Slashdot Mirror
Is Ubuntu Getting Slower?
An anonymous reader writes "Phoronix has a new article where they provide Ubuntu 7.04, 7.10, 8.04, and 8.10 benchmarks and had ran many tests. In that article, when using an Intel notebook they witness major slowdowns in different areas and ask the question, Is Ubuntu getting slower? From the article: 'A number of significant kernel changes had went on between these Ubuntu Linux releases including the Completely Fair Scheduler, the SLUB allocator, tickless kernel support, etc. We had also repeated many of these tests to confirm we were not experiencing a performance fluke or other issue (even though the Phoronix Test Suite carries out each test in a completely automated and repeatable fashion) but nothing had changed. Ubuntu 7.04 was certainly the Feisty Fawn for performance, but based upon these results perhaps it would be better to call Ubuntu 7.10 the Gooey Gibbon, 8.04 the Hungover Heron, and 8.10 the Idling Ibex.'"
Why should I read this FA if the author apparently didn't finish high school?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Let's see how that statement works in this situation:
It shouldn't be getting slower, but then again, performance isn't the reason Vista exists.
If you really want performance, run FreeDOS. Otherwise, shut up and get used to progress.
Your laptop IS, on the other hand, getting OLDER, and while your hardware might not be changing the requirements put upon hardware are.
Complete bullshit article, doesn't offer any useful information beyond a completely obvious conclusion -- the more features that are added to a given piece of software, the higher the demands on your PC. The only reason they've turned this into an "Ubuntu is getting slower" argument is precisely so that they can start debates like these and drag more people onto their ad laden site.
Not a lot different from the tactics that Slashdot has been using for years, really.
Ohhh! BURN!
Were they testing each distribution on exactly the same hardware?
If so, that sounds completely fair to me that it would be slower. Go and (try to) install Vista on a machine that originally came with XP (pre-SP1) and see how much slower it is. Is that a fair test either? I think not.
As software gets more useful (and Ubuntu has, Vista not so much) it gets bigger and thus gets slower on the same hardware. Hardware advances at the same time though, so in real terms they keep about equal. When you test new software on old hardware of course it's going to be slower though.
It's nice to see that the Ubuntu fanboys have moved so quickly to 'shut up and like it'.
It took Windows fanboys a decade to get there...
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
See, there's this thing called an analogy. It's kinda like a car...
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Because Ubuntu uses generic kernel builds and starts up unneeded shit at boot time. You also have frontend apps for a lot of apps that don't really need it - that can explain the reason the memory is being eaten up. Suggestions? Learn how to compile a kernel, or use a distribution that doesn't have a list of memory eating apps specific to itself, like Slackware for example. I've never had issues with it, and I've gotten the kernel to finish booting in 6-7 seconds with only the device support and services i only need.
Yeah I know - all these new Linux users don't like Slackware. It's so.. Linux like, and not Windows like. Perhaps Ubuntu can work on optimization and take care of the problem.
"That's quick" was the phrase my girlfriend after an update of Debian Sid to include KDE 4.1 and OpenOffice.org 3.0 from Experimental. "Wish my slow machine at work was this quick".
You don't have to guess what OS she is using there...
Anyhow, once you replace 3.5.x with KDE 4.1 you will notice a difference. At least I did. (No, I didn't read the article first... Bad boy.)
Complete and utter crap.
Most likely the performance decrease is to do with some unoptimized kernel feature. That kernel feature should be identified and optimized. Linux actually has a nice history of maintaining status quo or getting faster between releases. Atleast when you track it over say 10 releases.
I don't understand this, quite frankly, Windows user mentality of just accepting the state of things.
I would love to see Phoronix do a retest with some of the major patchsets removed and see if they can find the one or ones that cause performance decreases.
that's OK, I'm sure the next version, Moronic Monicker, is going to be a LOT faster.
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
As we add complexity and layers of abstraction things tend to slow down in general. If hardware keeps up, and actual human productivity increases, do we have an issue?
I'm all for lean and mean, but it's quite possible to optimize a distro for speed as well. Ubuntu getting slower is not a good thing, but slower is better than harder to use. Netbook distros can be optimized for the hardware in question, after all...
It would be interesting to see how these tests perform across distros, or with a kernel optimized for certain tasks. (Ubuntu Studio for example has a RT-optimized kernel to keep audio from skipping. In theory at least...)
.: Max Romantschuk
Would have been interesting to have the same benchmarks for Xubuntu, since that is the distribution that is targeted for computers where performens increase/decrease is very noticable.
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
Real men don't upgrade their OS for exactly this reason. In fact, we don't even use OSes. To get maximum performance we write all operations directly to RAM in machine code, while the machine is running, using a needle and a car battery.
Some of theses tests such as the SQLite test I am wondering if they used SQLite within ubuntu or they build and run it on the system they were testing.
This matters because Ubuntu comes with different versions of SQLite.
However if there is a problem then I hope they report it on launchpad. I have noticed any slowness myself.
Ok, the article completely ignores this (as do most of the above posters it appears). Each version of Ubuntu tested seemed to have different kernel builds. How much of the slowdown is due to the kernel being patched for security and bugs and how much is due to the software that has been added?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
I'm running the 8.10RC on my laptop and i feel the new kernel is much more responsive than previous versions. Gnome is becoming more robust, but thats the natural order of things.
If you look closely you'll notice that (a) the benchmarks were run on a Thinkpad T60 laptop, and (b) there were significant differences on some benchmarks like RAM bandwidth that should have little or no OS components.
This sounds to me like the power management was dialing down the CPU on the later releases...
It's more likely the Ubuntu/GNOME moving all apps to run in mono. I doubt the kernel have anything to do with this.
c++;
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".
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Some of the benchmarks were hardware testing, and those showed variation. They should not, unless the compiler changed the algorithms used to compile the code between distros.
Benchmarking a multi-tasking system like Linux is a tough thing to quantify. The Linux kernel recently had a big scheduler change, this alone could account for shifting benhmark numbers. It may not actually "slowing down," but running multiple programs more evenly. The effective work is the same or better, which would mean "faster," but an almost useless benchmark would look slower.
I'd say it's doing ok in terms of performance. So maybe it won't run on a toaster anymore. Oh no.
No, he's talking about linux. Linux Is Not UNix, remember? Stop confusing the two.
Canonical just got told!
Analogies are like matchbox cars full of chocolates... you never know how much spillover chinese paint you're going to get.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The problem is not speed or benchmark scores.
The problem is usefulness and usability.
we tend to focus on the former because it is "objective" while the later is highly subjective.
--- Back to the trees, back to the trees !
I may be a bit biased here. Full disclosure: I am an Ubuntu Member, User, Abuser. I think that Ubuntu is one hell of a Distro, and GNU/Linux is one hell of an OS. Ubuntu, however is not geared for the market where we squeeze every CPU cycle we can. For that you have to do a _LOT_ of cleaning, replace your kernel to something a bit more fit for a server environment. Ubuntu is, and will always be a distro that is Easy to use first, even if that comes at the expense of some kruft. Each distro is becoming more bloated, but one great feature in Ibex ( 8.10 ) is the "System Cleaner" ( for all you GNOME users, Applications --> System Tools --> System Cleaner ) that checks for unused packages. This may not be a whole lot, but before bashing speed, or claiming its fat, take a hard look at the distro really.
This is not a viral sig. Copy it at your peril.
is 6 any good anymore? or should I just toss it.
Yes, Ubuntu is getting slower, absolutely, without question on my part.
My single biggest complaint against 8.04 was that it could not get out of its own way to play an MP3 on my somewhat modest hardware (Via MII-12000). It runs fine on my wife's machine, however (AMD Sempron on Via MoBo).
Now, it is possible that the slowdown is only with 32-bit versions. My wife's machine is running the 64-bit version, and seems to run pretty well. In the mean time, I have reverted to Slackware, which has always been my refuge.
www.wavefront-av.com
Hell, how many geeks can say such phrases: "...was the phrase my girlfriend..."
baby steps man... baby steps.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
"Slackware" -- an African word, meaning "Gentoo is too hard for me".
What is important to note is that the gaming performance hadn't dropped with the newer releases.
Mystery solved. My games will run just about the same.
www.purevolume.com/martyd
An analogy is a simile, metaphorically speaking.
Eschew Obfuscation
ROFLMFAOOMGBBQ
Doesn't "Slackware" mean "I am too lazy to make it easy to install." ?
I don't understand this, quite frankly, Windows user mentality of just accepting the state of things.
That's the effect of having a Linux distro to be used by Windows-minded users.
factor 966971: 966971
Don't tell me Ubuntu is getting slower. On my eee PC with a stock hardware configuration, I go from a cold boot to the desktop in around 40 seconds whereas with XP it was taking about 3 minutes on average. Granted the sub-distro (if you would call it that) that I am using is optimized for my setup.
The game.
One thing I have noticed for a long time now is that the power management CPU scaling in Linux really sucks when you have more than one CPU/core. The problem seems to be caused by the kernel moving processes around to different cores. What this does is cause the various core to constantly speed and slow down, since the trigger for increasing speed is not instantaneous then you end up with crappy performance.
Note that this is when there is just one process sucking up a lot of CPU. If you have multiple processes using a lot of CPU then everything is OK because all the cores get bumped up in speed and stay there.
A few minor quibbles: there are no error bars (at just 3-5 runs for "most" benchmarks and 1 for the remainder, I have to wonder how significant the results are), the beta benchmark app was used for some reason, and the benchmark application automatically downloads any needed dependencies for each test, so I have to wonder if the methodology became inconsistent somewhere. On that last point, the most striking and inexplicable performance hits were for Java and media encoding, so I'd be more satisfied with the results if they could reassure me that they'd used a comparable virtual machine and encoder on each OS.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
No, Ubuntu. Just because Microsoft's parents let them do something naughty it doesn't mean you can get away with it yourself, young man. We expect better of you.
Neither Vista nor Ubuntu have improved sufficiently over their previous versions to justify the decreased performance. Ubuntu's focus is on user-friendliness, and it so it isn't exactly counting calories. Vista doesn't really have any excuses.
Ubuntu was the distro that completely replaced Windows for me a bit over two years ago. Since then my desktop has just gotten faster and faster and left more and more RAM and disk space for the applications as I've found more bloated things I can take out of Ubuntu. It seems pretty evident to me that Ubuntu could keep its weight down if the developers put some focus there. Ubuntu's target audience is largely Windows users who are used to the bloat so Ubuntu can get away with it, but that doesn't make it right.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
From those benchmarks the one thing that stuck out was that GCC is getting slower. This could be down to the Ubuntu default compilation parameters changing to use more optimisation, for example, which takes longer.
In addition the media portion of Ubuntu or Gnome has become incredibly slow compared to 7.04. Encoding is far far slower, and that's simply embarrassing.
