Red Devil's Blog takes a look at the Omega 10 Live CD, which was released last week.

"AN interesting new Linux project was released last week. Omega 10 cuts through the old debate about free/proprietary software with a solution I am sure many will find appealing - and just as many will abhor.

But first, some background. The Fedora project is well known for its uncompromising stance on software which is patent-encumbered or proprietary: if it fits either of those definitions, it does not get into Fedora. Neither will the Fedora developers help their users include software which falls into either category.
In some ways this is an admirable, ethical stance but to those who are new to Linux in general and Fedora in particular, it seems baffling and unhelpful.

These are the people who, having taken the bold step to convert from Windows or Mac OS, find themselves unable to do all the things they previously took for granted without having to tangle with multimedia codec installations.

A similar thing happened to me in my early days of using Linux: Why was this distribution thought of so highly when I could not listen to my (legally owned) music nor view half of the things I wished to see on the internet? With Fedora 10 now at beta stage, this thorny issue has been tackled by the Red Hat community engineer behind the Fedora games and Fedora Xfce media spins, Rahul Sundaram."

>> Omega 10 Live CD Beta: Fedora With Added Multimedia

Phoronix posted a review on the Corsair DHX 4GB DDR2-800MHz memory

"It's been a while since last looking at any Corsair memory at Phoronix, but up for review this afternoon is their latest TWIN2X4096-6400C4DHX memory. This DDR2 memory features Corsair's DHX technology for cooling the memory ICs with EPP latencies of 4-4-4-12 and run at 800MHz. Like many other Corsair products, the TWIN2X4096-6400C4DHX is also backed by a lifetime warranty."

>> Corsair DHX 4GB DDR2-800MHz Review

TechieMoe.com posted a review on Sabayon Linux 3.5

"Sabayon has been an interesting distribution in the past. Their emphasis on including games, 3D drivers, and multimedia support out of the box has endeared them to me.

However I've never actually chosen to use the distribution regularly, opting instead to play with the live games from time to time.

While searching for a different kind of distribution to throw on Rig 4, Sabayon 3.5 came up. Given my pleasant past experiences I decided to give it a try."

>> Sabayon Linux 3.5 Review

Phoronix takes a look at the Intel Atom Disk Encryption Performance under Ubuntu Linux

"While the ASUS Eee PC 901 doesn't have its solid-state disk drives encrypted by default, if you are storing any potentially sensitive information on this netbook -- or any mobile device for that matter -- you really should encrypt the data. When you lose a mobile device or it has been stolen, it can be a nightmare if your banking information was stored on there or even just passwords to your Internet accounts. However, what is theperformance cost for fully encrypting a hard drive on one of these Intel Atom computers? In this article we are looking at the performance impact of fully encrypting the solid-state storage versus an unencrypted LVM within Ubuntu Linux."

>> Intel Atom Disk Encryption Performance

Phoronix compared the performance of the open-source Mesa 3D stack and Catalyst Linux Suite with the fglrx driver on the ATI R500

"With Mesa 7.1 having been released this week and the open-source R600/770 3D support just around the corner, we've taken this opportunity to see how the open-source Mesa 3D stack compares to AMD's monthly-refined Catalyst Linux Suite with the fglrx driver performs for the Radeon X1000 (R500) series. In this article are Mesa 7.1 and Catalyst 8.8 benchmarks for the Radeon X1300PRO and X1800XL graphics cards."

>> ATI R500: Mesa vs. Catalyst Benchmarking

MadPenguin.org posted a review on Wine-Doors for Linux

"I have been using Wine (WINE) or various implementations of it (Crossover Office and Cedega) for a few years now. What is funny is that I often had more success with Wine proper than I did with the various offshoot products. Go figure! So when I learned this issue..."

>> Wine-Doors for Linux Reviewed

Phoronix tested the AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 on Linux

"While details on AMD's high-end ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics card began surfacing last month, today this dual-GPU graphics card has formally launched and will begin shipping to retailers. The good news this time around is that this graphics card will actually be something worth looking at under Linux now that there's the needed CrossFire support on the horizon. We're not yet permitted to publish the Linux CrossFire benchmarks, but today we have a few pieces of information to share about the Radeon HD 4870 X2 on Linux."

>> AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 On Linux

Phoronix takes a look at the ECS GF8200A Black & ASRock K10N78FullHD-hSLI running under Linux

"Back in April we had looked at the ECS A780GM-A, which was a nice low-cost motherboard and had worked well under Linux with the newer desktop distributions. This motherboard had integrated Radeon HD 3200 graphics, which we had found to perform well and equivalent to a Radeon HD 2400PRO discrete graphics card. However, for those interested in NVIDIA graphics, there is the GeForce 8200 IGP that also performs well on Linux. If you are interested in the GeForce 8200 chipset, today we are looking at two of the cost-effective motherboards deploying this chipset: the ECS GF8200A Black and ASRock K10N78FullHD-hSLI."

>> ECS GF8200A Black & ASRock K10N78FullHD-hSLI Review

Phoronix checked out the ATI Radeon HD 4870 on Linux

"A week ago we looked at the brand-new ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics card under Linux. This graphics card launch was unlike any in ATI's history where with the introduction of a brand new product generation, Linux users were greeted by same-day Linux support -- both through their proprietary fglrx driver and with the open-source xf86-video-ati driver. In addition, some of the board partners are opting to put Tux on their product packaging and shipping the Linux drivers on their product CDs. As we had also exclusively shared, AMD will soon be approaching a feature parity between the Windows and Linux drivers. Today we're publishing our complete review of the new ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB as well as delivering additional benchmarks from the Radeon HD 4850 under Linux, of course."

>> ATI Radeon HD 4870 On Linux

Phoronix takes a look at Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Linux Performance

"Back in March we had looked at the Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 mobile processor with its Penryn core and 6MB of shared L2 cache between its two cores clocked at 2.50GHz. We were very pleased with the performance of this mobile processor on Linux, which was found within a Lenovo ThinkPad T61 notebook, and today we are looking at the Penryn's desktop counterpart. Intel's Core 2 Duo "Wolfdale" E8000 series processors were released earlier this year with 6MB of L2 cache, 45nm manufacturing, a 1333MHz FSB, and support for SSE 4.1. The processor from the Wolfdale series we are looking at today under Linux is the Core 2 Duo E8400."

>> Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Linux Performance

Tux Machines posted a quick comparison review between Mandriva and openSUSE

"Last fall when the two mega-distros openSUSE and Mandriva both hit the mirrors, it was difficult to decide which I liked better. In an attempt to narrow it down, I ran some light-hearted tests and found Mandriva won out in a side-by-side comparison. But things change rapidly in the Linux world and I wondered how a competition of the newest releases would come out. Mandriva 2008.1 was released this past April and openSUSE 11.0 was released just last week.

My history with Mandriva goes back eight years. It was the first Linux distribution I was able to make work and paved my way to freedom. openSUSE swept me off my feet when 10.0 was in development and I've followed it closely since. I like both of these distros very much and as this article will show, it is very difficult to pick a favorite. But lets try:

Welcome to our grudge match - In the blue corner weighing in at 4.4 GB, defending champion Mandriva 2008.1 Spring. In the green corner weighing in at 4.3 GB is our returning challenger openSUSE 11.0."

>> Battle of the Titans - Mandriva vs openSUSE: The Rematch

Slashgear posted a review on the ASUS Eee PC 901 Linux Edition

"If the ASUS Eee 900 basically amounted to a larger-screened version of the 7-inch original, then the Eee 901 marks its graduation into a distinct model. Packing Intel’s latest 1.6GHz Atom N270 processor, in place of the 900’s Celeron 900MHz, ASUS could reasonably have left the rest of the notebook the same and simply added a little to the price. Thankfully they’ve subjected the 901 to a mild degree of fettling, tweaking case and controls and making for a markedly more attractive proposition. ASUS sent over the Windows version of the 901; check out what exactly impressed us after the cut."

>> ASUS Eee PC 901 Linux Edition Review

Dietrich T. Schmitz posted a review on the 64-bit version of openSUSE 11.0

"I have finished setting up openSUSE 11.0 on my HP dv2000z AMD Turion64 X2. Up to version 10.3 I was running the 32-bit version of SUSE and decided now was a good time to do a 'New' install and give x86_64 a spin."

