Yesterday we shared that S3 Graphics launched their Chrome 500 Series graphics cards, with the initial model being a sub-$50 USD OpenGL 3.0 capable solution. It's no power workhorse, but in the press release they shared: "Today's users will now be able to enjoy the latest Blu-ray playback, streaming HD video, DirectX 10.1, and OpenGL 3.0 applications on Microsoft Windows and Linux platforms." As we shared in the article yesterday, the last Linux driver from S3 Graphics was released last year and it's riddled with limitations...

WINE 1.1.9 has been released this morning and it arrives with a few interesting changes. This development release brings a large number of regression test fixes, performance improvements in memory management, improved POP3 support in inetcomm, an initial implementation of the XInput DLL, and various bug fixes...

Work on the Linux 2.6.28 kernel is winding down and yesterday afternoon Linus Torvalds made available the sixth release candidate in this series. The Linux 2.6.28-rc6 kernel has a few architecture and file-system updates, but really the change-log is just made up of minor regressions and fixes. The release announcement for the Linux 2.6.28-rc6 kernel can be read here...

Fedora 10 isn't even being released until next week, but five features have already been approved for Fedora 11 and a release schedule has been put in motion. FESCo, or the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee, convened yesterday and approved the Fedora 11 release schedule (though it's likely to change as with all past releases) and approved five of the proposed Fedora features. The five features that are marked to be introduced in Fedora 11 include DeviceKit integration, improved volume controls, Windows cross-compiler support, Presto plug-in integration, and simple support for setting up a multi-seat system. DeviceKit is a system -- still actively in development -- that can enumerate devices, create signals when certain devices are added or removed, provides the ability to merge device information / quirks onto the devices, and is able to replace some areas of HAL...

Following VIA's press release this morning that they released 2D/3D/video documentation and have joined forces with OpenChrome, Xavier Bachelot has notified the OpenChrome users of what's taking place and he has provided the developers with a TODO list of items they wish to accomplish. In a message to OpenChrome users, Xavier shares that some of the OpenChrome developers are now under NDA with VIA Technologies (read: not all documentation will be in the public domain), they are working on 3D support for the Chrome 9 series IGP, and they are working on bringing some of the features found within VIA's open-sourced driver (xf86-video-via) into the OpenChrome code-base. In a message to OpenChrome developers, Xavier detailed what he believes should be the TODO list going forward for the OpenChrome driver. The items of high priority include support for the VIA VX800 ASIC, DVI support (integrated TMDS), improved integrated and hardwired LVDS support, and dual-head support...

In addition to VIA announcing a register documentation drop and driver partnership, S3 Graphics, which is a VIA Technologies joint venture company, has announced a new graphics card. Earlier this year S3 announced the Chrome 440 GTX, but today's press release christens the Chrome 500 series...

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.

Egbert Eich has announced this morning on the RadeonHD mailing list that rotation support has been added to this open-source ATI R500+ driver. This is a feature requested by many to be able to rotate the screen using RandR with the xf86-video-radeonhd driver, which is now possible...

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.

It was one year ago to the day that Unreal Tournament 3 had shipped in North America. This title created by Epic Games was originally supposed to come with the Linux binaries on the game's DVD but that didn't happen and the UT3 Linux server arrived a month late...

In addition to being responsible for Multi-Pointer X, Peter Hutterer has also been working a fair bit on the evdev driver as of late. Evdev is the generic X.Org input driver and in the most recent release that occurred yesterday it has picked up a few new key features. The xf86-input-evdev 2.1 driver has added support for axis inversion, touchscreen support, runtime calibration for absolute devices, axis swapping, mouse wheel emulation, and drag lock...

It's taken an eternity (well, to the Linux community that has been eagerly awaiting code and documentation since very early this year when it was first promised), but it looks like the open-source 3D support for the ATI R600/700 (Radeon HD 2000 through Radeon HD 4000 series) graphics processors may finally be coming soon! Back in February around the time of FOSDEM, AMD had released the R500 3D programming documentation that allowed the open-source community to achieve initial OpenGL R500 acceleration just a month later. At that time we were told the R600 3D documentation should be out in roughly a month, but that never ended up materializing. Since then we've been told the open-source R600 3D is their leading focus and that they're working to provide the needed documentation or source-code (either a straight-up Mesa implementation or internal AMD software projects like TCore and KGrids), but due to their limited staff and being burdened with intellectual property issues, it's been a slow process to say the least. In late June there was an initial R600 Direct Rendering Manager, but it was without any 3D support, and then earlier this month we found out that they're close with their R600 DRI support...

Red Hat's Matthew Garrett has chronicled his AtomBIOS hacking adventures on his blog that has led to aggressive power management capabilities. By using an AtomBIOS program written by Jerome Glisse to manipulate the clock frequencies, the previously-published R500 documentation, and coding, and he managed to save 10 Watts of power with a Radeon X1300...

Less than a week after releasing the NVIDIA 180.06 Linux display driver, NVIDIA has released a new set of beta drivers for their supported alternative operating systems. NVIDIA has released the 180.08 driver, which adds in OpenGL 3.0 support and contains fixes for their new video acceleration API. Late last month NVIDIA had released a beta OpenGL 3.0 Linux driver that was based upon an earlier code branch, but the 180.06 release was missing this support for OpenGL 3.0 and GLSL 1.30...

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.

This news is coming a few days late, but the ALSA project has quietly released ALSA 1.0.18a as a minor update to its collection of sound drivers for Linux. This isn't a major update but a collection of updates on top of ALSA 1.0.18 final...

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.

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.

Since acquiring Macromedia, Adobe has improved its Flash Player for Linux quite a bit in recent times with the Linux version of Flash being updated in sync with the Windows and Mac OS X versions. For instance, development of Flash Player 10 led to several public alpha and beta releases that brought a number of new features to this platform...

Development on the Linux 2.6.28 kernel is slowly winding down and as a sign of that, Linus Torvalds has released Linux 2.6.28-rc5. The changes in this release are scattered across the board in the form of fixes and documentation work...