Next up for review: How fast is Kubuntu (Linux + KDE), how fast is FreeBSD (+Gnome and +KDE), and how does it compare to Linux + Gnome.
The funny thing is that the OP name is BadAnalogyGuy...
... they are.
Seriously.
I can see several problems with the testing methodology as is:
* The test suite itself: The Phoronix test suite runs on PHP. That in itself is a problem-- the slowdowns measured could most likely be *because* of differences in the distributed PHP runtimes. You can't just say "hey, version Y of distro X is slower than version Z! LOLZ" because, WTF. You're pretty much also running different versions of the *test suite* itself (since you have to consider the runtime as part of the test suite). Unless you remove that dependency, then sorry, you can't measure things reliably. Which brings me to my second point...
* What exactly are they testing? The whole distro? The compiler (since most of the whole of each distro version is compiled with different versions of GCC)? The kernel? If they're testing the released kernel, then they should run static binaries that *test* the above, comparing kernel differences. If they're testing the compiler, then they should build the *same* compiled code on each version and run said compiled code (which is pretty much what I gather they're doing). If they're testing the utilities and apps that came with the distro, then they should have shell scripts and other tools (which run on a single runtime, not depending on the runtime(s) that came with the distro version). Because if you don't, you have no fucking clue what you're testing.
Honestly, I was unimpressed by the benchmarks. I happen to do performance benchmarking as part of my job, and I can tell you, you have to eliminate all the variables first -- isolate things to be able to say "X is slow". If you rely on a PHP runtime, use *exactly* the same PHP runtime for all your testing; otherwise, you'll get misleading results.
No - it's Yoruba for "Come back after the rainy season - it'll probably have compiled by then, but if not, there'll be plenty of dried wilderbeest to snack on."
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "I'm sick of fucking with Linux in order to get it to do what I want but I really don't like the alternatives."
Yeah, I rocked Gentoo for a couple of years. I just want something that is fast, easy to use and gives me as little of a headache as possible. Linux is Linux and most of the knowledge learned in one distro will carry-over to another.
The game.
Why should I read this FA if the author apparently didn't finish high school?
Because intelligence and wisdom have nothing to do with "finishing high school"? I've got nothing past GCSEs. Luckily for me, employers in the UK see past that.
Well, I've got nothing past OWL, but fortunately employers in the US see past that.
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Ubuntu needs ricing...They should be targeting performance instead!
rofl!!
A project gets late one day at a time. There's probably a similar proverb for this too.
"all apps" being F-Spot and Tomboy, neither of which are running by default?
I dunno? I use Arch & Gentoo. LOL!
That's the end point if you think about it.
Linux is one of those OSs' that should be built around the hardware.
Arch Linux forces you to do that and consequently is much faster than a vanilla install of Ubuntu.
Not having to use resource hogs like KDE/Gnome etc helps as well.
You don't need overbuilt gui to work a good desktop.
But Ubuntu is for everyone and Arch linux is for real geeks.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
As a Windows fanboy, .NET consultant I make more then 700 USD/day :)
I drive a nice car, decline sex to desperate women who compliment me endlessly each weekend, while I'm up egostroking and renewing my knowledge and try to make more monnies instead.
I used to be a Linux fanboy, I watched porn, had long hair and boy, I was hot on the internet. I would be up all night *trying* to get the damn thing running, without getting paid.
Hey let's run valgrind on it and if a random number thingy is slowing it down we can remove it. DOH! A desktop machine does not need to scream. If you want speed use another distro like Arch if you don't want CPU cycles wasted on pretty visual cues.
I think that's a rhetorical tautology.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Linux is not an acronym. I think you are talking about GNU is Not Unix.
The GTK+ statistics are mind-boggling slow. That's what I notice most when I use Ubuntu or Fedora. On my non-Ubuntu laptop, I get the following results for GTK performance:
GtkDrawingArea - Pixbufs: 3.73s (on mine) vs 43-55s (Ubuntu)
GtkRadioButton: 13s vs 29-60s
I just think that's ridiculous. What did they do to GTK+ to make it so slow?
Some of us possess the ability but not the will.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
'Anonymous Coward' -- African words, meaning 'sometimes funny, sometimes not.'
'Ucuntu' -- an African word, meaning 'Unix for c*nts.'
'Ukuntu' -- an African word, meaning 'KUnix Kfor K*nts 4.1.'
'Hurd' -- an African word, meaning 'Much promised, but little gained.'
'Microsoft' -- an African word, meaning 'Help, I'm being anally violated by an angry, bald man with a chair fetish, who keeps shouting "Yeah! Give it up for me!" while bending me over.'
'Slashdot' -- an African word, meaning 'When Digg sucks cock, turn here.'
Which Linux distro?
Or even more radical, which OS?
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
I would like to see the same comparison on other GNOME based distros before I make any judgement. Is Debian Lenny slower than Etch? Is Fedora 10 slower than Fedora 8? Is OpenSUSE.... oh, wait!
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Turns out that DOS loaded and ran 100x faster on my machine than Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, Vista AND all the distributions of Linux I have kicking around!
c:\no\shit\
Maybe we should all just switch back to DOS.
I say don't drink and drive, you might spill your drink. Before you get behind the wheel just stop and think.
Well I guess if I ever plan on encoding an extensive number of movies and music, I'll just reinstall 7.04. Hmmm, this couldn't have anything to do with the many applications that do not yet take advantage of the latest kernel features could it? There have been major advancements in kernel development in the last 2 years, too many to list just go here and read a little: http://kerneltrap.org/
"Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night." -Asimov
No - it's Yoruba for "Come back after the rainy season - it'll probably have compiled by then, but if not, there'll be plenty of dried wilderbeest to snack on."
I could swear that's spelled "Gentoo"...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"Ubuntu" -- an African word meaning "I only just found out that Gentoo has moved KDE 4.1 into the stable Portage tree, and will upgrade soon".
I currently have three Ubuntu-based systems. I have customized the GNU/Linux distribution for each system. Anyone can do it.
One of the computers is an old (1998) Thinkpad notebook that doesn't have the video capability to run the full Ubuntu-Gnome GUI well. I do a minimal installation (the minimal CD is an official distribution of Ubuntu), then install about 25 select packages using a script that I call "Thinbuntu". This gives me a very functional GNU/Linux desktop for the old Thinkpad with the Long Term Support of the Ubuntu package system, including updates. It has all the features I need.
Microsoft simply can't compete with this.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
"Linux"--the Finnish word for "Many confusing forks"
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
So the soul-removal procedure went well, I see.
Why do you think this? I mean do you have a good reason or is it just because you don't like mono?
Take a look at some of the tests.
"Computational: The Dhrystone 2 performance within the BYTE Unix Benchmark was also the fastest on Ubuntu 7.04. There was approximately a 20% drop in performance between 7.04 and 7.10 that remained consistent even in the 8.04 and 8.10 releases. "
This is NOT in mono.
"Database: In our SQLite test of measuring the time to perform 2,500 SQL inserts, the performance hadn't dropped off after Ubuntu 7.04 but instead after 8.04 LTS. In this performance drop it was over 2.5x slower. "
SQLlite isn't written in mono.
"but in our compilation benchmarks we spotted major performance losses following the Feisty Fawn release. It was noticeably slower to compile Apache, PHP, and ImageMagick in the 7.10, 8.04, and 8.10 releases."
GCC isn't written in mono.
I could go on and on but many of the benchmarks have nothing to do with mono at all.
Heck I am not a big fan of mono but your statment is baseless.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
***Otherwise, shut up and get used to progress.***
Progress is motion toward a goal. Remove the goal and what is left is just motion. A lot of people confuse motion with progress. What goal do you perceive Ubuntu to be moving toward? Why isn't faster operation/lower overhead part of the goal?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
I can think of only two explanations, assuming their CPU-related benchmarks aren't memory-constrained. If they compiled the benchmark suite on each system, then perhaps there's some major regression in the newer versions of gcc that's negatively affecting the test results on all newer versions of ubuntu. This seems pretty unlikely.
The other is that it's a scheduling issue. Why would a benchmark that *only* exercises the CPU run slower on one version of Ubuntu compared to the other? Probably because it's not getting all of the CPU. Or being interrupted continually, etc. They should run the tests w/ "nice" turned all the way up, to suggest to the OS that they get *all* the CPU they want. I suspect if they did, that all the CPU-bound tests, at least, would have near-identical results. I/O is a different matter entirely.
In this case, anyways. The benchmarks had everything to do with X, GCC and Kernel performance numbers, which all slid over the intervals measured.
In other words, Ubuntus' not getting slower. The software that Ubuntu bundles is getting slower.
It's likely due to GCC's epic failure to better optimize code as 4.x progresses, but I'm not putting my money on anything until they've tested at least one other distro which builds with a different GCC version.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Wow, I was wondering how quickly Microsoft would be somehow blamed for this. Didn't take long at all!
This space for rent.
Ubuntu isn't really suited for low end machines anymore, IMO. Has to be at least 2ghz, with at least 512mb RAM.. Anything lower and it's going to be pretty slow.
I'm sure some people here are going to be comparing Ubuntu to Vista in regards of getting slower with release, but because it's Linux we have a few more choices.
They make distros that are meant to be lightweight- Anyone with a machine that's a little old, I urge you to try one of them. You'll be pleasantly surprised and maybe find a new favorite window manager/desktop environment in the process. Before you start talking about how joe sixpack doesn't want to try another distro or learn anything about Linux- I'm not talking to Joe sixpack here, I'm talking to you, a slashdot lurker.
Try one of these distros and be amazed at how fast everything is:
Crunchbang Linux
KMandla's GTK 1.5 Remix
Or, if you want to be more adventurous, get Arch Linux and grab a window manager like Openbox or PekWM. If you go that route, take a look at this Openbox guide that'll show you a nice panel to use, file navigator, and generally hold your hand through the process, here. But if you want your hand held even more, someone packaged a panel and file navigator and theme chooser and stuff like that together with Openbox already- Called LXDE. You can just grab that too, should be in any repository.
I do think it's unfortunate for joe sixpack that it's getting a little slower- But for them it's still faster than Vista and XP, right?
You know what they should make? They compile pretty much everything in the kernel as a module, and then they probe hardware and load the right modules each time you boot... It would be cool to be able to do a "Speed up my computer" boot where it loads the modules, and then compiles a kernel with the modules for the hardware it finds compiled into it. Disable things that it hasn't seen their computer use, etc., and then just still probe the hardware to fall back on another kernel if things have changed.
OR, how about loading modules when you actually need them..? And this goes for daemons, too. When you go to listen to something, and it returns that there's no module loaded for sound, how about loading the module then, and then starting the alsa daemon. Have you ever looked at the daemon list for Ubuntu? It's huge. I know I don't need all of those- I know because on the distro I'm on now I only run 3 daemons on boot, and everything works fine.
