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While Ubuntu Linux continues to grow -- in both popularity and new advancements for the Linux ecosystem -- and dance in the limelight, it isn't the choice for everybody. For those that may still be searching for their right Linux mate, Zenwalk 5.0 is a distribution worth trying out. Previously we have referred to Zenwalk as an unsung hero among Linux distributions and with the forthcoming 5.0 release it asserts a very well rounded Xfce desktop.

Last week the RadeonHD v1.1 driver was released, which (among other changes) had introduced extended monitor detection, RS600 support, and preliminary support for the RV670-based ATI Radeon HD 3850 and Radeon HD 3870 graphics cards. This v1.1 driver release combined with a recent git commit for adding additional TMDSA/B electrical values has led to quite a pleasant experience already with these new midrange graphics cards that have been on the market for less than two months.

At the end of our ATI Year in Review for 2006, we had stated, "next year will be a very interesting time for ATI/AMD Linux users." Looking back upon that statement, it has certainly turned out to be true, but perhaps an understatement for all of the AMD Linux work that has actually went on this year. The Catalyst Control Center was finally ported to Linux; there is now AIGLX support for use with Compiz, and the most substantial improvement being a brand new code-base for their proprietary Linux driver. Aside from their binary driver, they have developed a strong interest in better enabling the open-source community through releasing GPU documentation to the public (without NDAs!) and collaborating with Novell on the development of the RadeonHD driver. It has been one hell of a year for AMD, and in this article, we are going to look back at their twelve major driver releases from the year as well as re-benchmark all of these different versions.

In 2005 we started our annual AYiR (A Year in Review) articles for looking at the progress of the proprietary ATI and NVIDIA Linux display drivers over time. Now in our third year of doing this, it's time to see how NVIDIA's binary driver has panned out over the past year. NVIDIA had introduced GeForce 8 support this year as well as a few other features, but nothing major like in past years, and how has the OpenGL performance changed? With benchmarks in hand, we have the scoop for you today.

Just in time for the holidays, NVIDIA has released a new Linux display driver, which is a stable version of their previous 169.04 beta last month. In addition, the new NVIDIA 169.07 Linux driver has a few changes, while most of the release highlights were already found in the 169.04 release. We are preparing additional Linux tests with this new driver, but for right now we have the details on this proprietary display driver.

It's that time of the month again where we get to share with you all of the details on the latest ATI/AMD Linux driver release. This month, the ATI Catalyst 7.12 Linux driver (formally, what is known as fglrx 8.44) brings a host of new changes, mostly in the form of bug fixes. In total, there are just under a dozen noteworthy bug fixes in this release -- including addressing 3D acceleration issues on AGP graphics cards and the well-known OpenGL memory leak that was introduced with the new driver code-base. In addition, the FireGL graphics cards are now supported on this new driver code-base.

Ubuntu 8.04 Alpha 2 is due out tomorrow, and while we'll have more extensive testing as the Hardy Heron release nears in April, today we are publishing our first -- very initial -- benchmarks of Ubuntu 8.04 using the 12-19-2007 daily build and comparing these results to Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon. These tests are focused upon OpenGL gaming, encoding, disk, and memory performance.

Last month AMD introduced the ATI Radeon HD 3800 series as "enthusiast gaming performance for the masses" through the Radeon HD 3850 and Radeon HD 3870, which are both sub-$250 graphics cards. While rudimentary, the Catalyst 7.11 Linux driver (also released last month), supports these two RV670 GPUs with better support coming through the Catalyst 7.12 Linux driver this month. To see how well these two PCI Express 2.0 graphics cards are able to perform under Linux, ASUS had sent out their EAH3850 TOP and EAH3870 TOP. We have tested both of these graphics cards using Ubuntu 7.10 and have compared the results to other products using the fglrx driver, including the ATI Radeon HD 2900XT 512MB. These are the world's first Linux benchmarks of these new mainstream ATI graphics processors.

One of the special abilities of ATI's R600 GPU family is the integrated 5.1 surround sound audio support through HDMI. Many Radeon HD 2000 and HD 3800 series graphics cards also ship with a DVI to HDMI dongle, so that one can experience the full video playback capabilities of these discrete graphics cards. But what level of HDMI support can Linux users expect when using these latest ATI graphics cards? We have done some testing internally and have the initial ATI Linux HDMI video and audio results to report in this article.

