Bonum Certa Men Certa

Guest Article: Michael Larabel at Phoronix is Getting Desperate With the Daily Spam

Guest post by Ryan, reprinted with permission from the original

Summary: Today, Ryan takes a look at Phoronix benchmarks that served to embolden many Microsoft-connected sites which proudly herald Vista 11 is a lot better/faster than "Linux" (we saw many such articles, citing Phoronix); the problem is, Phoronix is comparing apples to oranges (or crude code/misconfigured kernel to a final release), as people already point out in the comments, so this is misleading to say the least and it is part of a pattern which worries us

Phoronix has been a joyless cash grab for a while, but is getting worse.





Not only has Michael Larabel been posting many articles about Windows or Microsoft which aren’t GNU/Linux-related in the slightest and are not of interest to people who want genuine news, but now he resorts to just plain old shitposting.





Moments ago, he declared that Intel’s Alder Lake CPUs have a major performance issue on Linux 5.16.





What’s the problem? There is no Linux 5.16!





Linux 5.15 was released today, and in the article he mentions he tested 5.16-rc1, which no distribution is pushing to their users, and few people other than kernel developers would ever try to compile and run.





In the headline, which I won’t link to, he doesn’t mention that it’s an rc (release candidate) kernel at all. He makes it sound like the sky is falling in on a stable kernel that someone is using in production.





It’s not uncommon, or anything to be alarmed about, that a kernel at this very early stage, might have a bug like this. There’s usually 6-8 release candidates before a stable kernel series goes out, and a week or so passes between them.





Look, I hate Intel as much as anyone, but AMD got caught up in this as well, and it will be fixed before you ever see the 5.16 kernel.





In #techrights we’re starting to call him MicroLarabel because of all of the Microsoft posts.





He has no credibility anymore.





Years ago, I used to read Phoronix because it was always mildly interesting, but now I barely skim over it. This is one example of why.





Another is the Microsoft shitposting.





Another, is if you go in without an ad blocker for whatever reason, you’ll have about 1×1 of screen left and won’t be able to read it anyway.





We live in a world where the US CDC has to warn people not to put condoms in a dishwasher, so even though it goes without saying, don’t put too much faith in Phoronix.





Some people, in the comments, act like this guy is contributing to Linux with his self-serving articles that are just vehicles for ads and Microsoft puff pieces.



Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 04/10/2023: "Looney Tunables" FUD and Kevin McCarthy Ousted
Links for the day
Windows Defender Flags Tor Browser as “Trojan Horse” Malware
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Sensationalist Clickbait Called 'Looney Tunables' to Badmouth Linux (It's Not Even Linux)
FUD attack
Links 04/10/2023: Murena 2 with /e/OS and More
Links for the day
Links 04/10/2023: KDE Promo Sprint and More
Links for the day
Clown Computing Means Security/Data Breaches, Not Just the Outsourcing Itself (They Get Cracked, Too!)
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Over at Tux Machines...
yesterday's posts
mp3HD: Another Patent Trolls' Patent Trap That Failed
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 03, 2023
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 03, 2023
"Modern" Computing Sucks and Harms Computer Users
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Red Windows
Red Hat is not into Free software
Richard Stallman Giving Talks in the Czech Republic and Germany This Week (Tomorrow's Talk is "Artificial Intelligence vs Language Models")
This past weekend he gave two talks in the Czech Republic
Companies Faking the True Number of Layoffs With Return-to-Office Mandates and Forced Relocation
we estimate that Microsoft cut about 30,000 so far this year, having cut many more jobs last year
Links 03/10/2023: Cellphones (Mobile Phones) Banned in Classrooms in England
Links for the day
Greener Pastures for Free Software Users
This coming week we'll publish many articles about GNU/Linux and technical means of/for user empowerment
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 02, 2023
IRC logs for Monday, October 02, 2023
Google News, Which We Call Gulag Noise, is Following the New York Times Into the Digital Graveyard
It merely gives an illusion of volume and instead of giving readers more stuff to read it wastes people's time
Daily Bulletins Coming Soon (Hopefully as Early as Next Week)
Today we finish testing IRC logs and their upload to Gemini, not just to IPFS
Over at Tux Machines...
yesterday's posts
Software Freedom is the Future and Microsoft is the Biggest Obstacle
GNU/Linux, at its roots, was all about Software Freedom
Links 02/10/2023: NUC, GTK Themes, and More
Links for the day
New Union Syndicale Articles About the European Patent Office
We'll probably get back to regularly writing about the EPO in the near future
If WordPress Knows Well Enough to Self-Host Its Podcast, Why Can't GNU/Linux Shows Do the Same?
For those who want videos and podcasts, here are today's latest additions from other sites
Richard Stallman Can Outlive Many of His Prominent Haters
M.J.G. tried hard to take our Web site offline, based on lies and repeated threats
The GNU/Linux Revolution Ain't Here. Look at Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) Instead.
The revolution won't be televised
Chaffbot Effect: Microsoft Bing Falls to Lowest Share in Two Years (Amid Loads of Bing Layoffs This Year)
Press outlets mostly failed to report that Bing is collapsing
Forget VSCode (Microsoft's Proprietary Spyware), Use KATE Instead
KATE is great
Sometimes It's Time to Reboot
No, not Android. KDE.
GNU/Linux Distributions as "Appliances" and DRM Platforms (the Case of ChromeOS and SteamOS)
Is this what we envisioned in the 1980s and 90s?
Fulfilling the Site's Full Potential
We remain devoted to the aforementioned goal of posting more original material
Over at Tux Machines...
2 days' worth
Upcoming Talk by Dr. Richard Stallman: Large Language Models Are Not Artificial Intelligence
LLMs aren't truly intelligent and cannot quite grasp what they spew out
GulagTube is a Burning Platform (Exit YouTube, Invidious Won't Save Us From Google/Alphabet in the Long Run)
Alphabet Agency (Google) sees the future of video as a "skinnerbox" (running Android) that indoctrinates you like TikTok does
Microsoft's Demise in the Global News Cycle is Rather Telling
It should be noted that Microsoft is, in general, no longer prominent or dominant in news headlines
Gemini Migration and Backup Capsule (Archive)
At the end we'll end up with something a lot better than before and latency should be massively reduced
Links 01/10/2023: Science, Education, and pro-Russia Slovakia Leadership
Links for the day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 01, 2023
IRC logs for Sunday, October 01, 2023