I don't know. Maybe that's not the solution. But those guys are clever, I'm sure they can come up with something to get rid of the extra daemons and modules running without sacrificing usability. Anyone here have any good ideas..?
... that they are shovelling into the system, the dodgy init replacement, the weird wlan drivers
Mod the parent up, I'm in the exact same boat. Ran Gentoo for three years, loved it, but realized that I was spending a lot more time tinkering with the OS than actually USING the OS. That's perfectly fine for a server of some variety where really the tinkering IS the interaction, but for a desktop or something you're going to use more interactively on a daily basis it became too much of a pain.
Ubuntu gives me some of the strengths I liked (such as a simple, straightforward package manager, wide amount of customization without too much screwing around) without too many of the weaknesses (compiling all software, praying emerging the world doesn't break my desktop, so on and so forth).
It's not a bad distro at all and it's tiring to hear of people slamming it for not being Slackware or Gentoo. This may come as a revelation, but Linux is about choice.
"Just a fox, a whisper."
It was well compensated with a bonus ;)
Subject says all *AC hides under rock*
It's called Wirth's Law
Why there isn't a suite of speed tests that are automatically done by Canonical about the speed of several usual operations? (maybe there is this kind of test and Phoronix test suite is very different)
er... Sorry to burst your bubble here, but Arch is not built around the hardware for your computer. Arch comes with a binary blog for a kernel with everything compiled as a module just like Ubuntu does, the only different is daemons that run at boot, which has little to do with your hardware. I agree that Arch is faster, depending on what you install, but saying it fits your hardware and that it's for "True geeks" is sort of ridiculous.
Perhaps you meant Gentoo?
Namely, graphics hardware. ATi graphics hardware and the FGLRX driver. FGLRX is known to have crappy 2D performance relative to its very strong 3D performance and the 2d performance that the open source driver excels at.
Meanwhile, 2D performance on Intel's hardware is smoking everyone else's pipe.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
I know the OSS freaks like to copy everything from Windows, but they've gone too far this time!
I think it was 7.10 that first included Tracker turned on by default. At this point Tracker was still alpha software, many users reported it taking up all available resources, and complaints were simply brushed aside. After suffering from my Ubuntu installation constantly freezing due to trackerd, and being unable to disable it without removing it (I disabled it in 3 separate places but it still persisted on restart) I installed Fedora and never looked back. It may not be quite so "polished" but it hasn't sprung any nasty surprises on me.
Free Software games list and commentary
... I see that tests that requite high computational power like BYTE Unix or Compilation is getting slower with each version, while disk benchmarks show that newer version is better. I am not an IT student so I can't really say anything about it, but maybe there are changes in kernel/Ubuntu that make disk operations faster while adding new works for the CPU to do.
In my completely unscientific tests, I've found that stripping off scrollkeeper in favor of rarian makes some of my older systems A LOT happier. Scrollkeeper was actually pegging and overheating a Celeron PC that used to run Feisty without complaint...
Apart from XP Embedded, where you can choose which parts of the OS are installed. It's not designed for home-use, but I've used it to make a 140MB version of XP that is blazingly fast. It can play media, has internet access, games, everything I need.
Microsoft simply can't compete with this.
Really? It's not open-source, sure, but from your post you're not rewriting or recompiling. (Nor are most of the people commenting on this article.) You're selecting which components you want to install.
I can disable services I don't want. I can uninstall (or simply not install at the outset) components I don't need. I have the control panel to customize, e.g., the video depth and turn off video-hungry components.
In all seriousness: at this level (not the recompile level), what's the difference?
Amen to all of the above. I grew disillusioned with the fact that Open Office along with all the JRE crap took about 5 hours to compile (conservative estimate) on my laptop with limited specs. For a set-and-forget setup (server) it is a great OS. But for regular everyday use, it's just plain tedious.
The game.
I drive a nice car, decline sex to desperate women who compliment me endlessly each weekend, while I'm up egostroking and renewing my knowledge and try to make more monnies instead.
You know, you could have just written "I'm gay" instead.
The blatant acceptance of new functionality always meaning increased resource consumption is crap.
Other's mention below that as software matures it should get faster and I whole heartedly agree with this view point.
In my few years as a Mac enthusiast (pre-OS X) I always remember looking forward to the latest OS release because it almost always added functionality AND ran more efficiently on the same HW.
I wish the rest of the SW industry would follow suit. I sympathize, I know it's hard work - but I don't think it's an unreasonable expectation.
Being a Ubuntu user since Feisty, I believe that the article is spot on. The reason I say this is because there is a huge problem with desktop responsiveness, and it started after Feisty: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/131094
This is NOT the plausible small hit due to increase in hardware support. The problem reported by so many on that bug report above is about having a modern system hanging for 1 or 2 seconds (or more), for operations that were "instantaneous" on Feisty.
FWIW, in the LWN comments about 8.10 there is yet another person mentioning the same issue: problems with kernels after Feisty http://lwn.net/Articles/304710/
If the majority of Slashdot users can read what you wrote (which I agree with, I may add) and consider you insightful, or even worse, accept this as inevitable and necessary, then you have just solidified a very large number of people as hypocrites.
.1 release fixes all of the problems... Which the MS Fanbois will continue to cite (and make fun of) for years after they're fixed... which will lead to negative public opinion about a perfectly fine operating system.
It could only be more sweetly ironic if the next version of Ubuntu shows to be slower than the current one, and then a
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
Perfect
Am I eval()? - http://www.monst3r.com.br
Ubuntu being demonstrably slower than older versions of itself is not exactly a selling point, especially because linux is often considered for lower powered machines...
But having Ubuntu running typical tasks slower than windows is just inexcusable, i saw some benchmarks where open source tools such as ffmpeg were slower on ubuntu than xp... There really is no excuse for that.
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That doesn't see the huge concern over "progress" resulting in slightly slower software on the same hardware?
It's been happening with every new version of almost ANY software. The only time speed increases with a subsequent version is when the original program was either hacked together or not properly optimized for specific hardware.
No one opens up Photoshop and says "Oh no, CS3 is slower than Photoshop 4...WTF? How is this possible?"
And thanks to Vista (tm), memory is now DIRT CHEAP. I can stuff 8GB into a machine for less than $150!
If you really want to complain about violating some law of nature in regards to software engineering - complain to Adobe about ACROBAT!
Because you are falling prey to a logical fallacy?
I believe that PIE (position independent executable) along with some other security enhancements were turned on in Ubuntu around the time the slowndowns showed up. This would definitely cause at least some slowdown on the 32bit version since there aren't enough registers to begin with. I'm not sure if it causes any noticeable slowdown on the 64bit version, since the amd64 architecture has a lot more available registers, which would correlate with the person mentioning earlier that the 64bit version seemed fast.
And as a Linux/Unix consultant, seeing as how there's less of us and we generally work more efficiently than our windows counterparts, you could probably be making a lot more than $700/day.
At least all the positions i've seen, unix consultants command more money, have less interview competition, and still provide better value for money to the companies who hire them, whereas windows consultants are ten a penny and most are very poor at their job, having very little real experience being fresh off an mcse course or similar.
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Performance may not be the raison d'etre, but performance must still be adequate. Linux in general has, as one of its "selling points", the fact that it runs well on older hardware. With Ubuntu 8.04, that point went to hell.
www.wavefront-av.com
Does the rest of the *buntus (sans U) show a similar decline in performance?
everything I need
I have no experience with it but it sounds cool.
I read that the next version of XP Embedded will have Genuine Advantage Embedded.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Yes.
You sure that's not gentoo you're thinking of? :D
I was pretty much exactly the same.
Turning point for me was realizing that I was compiling more and more in, just in case I needed it, because rebuilding world just to enable that new USE flag was getting kind of old.
In other words, I was using it like Ubuntu. The only advantage I had was I would compile for -march=i686, and other optimizations which produce binaries which only work on recent CPUs (the '686' class) -- whereas Ubuntu was -mtune=i686, if I remember, so it was possible to run on a 486, but would run best on a 686.
And, hey, there were other things I would turn on that were Athlon XP specific, and so on... then I realized that, on amd64, the optimizations were basically exactly the same -- merely compiling for x86_64 gave me all the benefits anyway. At which point, what the hell -- Ubuntu would necessarily be at least as optimized as my Gentoo.
And, more recently, I've realized that since switching to Ubuntu, I spend much more time actually using the OS, rather than tweaking it. Despite having it already much more customized than any version of Windows ever was, I still don't spend as much time tweaking it as it takes to maintain Windows, let alone Gentoo.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
ok so Ubuntu is getting slower..by how much? and most importantly: do we really care? it's still a damn sight faster imho than windows or ( the blasphemy of IT: ) mac.
this is a virtual insanity that always seems to be governed by our love for this useless twisting of our new technology.
Another ex-Gentooer-turned-Ubuntuer here. I had no idea we were so common.
In which orifice?
The disappearing pencil trick. Let me show you it.
But not like a truck?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Time to migrate to NetBSD and get a Mac now that Linux is becoming a Vista-wannabe resource hog.
One of the best parts ive always enjoyed with linux in any form is the modular design, that is, that any feature isn't exactly hard designed into the OS, you can pick and choose features and disable the ones you don't need. New software usually increases these options but that doesn't mean you need to use said new features. As for increased performance demand in updated software, if it is a concern i believe the option is always there to not update. Besides, read about the update to find out why it consumes more and what was fixed and you might find yourself no longer regretting that increased performance demand. The same goes for kernel differences, if there has been a change there is likely a good reason for it, do some research and find out for yourself.
Garrett
I can disable services I don't want. I can uninstall (or simply not install at the outset) components I don't need. I have the control panel to customize, e.g., the video depth and turn off video-hungry components.
In all seriousness: at this level (not the recompile level), what's the difference?
Linux (and Unix for the most part) tends to be a lot more modular than Windows. Windows does provide options. But not to the same degree. If you want to really dig in to a Windows system, it takes a lot more shennanigans than it does with a Linux distro (and then you're at the risk of losing all your changes at the next service pack).
Note that this isn't an Open Source thing. Proprietary Unix environments tend to work much in the same way.
One final point - Linux is no silver bullet. You still have to make trade-offs. There are still dependencies involved and removing something might mean removing a desired application. However, I've rarely run in to a situation where that decision is all that difficult or unexpected.
FYI, actually having sex is usually more fun than declining it.
You might want to check out nLite, which makes it easy to customise XP installations. You can remove the bloat, slipstream drivers and patches, run fully unattended installs etc. AFAIK under the hood it uses the tools Microsoft provide for corporate sysadmins and the like, but with a more user-friendly interface and useful defaults. Very popular with the Windows-loving section of the Netbook community and great for VM installs.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Apart from XP Embedded, where you can choose which parts of the OS are installed.
