Hardware stress testing with Linux

Totally Stressed

© Lead Image © bowie15, 123RF.com

© Lead Image © bowie15, 123RF.com

Article from Issue 155/2013
Author(s):

StressLinux helps you optimize your hardware and eke out more performance from individual components.

Linux is a flexible and universal operating system because of many positive properties. One of its less well-known applications, however, is as a hardware diagnostics tool.

For functional and performance tests, many people still tend to rely on expensive special solutions running on other operating systems, but the small StressLinux Live distribution lets you test your system's capabilities without the complex handling and high costs of other tools.

Based on openSUSE 11.4 and BusyBox, StressLinux [1] is available as a 200MB, or 225MB ISO image for 64-bit and 32-bit architectures. Alternative versions are available for use with USB storage media or in a virtual machine. You can find easily understandable documentation for creating a bootable medium at the project website [2].

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