PTS Desktop Live

# PTS Desktop Live 2010.1 "Anzhofen"

PTS Desktop Live and PTS Netbook Live are Linux-based operating systems designed to provide a free software platform for carrying out system tests and hardware benchmarks in an automated, reproducible, and effective manner. The Phoronix Test Suite operating systems are designed around the Phoronix Test Suite with the operating system itself consisting of a stripped down Linux environment, then built upon that is the Phoronix Test Suite with its test profiles and suites. This is not a standard Linux desktop with the normal throng of packages.

Testing with PTS Desktop Live is intended to be via a Live DVD or Live USB (i.e. flash drive or memory card) environment. PTS Netbook Live is similar to PTS Desktop Live but designed for testing on lightweight x86 systems and netbooks. Both PTS Desktop Live and PTS Netbook Live make it very easy to deploy the Phoronix Test Suite across an array of systems, isolates any software differences when seeking to perform hardware comparisons, and is designed to be very easy to carry out these Linux benchmarks even for a first-time Linux user.

The inaugural release of this operating system was PTS Desktop Live 2009.3 (codenamed "Gernlinden") and was based upon the Phoronix Test Suite 2.0 release. The Gernlinden release shipped with more than 50 open-source test profiles and all needed files being located on the disc image. PTS Desktop Live uses the GTK2 GUI dialog for the Phoronix Test Suite by default, but the CLI options are also accessible. PTS Desktop Live also features optimizations to the Linux kernel and related components for use on the latest high-end hardware and other performance related tweaking. PTS Netbook Live features optimizations for the Intel Atom processor.

The mission of the Phoronix Test Suite and related products will not be achieved until it has made Linux benchmarking incredibly robust and innovative, drop dead easy to perform nearly any kind of benchmark, and when it out-paces other leading operating systems for its benchmarking abilities. These operating systems are being updated quarterly in conjunction with new Phoronix Test Suite releases. The Phoronix Test Suite will continue to be supported under all other Linux distributions, OpenSolaris, Mac OS X, Windows, and *BSD operating systems, but this is just another addition on top of that.

PTS Desktop Live is designed to run on x86_64 compatible systems with 2GB or more of system memory (ideally 4GB+ if you wish to run many of the tests in a live environment) being highly recommended along with a modern CPU and graphics processor. No proprietary graphics drivers are shipped with PTS Desktop Live at this time, so depending upon the hardware you may not have OpenGL acceleration to run the few graphics-related tests that are included with this release. Only graphics drivers are provided for ATI/AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel hardware. An Internet connection is not required but is needed for communication with OpenBenchmarking.org and for utilizing some of the other Phoronix Test Suite features.

PTS Netbook Live is designed for netbooks and nettop computers with an Intel Atom processor.

## Quick Start Guide

When the operating system has fully booted, the end-user agreement for the Phoronix Test Suite will be displayed, followed by initializing the main GTK user interface for the Phoronix Test Suite. The Phoronix Test Suite has more than 100 test profiles while there are about 50 test profiles featured within live environment, which are free software, do not pose significant install size problems, and are suitable for benchmarking from a live environment. By default, PTS Desktop Live and PTS Netbook Live will only show the test profiles and suites where all of the needed test files and dependencies ship with this open-source operating system. However, to access any of the test profiles that may require downloading additional files or external dependencies, use the View menu to toggle the different options. The system's hardware and software information can also be viewed in a graphical window from this menu.

From the Available Tests tab, any test/suite can be selected to view more information. If you wish to install the test, simply click on the install button while waiting shortly for it to install. Afterwards, the test can be run by selecting it again and clicking on the run/benchmark button. If you have a OpenBenchmarking.org account, you can login from the File menu while Phoronix Test Suite settings are adjustable from the Edit menu.

When the testing has completed, the graphical user interface will reappear. Via the buttons that appear at the top of the interface, the test results can then be opened within the web browser. Depending upon the test profile, it may also be possible to immediately compare the test result(s) against a set of reference systems. If the completed test(s) do have reference results available, a list of the comparable systems are shown, so that you can click on one or more of these reference systems to see how the given system performs in comparison. Results from OpenBenchmarking.org can also be compared with any of the test results.

Assuming you did not launch any commands from the terminal to alter the disk(s) or its contents or carry out any other changes; PTS Desktop Live will have not touched your data or the installed operating system(s). If you wish to archive any of your test results, upload the results to OpenBenchmarking.org. Alternatively, when going to the Test Results tab and selecting a test, the File menu presents options for exporting results to text, CSV, and PDF files. The contents of the ~/.phoronix-test-suite/test-results/ folder can also be backed up for preserving the test results.

If you wish to use the Phoronix Test Suite from the command-line, open a terminal and run phoronix-test-suite.