I've heard of such a beast but never have seen it. I would hazard to guess that XP Embedded isn't accessible to most folks; it's not an option with their standard XP install. In contract, anyone who has access to Ubuntu could go this "Thinbuntu" route.
Whereas with Linux, I have to keep 180MB of files there which will remain mostly useless because I want to use Amarok in a Gnome environment but if I want to remove even one, it'll throw a hissy fit. Way to go...a small media player with 180MB of dependencies...
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
It's nice to see that the Ubuntu fanboys have moved so quickly to 'shut up and like it'.
It took Windows fanboys a decade to get there...
That's because today's Ubuntu fanbois are yesterday's Windows fanbois.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Linux (and Unix for the most part) tends to be a lot more modular than Windows. Windows does provide options. But not to the same degree. If you want to really dig in to a Windows system, it takes a lot more shennanigans than it does with a Linux distro
Indeed. I might have to go install something like XPLite or create my own installation media with nlite/vlite. It's really taxing firing up a GUI and unticking a few boxes.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
Anybody got any suggestions on a different distro to try?
Performance should never go down.
Yes as you expect a PC to do more and more their will be more overhead but the over all performance should go up as the code gets optimized.
The problem here is we don't yet know why these benchmarks are running slower.
Is it extra checks in the kernel for security?
Is it fluff that isn't needed.
Or is it bloat that needs to be optimized.
So no people shouldn't just shut up. The cause needs to be found if possible fixed.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Lets leave Apple out of this!
I was in the same boat as you. Used Gentoo for a few years, and realized that I was spending way too much time screwing with it. I also switched to Ubuntu, but I have to say, my Gentoo machine was always faster and had more features. For that reason I went back to Gentoo on my desktop, with one major change: I stopped trying to friggin play games on the thing. Turns out that when you get it to a usable state, and stop screwing with it, Gentoo works a lot like Ubuntu. That is, it just works.
Every time I have the urge to tinker with things, I try to make sure that it will really make a difference, and be worth the time. If not, I just go use Ubuntu. Now I have a fast desktop that just works. And on the off chance it doesn't the Ubuntu distros on the backup desktop or the Asus EEE Just Work.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Like running a system (Windows) that crashes even if it not doing anything special.
Apple geeks at least have a chance of talking to a girl.
It's still smaller than Windows Media Player, even when installed in the least efficient way possible.
Even the most basic programs need more than a gigabyte of backend libraries in Windows Vista.
You can probably program the complete UI of Amarok in one program. But that would probably be tens of megabytes itself, would bloat the program completely and would make reuse of code really hard.
It seems you don't grasp the concept of libraries.
As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.
that's OK, I'm sure the next version, Moronic Monicker, is going to be a LOT faster.
F, G, H, I,...M? Alphabet fail.
Suse vivo vixi victum reduco is ea id creatura absit decessus a facultas Linux! Dev root, dev root!
i have the same problem, but this is a gnome/kde problem, and has nothing to do with the speed of the computer, which has been constantly deteriorating, or rather, applications seemed to execute just as fast back in 99 as they do now, and even though the hardware is a lot faster, the software is a lot slower.
i find your lack of faith in science disturbing!
It is one of the stated goals of Jazzy Jackalope FWIW.
Intrepid Ibex was mobility for example.
Don't recall what Hardy Heron was. Gutsy Gibbon was about laying bases if I am not mistaken.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
telinit 3
That is a pretty good cure for a slow running machine.
Got Code?
"If you really want performance, run FreeDOS. Otherwise, shut up and get used to progress."
Jeez you're an idiot. I wouldn't have posted that under a registered nick either.
So people should just settle for bloat simply because of the advance of technology? Apple manages to make OS X faster than older versions. Other Linux distros do. Bad software isn't "progress".
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
You don;t keep your servers up to date then?
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Shouldn't we at least wait until the final release is available? The release candidate, by definition, is unfinished.
I have had a few cases where Ubuntu has run out of real memory and goes into a swapping loop. Sometimes the whole system will be unusable - cursor updates take minutes. The only solution is to reboot. I haven't seen this kind of behaviour, where essentially one process is taking down the entire computer, on an OS for a long time. It may be related to running Ubuntu 64bit (don't ask), but I've seen a number of other people with this problem, and there are long standing bug reports.
But not like a truck?
No, that's love.
Most gentoo users have relatively conservative CFLAGS, equivalent to the flags used to build any other distro, but targeting your particular cpu, eg "-O2 -march=core2"...
What this means is that the compiler can use features only present on this cpu, for many apps this doesn't help but also doesn't hinder, for some things it makes a significant difference (eg media encoding, modern cpus have features specifically for media encoding)
But what really matters about gentoo, is not the ability to set your cflags, it's the ability to set USE flags, whereby you can compile a program using different parameters or options.
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http://i35.tinypic.com/fxqb9w.jpg
Indeed. And Microsoft will be happy to support an nlite "custom" installation. That is the power of closed source proprietary software: the customer can select only those parts they need and the company is glad to support consumer freedom! Match that open source!
Me and U(buntu) - my blog about Ubun
Ubuntu = "Linux for Dummies"
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
A geek with a girlfriend
Probably TLB issue due to large amount of useless crap running in background. This is very windowish :[
Microsoft isn't in anyway related to mono, stop trolling.
"Set and forget" != "Leave bone stock install in place and pray there are no vulnerabilities"
The game.
First, Canonical chooses to pay some of the developers that work on Ubuntu, but they don't draw any lines with respect to what Ubuntu packages.
Secondly, Ubuntu is made up of packages that are their own, and packages that are Debian's. Ubuntu picks the important stuff (Linux, GCC, Xorg, GNOME versions), but the rest (50+%) of the software is simply imported from Debian.
Testing the performance between Debian builds and Ubuntu builds would be an interesting thing to do here, since it would point us in the correct direction as to whether it is GCC's fault for poorly optimizing code, as to whether it's the kernel's fault for being more aggressive about power management and/or I/O performance latency, whether the graphic slowdowns are due to commercial closed source drivers (which we can do nothing about) or due to Xorg changes, etc. etc.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
F, G, H, I,...M? Alphabet fail.
I'm sorry, I didn't realize the Noobuntu naming scheme has any meaning. let me try again: Jumbled Jalopy, Kamikaze Kyte, Lame Labyrinth. I'm sure by the time they reach Moronic Monicker shit will be flying allover the place, performance wise.
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
At the risk of soundling like a 1990s AOLer, me too.
And for most of the same reasons. Originally, I tried Gentoo out for the promise of more speed. Once I bought a new notebook, I realized that speed was not going to be an issue. I benchmarked Gentoo and Ubuntu, and found that the differences were negligible in most applications. I stuck with Gentoo for a while, using -Os instead of -O3, just because I was somewhat stubborn and already had the notebook set up. Finally, I think after the third or fourth day in a row of rebuilding Open Office, I realized what an absurd pattern I was getting into, and I scrapped the whole thing for Ubuntu.
The nice thing about Ubuntu, in my opinion, is that you can still configure and compile things to your specifications if you like. I always disable Beagle/Tracker. I tend to run my own kernel. I disable a lot of the useless startup scripts. It's very nearly as good as Gentoo, without the drawbacks.
No, because then his 2-incher get laughed at.
The support for power management (including cpu scaling) has improved in the successive versions of Ubuntu, largely due to kernel improvements. I've certainly noticed this on my laptop, which has had Ubuntu since the beta of Breezy. The result has been better support for hibernation and so forth, but not any particular change in application performance.
TFA said that speedstep was disabled for the tests, but were there any other laptop power saving features which would slow down user processes?
I'd like to see the same set of benchmarks run on a desktop.
I've been running Xubuntu on a 10-year-old Dell (450MHz P3, upgraded to 384MB) since Dapper, and have not noticed any degradation in its admittedly modest performance.
I've also been running Ubuntu since Feisty on a 5 year old Dell (2GHz, 1GB), also without any particular performance changes.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
"This may come as a revelation, but Linux is about choice."
But only if you choose correctly.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
n00buntu. If you want performance go with Gentoo :]
linuxhaters.blogspot.com FTW! Read the archive.
I would love to see Phoronix do a retest with some of the major patchsets removed and see if they can find the one or ones that cause performance decreases.
git-bisect is your friend.
factor 966971: 966971
ya but they're making the wrong choice!
I have upgrade since Ubuntu 6.06 (as the each release get to Beta release) on the same laptop HP dv5000z and let me tell you Ubuntu 8.10 has been the fastest and the most responsive yet. Much faster than XP Pro (as I booted into the partition last week to update the software I had installed it and it was crawling, mind you that I hadn't booted into the XP partition since I set up that partition two and half years ago).
except that anybody who wanted to, could remake their install using something like nlite.
and have only those items/services they desired.
it's called knowing what you are doing.
it's not something the masses would do, just like they wouldn't roll their own linux install.
Yes, Ubuntu is getting slower. Not only slower, but also more bloated. And not only more bloated, but more Window's like (all sorts of sharing services running by default). Not only all that, but consider that Ubuntu Server installs wifi networking, bluetooth, avahi-daemon, parts of evolution, etc. Bloat, bloat, bloat. But, if you spend 2 days cleaning up the default install, you can have a nice decently running system.
It obviously wasn't the goal of their article to isolate to performance issues to help find the problems.
It WAS the goal to install each version separately and test different areas of the performance.
And the fact is that in most areas Linux performance (not just Ubuntu, it's not like they do anything others don't) is going down. This isn't the only benchmark that shows it. Whether it be in new kernel features like CFS, the file system, i/o changes, bad drivers, gcc changes, gtk issues and so on. Linux in general isn't getting any faster, and this is a huge problem that should be looked into by ALLLL distros. Ubuntu, for example, could put an entire (6 month) release cycle, or even 2 release cycles (Apple is doing this with the next version of Mac OS) into performance optimizations but it wouldn't do a lot of good because they would have to be looking into Gnome, GTK, and all the other applications that go into it.
Even for me I have noticed issues, windows resize much slower in the last few years, I can't even use NVIDIA drivers with Firefox as the Ajax performance goes to hell, even writing to USB flash drives is noticeably slower than windows. And it's unfortunate because Linux is all I want to use.
In this case, Ubuntu is the sum of the software it packages. But if one piece of software is slower, then Ubuntu's not slower, that piece of software is slower. 1 + 1 + 1 = 3, 3 != 1.
This would remain true if Ubuntu were replaced with $DISTRO.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Windows Fundamentals (based on XP Embedded) is included in included in my Volume License Agreement from Microsoft. Our agreement is fairly basis so I suspect it is included in most (if not all) volume license agreements that include Client operating systems (Vista and XP).
