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December 01, 2008 -- We previously had looked at the ATI Radeon HD 4550 and Radeon HD 4670, but if you are looking for a graphics card that's positioned between the two and costs less, there is the Radeon HD 4650. The Radeon HD 4650 is clocked the same as the Radeon HD 4550, but is based upon the RV730PRO GPU and is able to provide a bit more processing power than the lesser RV710 solution. Sapphire though manufactures a Radeon HD 4650 graphics card that operates well beyond the reference core and memory frequencies for the RV730PRO and sells it at a very affordable price. In this article we are seeing how well the Sapphire Radeon HD 4650 512MB OC graphics card can perform under Linux.

November 28, 2008 -- Earlier this year we shared that Valve's Source Engine is coming to Linux after receiving some information that pointed in this direction. In addition, a year ago Valve Software was publicly looking for a senior software engineer to port Windows-based games to Linux platform. There have long been rumors and hopes among Linux users that Steam games would become natively available for Linux, but we have additional confirmation that Valve Software has ported their Steam game client to Linux. In Valve's most recent title, Left 4 Dead, there are shared Linux libraries shipping alongside this Windows game client.

November 28, 2008 -- With Fedora 10 finally entering the world earlier this week, we have performed benchmarks comparing the performance of Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 10. In our testing we used both the 32-bit and 64-bit builds of each distribution and then ran a series of automated tests through the Phoronix Test Suite.

November 27, 2008 -- With the holidays quickly approaching, if you are looking for a new 802.11g wireless router to connect a few more gadgets to your network but not looking for something expensive, you may be interested in the NetGear WGR614 Wireless-G Router. This wireless router with four 10/100MB Ethernet ports is fairly basic when it comes to its feature set, but from our testing we've found this router that sells well below $50 USD to be quite reliable for home use.

November 26, 2008 -- The KDE development community has banded together and today released an early Christmas present to those using the K Desktop Environment on Linux and other operating systems. The first beta release of KDE 4.2 is now available. KDE 4.2 Beta 1 features a large number of improvements since the release of KDE 4.1 in July.

November 25, 2008 -- Following several months in development, Red Hat has just released Fedora 10 (codenamed Cambridge). A number of new Red Hat innovations can be found in this release, such as Plymouth, and there are many updated packages such as those from X.Org and the Linux kernel. In this article are some screenshots from Fedora 10 final along with some of the other features that make up the tenth release of this very popular Linux distribution.

November 24, 2008 -- Over the past few weeks we have been providing several in-depth articles looking at the performance of Ubuntu Linux. We had begun by providing Ubuntu 7.04 to 8.10 benchmarks and had found the performance of this popular Linux distribution to become slower with time and that article was followed up with Mac OS X 10.5 vs. Ubuntu 8.10 benchmarks and other articles looking at the state of Ubuntu's performance. In this article, we are now comparing the 64-bit performance of Ubuntu 8.10 against the latest test releases of OpenSolaris 2008.11 and FreeBSD 7.1.

November 22, 2008 -- It's arriving two days late, but the first alpha release for Ubuntu 9.04 is now available. While there are some updated packages, to the normal desktop user there really isn't much to note in the way of changes. However, to learn more about the features that will be introduced in future development releases of Ubuntu 9.04, checkout our Exciting Features For Ubuntu 9.04 article.

November 22, 2008 -- A few months back we had looked at the OCZ Alchemy Elixir Keyboard, which was designed for gamers and was built quite nicely, but it had fallen short when it came to the multimedia keys working under Linux. Though if you are looking for an advanced keyboard that works quite well with Linux, you may want to check out the Logitech G15, which works under Linux and even with its small LCD display.

November 20, 2008 -- Earlier this year VIA announced they wanted to join the open-source bandwagon by establishing an open-source driver development initiative, releasing documentation and source-code, and to better engage with the Linux community at large. They have made a few small steps over the past few months, but today they have made their largest open-source contribution yet by releasing four programming documentation guides that cover the video, 2D, and 3D programming for their Chrome 9 graphics processor. In addition, they are now partnering with the community-spawned OpenChrome developers.

November 19, 2008 -- If all goes according to plan, the first alpha release for Ubuntu 9.04 (the Jaunty Jackalope) will be released tomorrow. It's not even been one month since the release of Ubuntu 8.10, but this first alpha release will show early signs of what we can expect to see in this next Canonical-sponsored release -- albeit many of the features are still in planning. In this article we will provide a glimpse at what Ubuntu 9.04 should hold in store to captivate Linux desktop users.

November 18, 2008 -- For Linux desktop users interested in a mid-range discrete graphics card there are more choices than ever before with NVIDIA continuing to release new stable Linux drivers as they have done for many years while AMD this year has been making evolutionary leaps compared to their earlier state. AMD is now providing same-day support with all new products, CrossFire on Linux, OverDrive, and many other recently introduced features. NVIDIA and AMD are nearly at a feature parity and even in the past two months they both released new video APIs for Linux (PureVideo / VDPAU and X-Video Bitstream Acceleration, respectively) and they are now battling it out on Linux over performance. We recently looked at AMD's new ATI Radeon HD 4830 mid-range graphics card, but in this article we are comparing it to the NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT, courtesy of Micro-Star International.

November 17, 2008 -- It has been a while since last looking at a Thermaltake chassis at Phoronix, but today we have our hands on the Spedo Advance Chassis. This full tower chassis is made of SECC steel and has seven 5.25" drive bays, but perhaps what is more unique is its dual 230mm fans, 140mm fan, and three 120mm fans (with room for another two). In addition, the Spedo Advance Chassis has an Advance Thermal Chamber 3, Cable Routing Management 3, an HDD relocation canister, and other features designed to satisfy the needs of the most stringent gamers and computer enthusiasts.

November 17, 2008 -- Last year we hosted our first annual Linux Graphics Survey as really the only study that's been done to get a better understanding what the Linux community is using in their computers to fulfill their graphics needs, what their key interests are, and where they are looking for improvements. We're hosting this survey once again so we ask that between now and December 15 you take a few minutes to vote in the 2008 Linux graphics survey.

November 14, 2008 -- Earlier today we shared that NVIDIA is bringing PureVideo features to Linux through a major update in their binary display driver. The NVIDIA 180.06 driver adds VDPAU support on Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD operating systems, with VDPAU being a set of APIs designed by NVIDIA to accelerate video decoding, provide post-processing capabilities, timstamp-based presentation of video frames, and compositing of sub-picture elements. We have now had the time to benchmark the Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix and have seen the benefits of PureVideo features finally arriving on alternative platforms.