called Atlas.

Most of us would agree that the NSA has spread its nets too far and cut deeply into our personal privacy. Ultimately, and perhaps ironically, I am hopeful this transgression will leave us with better protection for our personal communication than ever before.

Canonical has not abandoned Ubuntu TV, but it is focusing for now on delivering smartphones powered by Ubuntu Linux, according to Community Manager Jono Bacon.

Linux Mint 16 "Petra", based on Ubuntu 13.10, was released recently and is available as usual in two editions: MATE and Cinnamon. Let's take a look at what's new.

Read this guide showing how to install Minecraft. The article also includes a look at an open source Linux alternative that actually looks very close to the real thing.

The PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the December 2013 issue.

InfiniSQL is a massively scalable relational database system (RDBMS), composed entirely from scratch (not built upon some other technology). There is reproducible benchmark data described on InfiniSQL's blog proving that it can perform over 500,000 complex, multi-node transactions per second with over 100,000 simultaneous transactions—all on only 12 small server nodes. The limitation of 12 nodes was budgetary: this is an open source project entirely funded out of pocket, and not part of an institution. If I had access to more servers, I'm positive that scalability would grow much higher. But those kinds of details are on the blog. The bottomline is that this is a very high performance system, and in its infancy.

If the digital world is undergoing a binary version of the global warming awareness thingie, you can treat the gamers as a solar flare heading straight for our atmosphere. They don’t care about how long your smartphone battery is going to last, because they need a nuclear plant’s worth of power to play their games. They need the best games, and accordingly, the best hardware. Which means, if you want to be the gamers’ darling you need to design hardware that can do that and then provide drivers that bring all that power to bear. Like cars and their transmissions.

With patent reform legislation moving forward, an impressive group of law professors weighed in last week in favor of reform. The group submitted a letter to Congress that effectively demonstrates the seriousness of the problem of patent assertion entities (PAEs) and supports pending legislation. This issue is timely, because the Innovation Act (HR 3309) was approved by the House Judiciary Committee on November 20 with a strong majority (33-5) in favor. There is a good chance that the full House will take up the bill this week.

Git is quite easy to learn, but you go much further with an understanding beyond a simple cheat sheet, so we’ve combined this ‘how-to’ with a little of ‘why’

We are happy to announce that Linus Torvalds has just unveiled the second Release Candidate version of the upcoming Linux kernel 3.13.

A full review of Linux Mint 16 Cinnamon.