I currently have it installed on several older PCs (late Pentium II's and early Pentium IIIs) with impressive results. It performs much faster than even Windows 2000 on the same hardware. Those PCs are currently being used by students in an open lab.
yeah, but compiling is still compiling.
I would think some server type applications take a while. Especially if it is a library that is going to require a lot of other stuff to be recompiled.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Having the position to be selective and not just lose yourself because a vagina walks by, is more fun then ending up with the fat girl in a dark corner, because she has a pretty personality :)
Victory is one point away from a tie, not necessarily failure.
As software gets more useful (and Ubuntu has, Vista not so much) it gets bigger and thus gets slower on the same hardware.
The last few releases of Mac OS X were faster than the previous ones on the same hardware.
(Of course some people remark that this simply shows how "bad" the earlier ones were.)
All of you former Gentoo users who found yourselves tweaking more than using your computer were obviously not using Gentoo correctly. I guess it's a matter of balance between power and self control. Just because you can easily tweak anything doesn't mean you should or need to. The principle of diminishing applies here just as well as anywhere. Smart users should know that balance.
Here's another way to look at it. You could use Ubuntu the same as you used to use Gentoo, but of course it wouldn't be as easy. Apparently you need the barriers of an OS that is more difficult to tweak in order to keep you on task. That's fine, but it seems unneccesary to me. It's probably the same reason that many people prefer Windows to linux (and let's be honest, there are many people who do prefer Windows to linux).
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
Not even talking about the advantage of being free:
- for optimization, I can select the window manager
- for optimization, I can select the desktop environment
- I get full compatibility with the open-source ecosystem
- I can install programs from the huge apt-get application universe (including programming languages and tools)
- I run it all from a very short script, unattended
- it is fully supported, with automatic updates and no nonsense
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
You might want to check out nLite [nliteos.com]
Thanks for the suggestion. I really see no advantage to using MS Windows.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Archlinux FTW, if you understand Linux well enough. If you're above that understanding, go for Gentoo, if you're totally a Linux master, go for slack (you're nuts!). Ubuntu has always seemed like a stepping stone. I learned Linux with it, and moved on to greater distros (Arch). I'm too lazy to use gentoo or slack, but I'm sure I could if I had the many hours to invest that such action would require. Ubuntu is a great OS balance between being windows-y enough and somewhat faster than windows, which makes it good for indoctrinating new users...outside of that, once they learn more, another distro would probably suit them better if they want more speed, stability, and control.
They add more and more stuff in the default install which get their 'fair' share from CPU time and memory. You probably don't need half of them, but they eat time. Somehow this reminds me of Windows...
In earlier distros i cared about what's running in the box, nowadays i'm more and more lazy, i don't really notice any performance increase despite i buy a stronger machine every 2 years.
Probably, if i start killing some of these bloatware, i would get back a faster system.
It's not really the distro's problem. The more they try to please everyone, the more code they gotta stuff in by default.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Much better! I particularly like Jumbled Jalopy.
Suse vivo vixi victum reduco is ea id creatura absit decessus a facultas Linux! Dev root, dev root!
Actually, on that note, has anyone noticed "Linux" and "Windows" are antonyms?
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
If your goal is winning, a tie is failure.
Wow. +20 jerk-off points for using other people (women, in this case) as props for your own ego.
I mean, misogyny may be the rule at old Slash U more days than not, but you, sir, are a grade-a special asshole.
Yes this is the part that some people don't seem to understand, but, I guess it is fair to do comparisons on default installs. It's also fair to say that it's obvious as time goes on and features are added that the default install will become slower. One thing that really got under my skin was the damn indexer in Hardy though. Other than that it's ok. I have big expectations for Intrepid. Keep up the good work Ubuntu!
Yeah, I got sick of the recompiling. That was always incidental to me, anyway--I liked Gentoo because the "just works" options of the time (Mandrake and the like) rarely "just worked" and were full of annoying crap, while my favorite techy-oriented distro--namely Debian--had, relative to Gentoo (and IMHO, of course) an inferior package management system and way, WAY fewer packages. The whole, "it's faster because we compile EVERYTHING!" deal never really appealed to me.
I still miss the breadth of Gentoo's package selection, and I still prefer Portage to Dpkg+apt, but Ubuntu saves me the compiling, finally delivers on the "just works" promise (mostly), and gives me automation where I want it (discs automount, network config is hassle free, hardware autodetection, etc.) without bogging my system down. I switched when I realized that Ubuntu was almost exactly the system I'd like to custom-build my Gentoo to be.
Yeah, cause women aren't people, awesome.
Seriously, get the fuck out of my gender, you waste of sperm.
Anyone who's not a fucked-up case of arrested development eventually realizes that women ARE PEOPLE. It's not cool or a sign of your manliness to reduce them to just sexual objects; what it is is a sign that you are going to have one-sided, unfulfilling relationships, that you're going to be a bad lover (probably physically, but certainly over any span of more than a couple sexual encounters), and that you're going to hurt people who don't deserve it. Making you an asshole.
Seriously, grow the fuck up. You are pathetic, and there's no excuse for this kind of bullshit, anywhere.
More bullshit slashdot "moderating" here.
Continued fail. {adjective} {animal (including fictional animals)}
Game over. Insert coin(s) to continue.
"Little is much when little you need."
Windows Fundamentals (based on XP Embedded) is included in included in my Volume License Agreement from Microsoft. Our agreement is fairly basis so I suspect it is included in most (if not all) volume license agreements that include Client operating systems (Vista and XP).
Great. If you happen to have a Volume License Agreement. And if you have a WinXP disk? What do you do then? With an Ubuntu install... any Ubuntu install... the option exists.
Mod parent +1 ironic, I believe.
What in the fuck is going on with you retards doing the moderating here? This is BULLSHIT OFF TOPIC RANTING, not "insightful" in any way.
There isn't much choice but to spend a reasonable amount of time tweaking Gentoo, or at least keeping it up to date (which does sometimes require tweaking). If you don't update regularly you end up having to spend hours fixing portage yourself, at least that was my experience when I last used it a couple of years ago. Perhaps it's better now and a box you've not powered up for six months can be brought up to date with less than two days compiling, interspersed with a couple of hours of fixing portage.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Back in the days when processors were slow, and memory was scarce, it took 16 MB (sic) to run a full desktop. Like a word processor, a spreadsheet and a browser. 4 MB was a little tight, and 64 MB was plenty.
I used to have a notebook (a Sony Vaio) with 64 MB RAM, a 300 MHz CPU, and it ran Linux SO DARN FAST! With emacs, Applix Office, 20 windows of Netscape 4, while listening to MP3 files, a compile in the background was barely noticeable.
Today, I'm sitting in front of a multi-GB multi-GHz machine, and it's slow! This is some kind of sad, since I'd prefer a less feature rich system if I could run it on these slower machines that don't have a fan. E.g. on a NSLU2, you can't even open a web-browser. This thing has 32 MB memory while Firefox wants 250 MB. That's just too much for displaying a single web page, IMHO.
The reason for this slowdown is as follows:
1. the kernel
In the recent time, everybody is optimizing for the big-iron servers (EMC, google, whatever), and nobody is looking any more for memory consumption and latency. And while the benchmark may still look great, the system becomes clumsy, bloated and un-resonsive.
2. GCC / STL
While the original idea of C++ was to make an OO language that's backward compatible with C, the older C++ program's can't even be compiled with the newer compilers! The templates, especially those of STL and boost, go totally out of whack when it comes down to memory footprint. It might give you a few percent of speed advantage to have a custom version of each single data type, but only if you don't use it much. Otherwise it's just totally trashing the cache. Not even to start talking about XML and consorts.
And if you compile those programs, the compiler needs to compile 100eds of customized template versions in 100eds of source files, just to throw away most of this redundant work during linking. This is just a waste and it does not scale.
Amarok is a KDE application. For those of us with KDE libraries already loaded into memory, it is small. If you'd stick to one DE the media player would be small; if you don't, you'll have to compromise, that's the nature of computing.
I'd bet almost all of it is the effect of the scheduler. The benchmarks all show single tasks taking longer, but that's not taking into account multi-process performance. Is the desktop still responsive now even with a high-intensity background task running? I'd take that over the task finishing 5% faster any day.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Their are plenty of small media players out there for Linux. I would not classify Amarok as one of them.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
I just want something that is fast, easy to use and gives me as little of a headache as possible.
:
Mod the parent up, I'm in the exact same boat.
:
I was pretty much exactly the same.
Then why the hell were any of you running Gentoo in the first place ?
Gentoo is all about tinkering and customising, and being offered the flexibility to do so, not ease of setting up.
Indeed. I might have to go install something like XPLite or create my own installation media with nlite/vlite. It's really taxing firing up a GUI and unticking a few boxes.
Yes, unticking boxes is easy. So's deleting a file. But what happens after the fact?
Those utilities do look like a step in the right direction. Pity they're from a third party and a complete hack (albiet a very cool looking one). What happens when Microsoft releases a service pack? What happens if you change your mind and want to install a component?
I know with Ubuntu I'm removing a package using the very same tools provided by the base distro. When I update, I only update whats installed. And I know I can always install / re-install anything missing at a later time.
Maybe but that will take a lot more testing to find out.
The think is that an ideal scheduler would detect that the UI is mostly static and not take a lot of CPU time unless you where using the desktop. Of course nothing is ideal.
I also doubt that there is one answer.
1. GCC compile times. Did they use the same version of GCC for all the tests? If not it could be extra optimization in the compiler taking up cycles. That is something I can live with.
Did they use the same file system in all the tests?
Just a lot of variables to sort through BUT Mono isn't a big problem in any of the tests I have listed.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
What the smiley has to do with it?! Oh, wait!
-- dnl
You know, sucessfull people usually don't brag that much
The user's, of course
-- dnl
The truth is it is getting slower, which is causing serious problems, and is annoying the sh*t out of me.
I recently upgraded my laptop to Kubuntu 8.4. I am not imagining it - it really is noticeably slower than before. Applications start slower, there is more disk activity and the disk itself feels slower. The laptop in question has Intel Core Duo and 2 Gigs of RAM, which should be plenty.
I haven't investigated in detail why it seems so slow, but it is not something obvious: the disk UDMA is enabled, there is available RAM, there isn't a background process running and taking all CPU time.
A co-worker's computer, which is somewhat less powerful than my laptop, became practically unusable after the upgrade to Kubuntu 8.10.