The year is winding down and while we have a lot to look forward to next year, what were the greatest Linux innovations of this year? This year at Phoronix, we have published over 325 articles, with most of them being Linux hardware and graphics reviews, and that is in addition to over 700 original news entries. After spending much time in considering what the "best" and most substantial Linux gains over the year have been, we have comprised a list of what we believe are the greatest Linux innovations of 2007 along with our reasoning behind these decisions.

We discovered back in September when running the Razer Barracuda AC-1 with ALSA 1.0.15 that this sound card was quite problematic with the initial CMI8788 ALSA driver. However, last month we reported that the driver was being rewritten from scratch with a much brighter outlook. We have retested the Barracuda AC-1 with its C-Media CMI8788 Oxygen APU using the latest snd-oxygen driver, which also works with other high-end sound cards such as the ASUS Xonar and Auzentech X-Meridian.

The WINE project is going on 15 years in existence, and two years ago, it finally went into beta. Through the beta stage, there has been a consistent release about every two weeks, which often brings a fair number of improvements to this software for running Windows programs on Linux (and other operating systems). Sparked by curiosity as to how the performance of WINE is affected release by release, we have gone through and benchmarked the past seven releases. While this only represents the past four months of work by the WINE community, the results may surprise you.

Earlier this week we published benchmarks of the XRender extension using NVIDIA's latest beta Linux driver, which had a substantial performance boost thanks to Render improvements with this latest driver. One of the questions that have since come up is how ATI/AMD's binary Linux driver compares when using this X extension. Well, right now, it lags behind NVIDIA, but a Phoronix Forums member has discovered a hidden ATI Linux option that should yield XRender performance gains.

While all of the rage recently has been around Intel's X38 Express Chipset, there is still plenty of life left in Intel's P35 "Bearlake" Chipset. The Intel P35 is only a few months older, but it contains most of the same features as the flagship X38 aside from the PCI Express 2.0 support and a Hardware Memory Prefetcher. We have previously reviewed Intel P35 motherboards such as the ASUS Blitz Extreme and Gigabyte P35-DS3P, but in this review, we are going back and looking at two more of these Intel Bearlake motherboards. At hand today we have the ASUS P5K-E WiFi and Gigabyte P35-DS4 motherboards, both of which are similar in many respects and use the P35 + ICH9R combination with DDR2 memory.

Towards the middle of last month, NVIDIA had released the 169.04 Beta Linux Driver. The change-log was quite lengthy and what we had discovered while benchmarking the GeForce 8 series was that there were improvements to be found in this release and it was far more than a simple version bump. One of the reported changes for this driver release was "improved RENDER performance", and out of requests from readers and interest by the Linux desktop community at large, we have conducted XRender benchmarks using render_bench and have the NVIDIA results available today.

It was just a week ago that the RadeonHD v0.0.4 driver was released, but today it has been replaced by v1.0! RadeonHD 1.0.0 was just pushed out to the public, and while it's still lacking 3D support and isn't bug-free, it's matured quite a bit over the past two and a half months that it's been available to the public.

The first alpha release of Ubuntu 8.04 was scheduled to be released today, but the official release has been pushed back until tomorrow. However, a preliminary CD image of this first alpha release for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS has surfaced today on the Internet. While there is still seven more Ubuntu 8.04 test releases planned before the final release of Hardy Heron in April, we have already started exploring this first Hardy Heron LiveCD.

Last week Ryan "Icculus" Gordon had confirmed that the Linux client and server ports of Unreal Tournament 3 were caught up in a legal issue regarding some middleware used in this latest PC title from Epic Games. However, what is the middleware that Unreal Tournament 3 is caught up in? There is a strong possibility that it deals with the PhysX licensing from Ageia Technologies.

Back in July we looked at the Gigabyte GeForce 8600GT graphics card. This midrange GeForce 8 series graphics card came equipped with Gigabyte's Silent-Pipe II cooler, which made for a fan-free experience, while still managing to overclock quite well. In this review today we are looking at its bigger brother, which is the Gigabyte 8600GTS. In addition to using the slightly faster G86 core, the GV-NX86S256H utilizes the Silent-Pipe III cooler. Gigabyte's Silent-Pipe III is much larger than its predecessor while using two large heatpipes.

Recently there has been much talk about RandR 1.2 support with RadeonHD and Nouveau (among other drivers), and as a result we have been asked many times now "what is RandR, and why do I care?" Well, RandR is the "Resize and Rotate" extension in X.Org and the v1.2 update introduces new functionality such as dynamic hot-plugging support for display devices. To help those who may be new to Linux or just never took advantage of this X.Org technology, we have written a brief guide with some of the RandR basics.