>> openSUSE 11.0 x86_64 Review

Phoronix tested the NVIDIA GeForce 8200 IGP under Linux

"Back in March we had looked at the Radeon HD 3200 graphics found on AMD 780G motherboards. With the Catalyst Linux driver the Radeon HD 3200 had performed about the same speed as the discrete Radeon HD 2400PRO graphics card, which we were quite pleased with considering its integrated and low-power design. The Radeon HD 3200 also offers support for DisplayPort and HDMI, but it's up to the motherboard vendor which output connections they wish to utilize. The Radeon HD 3200 / 780G certainly impressed us, but today we are looking at NVIDIA's latest IGP offering for AMD's Phenom platform. While not all of these features are available to Linux customers, the GeForce 8200 supports DirectX 10, PureVideo HD, GeForce Boost, Hybrid SLI, and other leading edge features. Though between the Radeon HD 3200 and GeForce 8200, which IGP offering reigns supreme under Linux? In this article we'll tell you our thoughts."

>> NVIDIA GeForce 8200 IGP Review

Pinguinway published a review on Damn Small Linux 4.4

"DSL 4.4 was just released on June 9th, so this past weekend I installed it on my Compaq Deskpro Pentium III 800 Mhz machine. It only has 256 megs of RAM, so a lightweight distribution like DSL is a good choice for it. Their site claims you can run DSL 486 DX with 16 megs of RAM, so even this old Compaq should fly with what it’s got. A link to the release notes is here.

DSL is an incredibly small distribution, hence the name. According to their site it started as an experiement to see how many useful applications they could fit on a 50 megabyte live CD. Even though DSL is a live CD, you still have option of installing to a hard drive or a USB pen drive. They even have an installation that lets you run DSL using QEMU on a Windows host machine. I chose to install DSL to my hard drive using the frugal install. This creates a Grub menu for you and puts the compressed DSL CD image onto your hard drive. I found it cut the boot time to about 1/3 what is was with the CD."

>> Damn Small Linux 4.4 Review

OSWeekly.com posted a review on PCLinuxOS GNOME

"Everyone is familiar with PCLinuxOS by now. And most of us have preconceived thoughts and opinions on this Linux distribution. And yet, I could not get my head around the attraction of this distro over Ubuntu, Simply Mepis, Linux Mint, Freespire or any other beginner-friendly Linux release. I mean, yes, PCLinuxOS is very polished and attractive. It takes the best that Mandriva has to offer and then adds to it with features its developers felt like were lacking in Mandriva itself."

>> PCLinuxOS GNOME Review

Phoronix posted a comparison review running the AMD FireGL V8600 under Linux and Windows

"We've published a great deal of benchmarks looking at the Linux "fglrx" driver (now more commonly referred to as the Linux Catalyst driver) since these major changes were pushed into the limelight this past fall. In fact, since this past September we've published more than 80 display driver articles with many of them being AMD related, and that's in addition to nearly a dozen graphics card reviews. On the AMD side, all of our testing has been done with the consumer-grade Radeon GPUs and IGPs, but that has changed today. In this article, we are providing our first look at the AMD FireGL V8600 1GB under Linux. We'll share our thoughts on this high-end workstation graphics card and specifically looking at how the Windows and Linux performance compares."

>> AMD FireGL V8600: Linux vs. Windows

MadPenguin.org posted a quick review on PCMan and Specto

"It’s rare these days that any one program gets me really excited, as I always feel like I have seen it all. Today, however, I believe I have come upon software concepts that have a lot of potential. Both are very different from one another, yet each is very strong in function in their own way."

>> PCMan, Specto Reviewed for Linux

Phoronix posted a review on the Tyan Thunder n3600M

"Two months ago we had looked at the Tyan Tempest i5400XT motherboard, which was Tyan's latest product based upon Intel's newest workstation chipset and had support for dual Intel Xeon quad-core processors. We found the Tempest i5400XT to be a real winner and everything had worked terrific with Linux. Today we are looking at another Tyan workstation motherboard but the tides have turned as we look at their latest AMD dual quad-core solution, the Tyan Thunder n3600M. The Thunder n3600M motherboard supports dual AMD "Barcelona" Opteron processors, 16 sticks of DDR2 RAM, and eight SAS ports, among other stunning features."

>> Tyan Thunder n3600M Review

Phoronix compared 4GB SDHC Memory Cards from OCZ and Crucial

"Have you been searching for a Secure Digital card that is able to accommodate all of the pictures you take on your next vacation or looking for more storage on your Internet tablet? If so, you have likely come across the latest Secure Digital High Capacity cards that overcome the earlier 2GB capacity limitation of traditional Secure Digital cards. However, there are just so many SDHC cards on the market and they are all priced similarly from different manufacturers, so what should you choose? At hand today in this weekend review are two 4GB SDHC cards from OCZ and Crucial."

>> 4GB SDHC Memory Cards: OCZ vs. Crucial