So beyond mere annoyance this is creating real problems. We are seriously considering migrating all our [K]Ubuntu machines to Debian. Besides the speed, it has the important advantage that you don't need to upgrade your OS every 6 months (which is utter idiocy: I don't have time to upgrade my OS twice in a year, I have work to do. If you ask why I don't use the LTS - the previous LTS is too outdated and the new one is too slow).
then quit bitching about Vista being slower than XP you freetards
Really? Mono is related to Microsoft in every way except having MS code in it. All the specifications that Mono is built to are developed at Microsoft.
This space for rent.
Like running a system (Windows) that crashes even if it not doing anything special.
The 90s called, they want your trolling back.
This space for rent.
Out on a limb here...
I presume the tests ran single tasks. As other posters have guessed, I also think its VM related. This would seem to be a result of VM advances that favour multi-process throughput/responsiveness over single-tasking speed. Are most of the recent VM changes geared at server or desktop use?
I would be interested to know the results if the CK scheduler was used. Con always focused on typical "desktop user" workloads in tuning his scheduler.
Just a thought...
Thus far it has been starting up much faster than its predecessor. Also, it starts up much more smoothly. It almost always takes the same about of time from boot to fully loaded. Previous versions of Ubunutu tended to be all over the charts on my system. While, I certainly am a fan of faster boot times, it isn't a make or break deal for me. It definitely should be a consideration, and I hope the Ubuntu devs devote more time to it in the future. However, Ubuntu would need to approach Windows XP start up times before I started to get seriously pissed off.
i use freebsd on a laptop with a 500Mhz amd k6, 128M on RAM. it runs gnome, vlc and can even run winXP on qemu pretty acceptable
shut up and get used to progress.
Progress towards what? Software quality can be divided into multiple dimensions, a few of which are:
I'm simplifying a bit here, and leaving some out.
Sometimes you can make software better in one dimension without making it worse in others. Sometimes you can't. When you can't, what exactly is progress? What is it progress towards? People value different things, and their values change in some contexts.
Invalid token: progress.
-- Jonas K
you should look up sarchasm.
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
From time to time I download the newest Ubuntu and check it out to see what all the new fuss is. I am continually disappointed though, and it rarely makes it a week before being purged.
It's not just the bugs and the long app-launch times. It's more than just the gratuitous resource consumption. It's the whole thing... It's bloat on top of eye-candy bloat with a hefty helping of fanboy zealotry.
I love *NIX very much but it is precisely because I love it that I have to point out that something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
When did the userbase of linux go so wrong? When did it start? Those of us that have been around for quite a while have watched the rockstar rise and subsequent plummet in the communities surrounding it. 10+ years ago you could jump into IRC type /join #[your distro] and be surrounded by people that truly loved their systems and would help you without being condescending, resorting to ad hominem attacks, or calling other *nix variants crap. A lot of those guys, myself included, were using Solaris, HP-UX, Tru64, AIX, etc. during the day and spending some of our evenings just helping out others that were interested in or 'testing the water' with linux. The slackware community was great. Even a little more recently when Gentoo first really got rolling between 1.0 and 1.2 the community on EFNET in #gentoo was a shining example of what a userbase should be. I spent many an hour in there helping people figure out their CFLAGS, configuring their XF86Config, and the like.
With the influx of more and more folks that seem to be vastly more focused on hating Windows, Mac OSX, and even other UNIX variants, the face of linux has changed. People that used to use *NIX as a personal choice did so because they truly loved computers. Now it seems to be the equivalent of a battle standard. Your Operating System is your country, your flag, and your religion. Thousands of angry people focused on their hatred of anything that is unlike themselves. It's GNU/Xenophobia.
The programming ramifications of this have become pervasive throughout many of the more popular distributions. In fact, the fundamental idea of the ideological Bazaar has been replaced by the Cathedral of intolerance. Instead of a focus on excellence and listening to the end-users, more and more developers are dismissive and prone to flame. More time is spent developing completely worthless and unrelated 'features' than in solidifying and optimizing the current code. Instead of, say fixing GNOME's inability to remember where I want my launch icons on the panel, we get wobbly windows that add absolutely nothing to the value of the desktop. Instead of writing just one really, really good IDE for C development, we get oodles of feature-incomplete environments that can't even compete with older Visual Studios or XCode; and this is supposed to be forte of *NIX. As children we are reinforced to eat our meat and vegetables before we get dessert. Yet more and more developers focus on the candy and leave the meat (optimizing) and vegetables (squashing bugs) virtually untouched. It's not as exciting of course, but it is necessary. In *buntu I struggle with yet another audio layer to cover the other layers to figure out why my sound card is doing a darn good impression of a french mime when I try to play some music. Meanwhile, a thousand fanboys upload yet another Youtube video of a spinning desktop cube with a Moby soundtrack.
Perhaps it is the fate of those of us from the previous generation to make way for the new one, but as we do so there should be some guidance, some hope, and some direction given. Reading through the comments in this story really drive home how far this has gone and the need for a gentle hand to remind people not just of the Bazaar, but also that we need to eat our meat and vegetables before we get dessert. This reply has gotten much longer than I originally planned though, but perhaps this conversation can continue in another venue.
Perhaps: Software becomes bloated one bit at a time.
I can install programs from the huge apt-get application universe
Huge, but still fragmented and not huge enough, your repo should be all of Sourceforge and everything else. You shouldn't have to live in the walled garden of your distro's repository. In Windows and OS X, packages are always installable for the most part. After Alien is integrated into the existing common package managers; or the managers are made compatible with RPMs, DEBs, and others; or the formats are upgraded so they can be more easily adopted by the existing managers; or at least one new format is created that is easy for the managers to adopt, this will continue to be a problem for Linux users, the ones who don't want to spend all day looking for dependencies and compiling software just to run a program. Compatibility with the existing Linux software ecosystem, while being mandatory, doesn't mean much to normal computer users when they can't click to install software from some developer's website because the developer gave up trying to support the thousands of distros who thought they were doing everyone a favor by requiring different packages for every version they put out.
Then, users will finally be able to update their system directly from the developers who put out those security updates instead of waiting for their distro to do it for them, because the devs will finally be able to support them directly because they're on GNU/Linux, and everyone will be much more free. The distro companies may not like that freedom very much, but tough for them, it's open source software so they will have to deal instead of trying to profit off that aspect of distro lock-in.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
I understand sarcasm quite well. I also know when to use it and when to indicate that I am using it.
You see, the fact that you persisted in poor approximations actually makes you look less intelligent than if you were to produce your satirical responses in proper form and format (i.e. following the style and usage rules for the names but using derogatory adjectives) for a more relevant rejoinder with the poster you were attempting to razz.
"Little is much when little you need."
I've seen a few performance regressions get flushed through the kernel. Some are just plain bugs and there are others certain scaling related improvements that sometimes trade off raw performance for throughput but ah looking at some of these benchmarks especially the memory read/write area has me thinking its got nothing to do with kernel bugs or bloat.
I'm thinking whoever did the benchmark may have neglected to properly configure bus/power management or use the same cpu microcode revisions.
Please share your thinbuntu script? I have an old Thinkpad R30 and this would be nice to use. Much thanks.
FYI, actually having sex is usually more fun than declining it.
What is this "sex" thing you speak of?
I've never used nlite. Looks interesting - I'll have to check it out in more detail.
Having said that, if I wanted to do a minimalistic Ubuntu install (as described by the parent), it doesn't take burning a special install disk. It's there. Included. And just as viable as the full-on all-defaults-enabled distro. No additional 3rd party apps and unexpected hacks required.
Whether "the masses" would do this or not... possibly not. But I'm not sure how that's a factor.
Well I converted from Mandriva 2008 to Ubuntu 8.04 about three months ago and I feel that Ubuntu is totally awesome. Fast friendly and easy to handle. I upgraded online to Ubuntu 8.10 and I can't say that I noticed any "slowing down" from 8.04.
There again, maybe I'm just happy to have found a distro which runs well on this piece of junk I call a computer.
My two bits
Clive DaSilva Email: clive.dasilva@gmail.com Ubuntu 18.10 Kernel 4.18
Yes. I would imagine ubuntu should get slower - on the same computer. Features in the OS get upgraded to make use of faster hardware as it becomes common. The criticism leveled at Vista is that it took too big of a leap in one go and the average computer didn't run it well enough.
The great thing about Ubuntu over Vista is that it is so customizable. You can use Vista with less eye candy, but you can use Ubuntu with Xfce instead of Gnome, or Fluxbox, or no desktop environment at all if performance bothers you. Sure Hardy may run slower in tests than Feisty on the same machine. Change all the settings in Hardy so that it is essentially Feisty and this "issue" goes away.
Censorship is the opposite of education. If neo-darwinism were defensible, people would not need to try and censor ID.
software gets slow a percent or so at a time.
Making something take one percent longer doesn't seem significant and probablly won't even be noticed in most testing. But do that a hundred times and your performance is worse than halved.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
You only forget that you are not supposed to be doing that. The very "license" (and I use parenthesis because it is so far from a license the y actually coined another term to call it) of windows say you can't hack it -
SO, no neither XP, neither other proprietary things are meant to be tweaked , and the fact they can illegally tweaked don't make then better. They only make you a trespasser.
-><- no
Phoronix stated in the second paragraph: "For our testing we had used the final Intel 32-bit releases of the four most recent Ubuntu releases except for Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex" where we used the Intrepid release candidate."
This benchmark would be more valuable if it compared how the ubuntu repository fared when compiled with the different available compilers:
-Intel compiler
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/howto-install-intel-c-compiler-10-on-ubuntu-feisty-fawn.html
-GNU compiler
-SunStudio compiler
http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/downloads/index.jsp
-Portland group has unifying binary for both intel 64-bit and amd 64-bit
http://www.pgroup.com/about/why_pgi.htm
-Pathscale compiler
http://www.pathscale.com/node/189
It would also be nice to discuss benchmarks for:
-AMD 32-bit Kernel
-AMD 64-bit Kernel
-Intel 64-bit Kernel
Mod me Redundant but the above post could've been written by me. When I was using Gentoo, the other options seemed to be either a too-out-of-date-for-the-desktop Debian install, or some other distro with overly tiny repositories.
Ubuntu came along, leveraging Debian's big software repository while providing up-to-date key packages in their own repos.
I never looked back. Debian powers my servers and Ubuntu powers my desktops (along with OS X)
'a';DROP TABLE users; SELECT * FROM DATA WHERE name LIKE '%'... if you're reading this, it didn't work.
Ubuntu = Vista of the linux world.
What's failure then?
If your tie is win, you shall not fail.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
+1, Epic Win.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
That's just retarded. KDE and GNOME libraries comprise similar functionality to the Windows foundation, in different ways with different strengths, and it just happens you are able to run both at once.
There are plenty of "small" media players you can install that depend on as few libs as possible, including some that run via a command line interface. You have the full spectrum of features and requirements available to you. Try saying that about Windows, where a multi-megabyte beast like foobar2000 is considered "lightweight".
