Posted on Jan 03, 2021 by kingbeowulf
The pace of Slackware Current updates in December was incredible. Fast on the heals of KDE/Plasma 5, we have updates to Kernel 5.10 and then, just in time for Santa, Xfce-4.16. Numerous fixes and additional updates are happening throughout. Refer to the change logs for details: Slackware Change Logs
After the start of the New Year, can a Slackware 15.0 release be far behind?
Posted on Oct 10, 2020 by kingbeowulf
It is finally time to say goodbye to the MSI X99S Krait SLI build from 2014. This was my first Intel CPU build since 1999-2000. That winter I built an Athlon64 system with a Gigabyte Geforce 256DDR as more performance than what Intel offered (no 64-bit!) at a much better price.
It was shortly thereafter that I briefly switched to SLAMD64 until Slackware64 was released.
I started out with an Intel i7-5820k and 16 GB DDR4, with a Gigabyte Geforce GTX660 Windforce. Then came the EVGA GTX 1060, followed by an additional 16 GB DDR4 (I deplore empty slots...), 256 GB NVME, and the current Intel i7-6850K. When I added the new CPU I upgraded the passive CPU heatsink and fan with a Thermaltake 240mm dual fan closed loop liquid coolor (Water 3.0 pump).
When Slackware64-current added kernel 5.4.x, I temporarily blacked out and replaced the Nvidia GPU with the
** XFX Radeon RX 5700 XT THICC Ultra III **
Why? Absolutely no idea. As I said, I must have blacked out. This is a massive GPU card and barely fits in the Antec P100 case.
The bonus of a Navi class CPU on kernel 5.4 is that I can now run a full opensource amdgpu/Mesa GPU stack with OpenGL and vulkan hardware 3D accelleration. I can hardly wait to see what this PCI-express 4.0 card can do on the new GIGABYTE X570 AORUS ELITE AMD Ryzen motherboard with PCI-express 4.0
Now I just have to rip out the old Intel guts, and plug in the new AMD guts...and clean out the dust.
Posted on Dec 22, 2019 by kingbeowulf
Here are some initial Phoronix-test-suite benchmarks for the miniITX Rysen 7 with various GPUs I had on hand. For Nvidia, we used the their proprietary driver; for AMD, the open source radeon and amdgpu drivers provided in Slackware64-current kernel 5.4.2, 5.4.3, 5.4.5 (nvidia, radeon, amdgpu, resprctively - Slackware updates were fast and furious this week!).
The CPU cooler is a low profile SilverStone SST-KR01 so that the power supply would fit. Power is provided via a Rosewill HIVE 650S 650W ATX power supply. The Nvidia EVGA GTX 950 is an ITX form factor GPU; and thus, the results are with the case closed. The 2 radeon GPUs are huge and are attached via a PCI-E riser with the case open.
Phoronix Test Suite from Slackbuilds.org; stock KDE4; system and tests use default settings. For the RX590, the "HIGH" run references setting the GPU power management to "high" from the default of "auto".
Posted on Dec 15, 2019 by kingbeowulf
It was a shame to toss a perfectly good mini-ITX case (Coolermaster Elite 110), so with the assistance of a mysterious benefactor, and fellow Slackware fan, I now have the components:
Jan 03, 2021
kingbeowulf
Oct 10, 2020
kingbeowulf
Dec 22, 2019
kingbeowulf
Dec 15, 2019
kingbeowulf