Sam ty sig.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Futurama#The_Problem_With_Popplers
Fry: They're like sex, except I'm having them!
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
You're so cool, may I be your fanboy?
The outcome you don't want. Aim for failure, you can always be surprised when you win.
signature is pants
Yes, Ubuntu is getting slower in some ways & faster than others.
I'd really like to see better benchmarks than this... A lot of this could be caused by the compiler -- as they are compiling the suite separately on each platform? Also, the is it something underneath Java that is a problem, or just the new Java version (which one?).
I know and understand that GCC takes longer to compile code -- but that's because the GNU's are trying to put together an architecture that is easier to create optimizations in the chain. Looks like they have a long way to go to actually build better code... Unless the code intentionally tries to defeat GCC from it's attempts at optimizing.
What I'd like to see is more focused benchmarks so that it's possible to track the problems down.
1) Kernel benchmarks compiled on the same version and flags of the compiler in ANSI C.
2) Java benchmarks per java version in each OS version.
3) GTK Benchmarks written in C -- same binary.
4) Mesa benchmarks written in C -- same binary.
I agree about cars. I want to replace my 1990 MR2 Turbo which I bought in 2000 for NZ1313K. Now if I try and find a new car for $13,000 there is no way I can find any mod engined 200HP rice rockets. They are all old slow junkers or much more expensive than my budget allows.
They are also loaded with extra features like ABS brakes, adaptive dampers, airbags, pretensioning seatbelits, CD changers, run flat tyres, and all manner of other goodies that just add weight, not performance.
Just like new OS's I guess
If I recall correctly, the scheduler changes that were put into the Kernel were primarily to increase "Perceived Desktop Performance" at the expense of "Actual Overall Performance". What this means to me, is that there should be less latency switching between applications and the application I'm currently focused on should get scheduling preference, but, the overall performance, meaning actual work getting done by all applications, could be less.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
You mean like "Jealous Jabberwock"?
Personally my preference would be for something like "Jumpy Jackalope", but that's not the tenor that I think he was reaching for.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Hey! I liked my bubble!
Now I'm going to spend the rest of the day installing Gentoo.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
"your repo should be all of Sourceforge and everything else." ./configure && make && make install. It's better that its Windows' counterpart, isn't it? (or is this a case of double measure? When will be Windows "repo" all of Sourceforge and everything else?)
"You shouldn't have to live in the walled garden of your distro's repository."
Why not?
"In Windows and OS X, packages are always installable for the most part."
Sure? Try installing "all of Sourceforge and everything else" on Windows or OS X. When you manage to install even a significant fraction of what you can install on Linux return, please.
"After Alien is integrated into the existing common package managers"
First you should know what are you talking about. You'd know then Alien doesn't add so much to the equation.
"or the managers are made compatible with RPMs, DEBs, and others"
Again, you don't know what are you talking about but still try to offer your opinion as one from a knowledgeable person.
"this will continue to be a problem for Linux users, the ones who don't want to spend all day looking for dependencies and compiling software just to run a program."
I simply can't remember when was the last time I compiled a program on my desktop, probably years. The plain truth is that people that "don't want to spend all day looking for dependencies and compiling software" simply don't do that.
"Then, users will finally be able to update their system directly from the developers who put out those security updates instead of waiting for their distro to do it for them"
That's so wrong from so many points of view, I simply don't know where to start. Anyway, I'll start by the easy part: how many of those developers you mention do indeed publish security (mind you: just *security*) updates? Answer: almost no one. So you are talking about an imposibility; you are offering an "update" for a non-existant landscape. And then, even on the land of "compile once run everwhere", Java, that's it, version X of foo only runs nice along version Y of bar (as long as the zoot toolkit is installed too, of course). Are those "end developers" so to say, the ones accepting the burden of integrating their software nicely with dozens of other related programs? Is my version of ssl going to run nice with the last version the people from glibc provides? Will work last Venema's Postfix with last version of Amavis? (but Amavis people is still working with last-but-one Postfix). How long will Venema support his last-but-one Postfix? I'm still not ready to integrate the changes from the last one on my environment...
It's easy to offer almighty solutions to imagined problems... as long as it's not one himself the one to deal with all those nitty-gritty details (all those petty nuisances are not for us, the people with the great vision, are they?).
Epic thread if I have ever seen one is indeed, is epic.
But... the future refused to change.
Slackware -- 1. Anglo Saxon word, meaning "I'll keep looking for glory fighting a war that has already been won by not less than 10 other factions of Linux." 2. Opposite of Slack (Sub-Genious) 3. Some old bastard that couldn't cope with the change that made life easier so they could go on and cure cancer, aids, write great games in OpenGL.
Fedora -- 1. French word for giving the man a hand litterly (reach around). Think French hooker working the corporate ladder but just enough of a slut to get stuck on wall street as the dirty secret wives find out about from chapter 11 filings.
Ubuntu -- 1. Ancient Atlantian word for enlightenment. 2. The church of subgenious refers to this as Slack. (you can slack off and it still works for you). 3. Will brang world unitity. 4. The Anti-Christ Ph33r's it.
Mandriva -- 1. German word for " Frankly France Fucking Sucks " 2. The sound of dribbling gravey out of your mouth on your mama's mashed potatos. 3. Man-Driver -- Something remotely sexual. Mandrake was a renown homosexual. That's why they went atomic when they found out the name was being used by a french whore selling tricks for x86.
Debian -- Ghandi -- 1. An Incan word for a Hindu cow that when beat with a stick pops like a pinata with all sorts of delicious candies full of razor blades and rat poison. 2. A mistranslation of an Incan word for a Hindu cow that when beat witha stick pops like a pinata with a bunch of mexicans hiding out in hopes of finding a job in America. 3. An obsessed pervert who liked sed(x) so much he named his condom after his girlfriend.
*I can keep going as this is fun
Turbo-LInux -- A Japaneese word for a french whore who didn't use a condom. Nobody has heard much of her lately and it was assumed that she was a parasite who got absorbed into another parasitic whore named deb L i n dos (dallas). *say it really fast. ... hope I helped with the lexican
I currently have three Ubuntu-based systems. I have customized the GNU/Linux distribution for each system (...) using a script that I call "Thinbuntu". It has all the features I need.
Can you share this script with the rest of us?
But hey, since it is still faster than windows XP, I don't care.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Oh come on, thats funny shit! I havent laughed this hard in weeks!
Almost all OSes get slower as they grow, but processing speed gets faster, and in the end, it will even out. You can count on this trend continuing to happen at least until AI gets to the point where computers can get smart enough to redesign and reimplement their OS to be more efficient. However, at that point SkyNet becomes self-aware, and you'll need to contact John Connor via a ham radio.
Making love is more like a series of tubes.
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
I was in a similar situation. It was really awesome.
Then I had a spiritual moment and got married.
I recommend you don't do this.
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
Jaunty Jackalope FWIW.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2008-September/000481.html
"There are some specific goals that we need to meet in Jaunty. One of
them is boot time. We want Ubuntu to boot as fast as possible - both in
the standard case, and especially when it is being tailored to a
specific device. The Jackalope is known for being so fast that it's
extremely hard to catch, and breeds only when lightning flashes. Let's
see if we can make booting or resuming Ubuntu blindingly quick."
Don't point that gun at him, he's an unpaid intern!
A number of significant kernel changes had went on between these Ubuntu Linux releases including the Completely Fair Scheduler, the SLUB allocator, tickless kernel support
These are kernel level modifications. Many distributions have switched to the SLUB allocator as the default allocator. CFS has proven it's worth (that's why it was included in the mainline kernel). I don't know whether the tickless kernel support is enabled for most stock kernels or not. I use Arch Linux, which upgrades the kernel if available every time I do a system upgrade. So far, I haven't experienced any degradation in performance. It's likely that the drivers for some chipset have been flawed, and this chipset is used in the machine where the recent Ubuntu was tested. Also, if the desktop effects feature got activated during upgrade of the text machine, that can explain a small amount of performance degradation, but not as much as a 2x-3x degradation in LAME performance.
The point is, we must test Ubuntu on different machines to determine if it's Ubuntu, the kernel or some hardware specific issue that is causing this.
That's just how KDE is designed...
That said, if you have a distro which defaults to gnome it's unlikely to have included amarok as it's default media player, and if you want a lightweight media player there are several better choices.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Will red ones get me a blowjob?
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Removing my mod.
Ehm, how many forks of Linux can you list? I know of none that have wide enough use to be confusing to anyone susceptible to confusion over the matter.
hi there, new best friend!
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
how does Butthurt Busybody work out for you?
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
In an internal memo SGI's Tom Davis criticised some of what had come to pass in Irix 5.1. Within the memo he propsed that it was effectively a death by a thousand cuts (well 20 cuts I guess):
The memo is a great read and if you have the time it's worth a look (it's a shame no one will see this comment really). It's hard to tell whether Ubuntu has a similar situation - without correct measurement it can be terrifyingly hard to tell whether performance has really declined...
If you can run apt-get commands, you can make your own subset of Ubuntu. Grab and burn the Minimal installation CD that suits you:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD
LTS gives you the most bang for the buck. (o;
Boot; install the minimal command-line environment (CLI).
Restart. Run apt-get update.
Then run apt-get {pkg-list}
where pkg-list is a space-separated list of the pieces that you want to install. Here's my list.
xorg gnome-core gdm synaptic gnome-app-install gdebi ubuntu-gdm-themes gconf-editor gnome-volume-manager gparted conky alacarte xterm smbclient update-manager update-notifier pcmanfm file-roller nautilus-open-terminal evince cups-pdf system-config-printer-gnome arj genisoimage lha ncompress p7zip p7zip-full sharutils unace unrar build-essential
firefox gnome-utils
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
For example you can read an Ubuntu/Mandriva/Fedora comparison. You can find other benchmarks by scouring the Phoronix articles page. I have a feeling the result is usually a wash with no distro coming out on top on all tests though...
One thing I do not yet understand is why all modern distros targeted at at least "mid-end" hardware (say, you won't probably try to run Ubuntu with less than 128MB of RAM) are compiled for >=486. As far as I recall, the original Pentium was 586 and Pentium Pro was the 686. How many of the <=586s have you seen "in the wild", running Ubuntu? Or at all, for that matter?
I have read those in the past. I was wondering if something had changed.
If it is still a wash then the decrease in benchmark performance is a Linux issue and not an Ubuntu issue.
Which to be honest what I would bet really is going on.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
That was almost good, but your skill with adjective use needs to be redefined, and as normal, you are now attacking me instead of the distribution. Maybe I should cry? I would prefer to give you a more intelligently worded insult. I'll even use Busybody for your noun, since that was relatively clever.
Maybe Bilge-sucking Busybody?
Too piratical? What about Bobble-brained?
If you feel you absolutely must go with the whole "gay" reference (I wonder why you would choose such a immature insult...), perhaps you would consider Sphincter-breached Slug.
It may not be a "b" but it works much better from the standpoint of including an actual animal instead of an adjective that nominally serves as a noun.
Or you could apply those to yourself and save me the trouble of finding an insult for you.
"Little is much when little you need."
Hah, I wonder if you saw that I had mentioned the Jabberwock in an earlier reference to Ubuntu.
Indeed Jealous Jabberwock could serve or for those that are tired of it all - Jaded Jabberwock?
"Little is much when little you need."
You make a good point, but finding out that the girls are purely imaginary constructs of your broken ego is less fun.
Probably best he stick to declining them.
Same here. I started with Gentoo, and after two years had grown sick of having to compile everything. Moved on to Debian - was much better, but I eventually got tired of mucking with config files in vim. So, as far as Linux goes, it's Ubuntu for me now. I don't really miss anything, and my past experience with Debian still pays off every now and then (and, well, I just like aptitude to manage my packages).
I have Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex Beta on the same PC, same H/D, that I have version 8.04 Hardy Heron. I timed the boot up time for both versions. Ibex actually boots up slightly faster than Hardy.
I accept your apology.
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
True - but you still can't plug in a random wireless card from BestBuy and connect to the net.
And you can't play 95% of the games people play.
You made me apologize a lot. You are a tough person to please.
"Little is much when little you need."
Turns out that when you get it to a usable state, and stop screwing with it, Gentoo works a lot like Ubuntu.
I think Ubuntu provides more, but even assuming that's the case, I'll take Ubuntu any day for the simple reason that precompiled binaries install faster than source code.
Sure, you can use binary tarballs on Gentoo, and you can speed things up with a shared binary cache, and with distcc and ccache (or whatever you kids are using nowdays), but that falls under "screwing with it" -- and if it brings me to something which works as well as Ubuntu, what was the point?
I'm glad I used Gentoo -- it gave me a much deeper understanding of how the OS is put together. But I'm equally glad I no longer use Gentoo.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Just because you can easily tweak anything doesn't mean you should or need to.
However, if I don't need to tweak more than what Ubuntu gives me, what's the point of Gentoo? At least with Ubuntu, I'm not compiling all the time.
Apparently you need the barriers of an OS that is more difficult to tweak in order to keep you on task.
I haven't found Ubuntu to be more difficult to tweak, for things that I care about. I could probably use Gentoo just fine.
But again -- no point. Ubuntu just works, out of the box, no tweaking needed, no waiting for things to compile. It installs faster, and it updates faster.
On top of that, it's popular, which means more packages out of the box, more tutorials, etc.
It's probably the same reason that many people prefer Windows to linux
I've found Windows to be harder to tweak in ways that I actually want to tweak it.
Example: I had to use a Mac for a week or two, when my old laptop was dead. I was mousing all the time. The few things which had decent keyboard shortcuts, they were all different than what I had on Ubuntu, and pretty much none of them were customizable.
Then I bought this new laptop, with Ubuntu preloaded -- wiped it and installed Kubuntu.
Within the first few hours of use, I'd either set or discovered keyboard shortcuts for everything. Logout menu is win+backspace -- then alt+s to suspend, alt+t for turn off, etc. Win+arrowkeys packs the current window to the next edge -- makes it very easy to organize my windows, or pack things against the edge of the screen. When dragging or resizing windows, they snap to each other and the screen. Sloppy focus. Good package management.
I could go on...
These are all things that I was able to do either out of the box, or within the first hour or two of use. Most of them simply are not available, in any form, on Windows or OS X. The exceptions aren't customizable.
Understand: These are things I can tweak quickly and easily, and directly improve my user experience. Changing a USE flag, or playing with -Os/O2/O3/etc, provides no obvious benefit, often no measurable benefit, over the defaults Ubuntu gives me.
And that ignores sibling poster -- yes, Gentoo does require a lot of maintenance. But even if it didn't, I've simply found Ubuntu to be as good or better in almost every respect.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Then why the hell were any of you running Gentoo in the first place ?
Because, at the time, it seemed logical -- after all, it would give me a faster computer (though mostly because I was more careful about which packages to install, not because I was so incredibly optimized).
And it was easier to hack, in some respects.
What happened was, I grew up, I got a job, and I now have significantly less time to spend fucking around in a terminal just to get my OS to work.
And because of said job, I can now afford computers that are fast enough that I can't actually keep them busy. I used to be all about Fluxbox, -Os (not a lot of RAM or cache), and removing everything I possibly could from USE, killing as many daemons as I could, etc. Now I realize that I can load up a full KDE, and pile things on top of that (including several GNOME apps, even a Windows app), even install MySQL (which on Ubuntu means it's always running) and forget about it for months, and the only thing that ever feels slow on this machine is Flash.
And this is a laptop.
Gentoo is all about tinkering and customising, and being offered the flexibility to do so, not ease of setting up.
The point is that I can tinker and customize Ubuntu, also -- and it's easy to setup.
The things which Gentoo provides that Ubuntu doesn't -- mainly, the compile-time tweaks and optimizations -- ok, it's cool to play with those, but in the end, they don't do much for me. Maybe -- maybe, possibly, if I sacrifice a goat -- I could squeeze a few more frames per second out of a game. Now, I get ten or twenty more by rebooting to Windows.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Me personally? Installed via a live-cd, got the essentials working, and called it quits. Yes, more work than Ubuntu. A day or so more. But the speed is impressive, and it was worth the first few days of fighting with it.
Make no mistake - I have a Ubuntu netbook and a backup desktop running Ubuntu for when I need something special that doesn't exist on the Gentoo machine. But for day-to-day stuff, it's far faster.
I just have to treat it like a prima-dona, and never change things. To each their own, I guess.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "I'm sick of fucking with Linux in order to get it to do what I want but I really don't like the alternatives."
Quite. Or, alternatively:
"Ubuntu" -- an African word meaning, "I'm paid to make my code run efficiently on other people's computers, not to dick around making other people's code run efficiently on my computer."
the speed is impressive, and it was worth the first few days of fighting with it.
I think I've said it farther up in this thread, but...
I found no difference in speed. The difference was largely what I chose to install, but frankly, I run a full Kubuntu/KDE desktop, it works well, and I can't actually make it feel slow. (Yes, I've tried.)
About the most I could do to optimize at this point is to shave a few more seconds off boot time, but... it's login in 25 seconds, and usable maybe 3 seconds after login.
Yes, I do have very good hardware. But you know what? Spending days fighting with something is no longer fun, and is also no longer economical. It doesn't take that many days of fighting with it to realize I could be working instead, and simply buy more speed.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
that was a short post. I was expecting another long winded disertation failing to prove me wrong.
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
My posting history is varied and interesting. You seem to have a history of short posts that miss the point entirely or are simply trolls :)
By the way: I think you missed the part where I won every time. You think you are the one playing the game, but, if you noticed my posting history, I usually only respond to the people that sincerely believe their tripe.
In this case, I've been using an obvious and well-documented troll and his half-way clever comments to massage my ego this whole time! There: I admitted it! And now that I have done so, I'll even let you get the last word.
"Little is much when little you need."
XP Embedded - Not available to the general user - and 140MB .... for an embedded system!
Try DSL - Fully GUI system, with everything you need for a basic system can boot from a USB key and will work on a 486DX with 16MB RAM - Can run totally in RAM with only 128MB memory - try that with windows ...
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
here's 3 last words: unwarranted self importance.
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
I too loved the compiler optimizations, however the process could be offloaded elsewhere if you just had a package management system that stored different architecture specific optimizations pre-built. The idea is already implemented in things these optimized Mac builds of firefox. What if we had an entire OS installer and package manager that downloaded binaries for our particular architecture?
There would certainly be space costs on the server side, but I don't see why it's anything worse than hosting entire livedvds for obscure architectures when most of your users will be using x86 anyways.
Blog
That is now one of my favorite quotes. You should write a book so it would be easier to quote you.
There are two OS in My ASUS Intel notebook. one is Win XP-sp3 another is Ubuntu8.04. when I am running ubuntu,the fan of the CPU makes little sound,but when it is xp, the fan is so noisy,just like a motor...
No, this is a version of windows specifically designed to be configured to make customised install discs. There is nothing illegal about any of this.
I moved to Ubuntu from SuSE a couple of years ago. I used Debian for years, but wanted something a bit more up-to-date without having to run unstable. SuSE was quite good, but I was even happier with Ubuntu.
So, yesterday I upgraded from 8.04 to 8.10.
Now my system is slow. Paging down in Firefox isn't instantaneous like it used to be. Switching from one virtual desktop takes a couple of seconds.
Text mode apps running in a terminal are still fast. Apache still serves up pages quickly. It's just GUI stuff that is slow. I've also tried switching from Gnome to KDE and that didn't help. (It actually made things worse. They seem to be trying to match the performance of Vista as well as the look with this version of KDE.)
I'm probably going to have to move back to 8.04. :-(
Yes, running binaries is soooooo insecure, because of course you go through every line of source code before you compile your programs to make sure there's nothing malicious in them. Sorry, but that isn't my idea of security even though that's one option. I can download and run binary packages if I want to, and there's nothing impossible about doing so. You can *already* do that, what I'm saying is they should be *packages* instead of binaries so you can easily remove and update them if you want to. There is nothing impossible about that, so stop living in the past and think about what new users want for a change.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
xp and kubuntu intrepid ibex on dual boot here on a brand new laptop.
Ibex is slow compared to debian. XP is slower than both or than ubuntu 8.04 32 bit: AV software to blame?
Ibex is a lil unstable - though some updates today replace the crashing kde panel - but everything worked out of the box: graphic wifi network printers. windows started downloading jvm updates twice, and i had to track down the printers cds for the drivers.
A 20% loss in performance is NOT progress, but regression. We slam Vista because it provides very little MORE than XP did with a huge cost in speed, yet somehow when Ubuntu does the same thing we call it progress.
Progress in an OS is providing more with less, hence the Kernel changes to provide better service. Sounds like maybe they aren't working out as well as expected. Would be interesting to see if the apps that performed better like GPG had their gains in performance from changes in their code vs changes in the kernel.
Erm, no that wasn't a trolling comment, that's actually my honest opinion. I believe in total software freedom for Linux users, so sue me.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
Amarok's dependencies aren't actually 180MB--that's just the way Ubuntu (or Debian) packages the KDE libraries. On Gentoo, for example, you can compile Amarok to total, with dependencies, less than iTunes' 60+MB.
Finally, if your program actually *is* going to need 180MB of code, you can bet it's better to have it separated into a reusable library.