Ubuntu 8.10 vs. Mac OS X 10.5.5 Benchmarks

An anonymous reader writes "As a sequel to their Is Ubuntu Getting Slower? Phoronix now has out an article that compares the performance of Ubuntu 8.10 to Apple's Mac OS X 10.5.5. They tested both the x86 and x86_64 spins of Ubuntu and threw at both operating systems a number of graphics, disk, computational, and Java benchmarks, among others. With the Mac Mini used in some of the comparisons, 'Leopard' was faster, while in others it was a tight battle."

Comments

First post.

[Computershack]

w00t. First post!

Re:First post.

[Anonymous Coward]

Frits Psot!1!!!11!! There, fixed that for ya.

Ubuntu if you want to

[denison]

The lady's not for buntu'ing

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[ShieldW0lf]

Did anyone expect that Apples OS was going to be beaten on Apple hardware by a generic Linux distribution?

Which is faster on my Gateway box?

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[Anonymous Coward]

What are the meaningful differences between a Mac and a normal PC that would change performance??? Will a Core2 run faster in a differently shaped box?

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[ShieldW0lf]

Mac OS X doesn't have to accommodate variances in the hardware it is running on in the same way that Linux or Windows has to do. Therefore, it can exploit the hardware better. It's the same principle that applied to game developers targeting the XBox rather than a standard PC. Standard PCs might be more powerful, but the XBox is a non-moving target, so you don't need to write to the lowest common denominator, and can exploit the particular strengths of the hardware better. So, it's unreasonable to expect an OS that is written to work on multiple platforms to compete in this fashion.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[0racle]

Just a few things off the top of my head, but the OS and filesystem. Probably why the article is about comparing Ubuntu with OS X and not a whitebox machine with no OS to a Mac with no OS.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[nicolas.kassis]

Except OSX doesn't do a very good job at it. Please snow leopard, FIX IT!

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the difference is that OSX doesn't enforce fsync actually finishing the write to disk. A tradeoff of reliability for performance. On top of that, SQLite is typically compiled to aggressively fsync on most distributions.

Combine that with ext3 forcing fsync to flush all pending writes before returning, and things get really ugly.

Firefox 3 has already discovered this with their use of SQLite for history handling. See complaints about firefox causing disks to constantly spin up, and 30 second system stalls...

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, just keep drinking the kool-aid, you buy that next update. Trust us, we'll fix it!

Idiot.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[EastCoastSurfer]

Hmm...Apple isn't 'fixing' anything. Snow Leopard is supposed to add a lot of new features under the hood. Now, only time will tell if those features work as advertised.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac OS X doesn't have to accommodate variances in the hardware it is running on in the same way that Linux or Windows has to do.

It doesn't, huh? You mean like three generations of PowerPC CPUs, a second CPU architecture (x86), all the different flavors of HDDs, DVD drives, video cards, and other installable and peripheral devices you can add third-party, and then just about every bit of hardware Apple has come out with since the G3 processor debuted?

Therefore, it can exploit the hardware better. It's the same principle that applied to game developers targeting the XBox rather than a standard PC. Standard PCs might be more powerful, but the XBox is a non-moving target, so you don't need to write to the lowest common denominator, and can exploit the particular strengths of the hardware better.

Okay. The XBox uses a motherboard. Apple has several models using a variety of motherboard and hardware dating back to who-knows-when that it has to account for. You're comparing a console's static array of hardware to an entire production line. That's hardly the same thing.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[ShieldW0lf]

Mac OS X doesn't have to accommodate variances in the hardware it is running on in the same way that Linux or Windows has to do.

It doesn't, huh? You mean like three generations of PowerPC CPUs, a second CPU architecture (x86), all the different flavors of HDDs, DVD drives, video cards, and other installable and peripheral devices you can add third-party, and then just about every bit of hardware Apple has come out with since the G3 processor debuted?

Therefore, it can exploit the hardware better. It's the same principle that applied to game developers targeting the XBox rather than a standard PC. Standard PCs might be more powerful, but the XBox is a non-moving target, so you don't need to write to the lowest common denominator, and can exploit the particular strengths of the hardware better.

Okay. The XBox uses a motherboard. Apple has several models using a variety of motherboard and hardware dating back to who-knows-when that it has to account for. You're comparing a console's static array of hardware to an entire production line. That's hardly the same thing.

Ok, you've expressed how much more variance there is in the Apple product line compared to the XBox. Now, just for the sake of completeness, why don't you express how much more variance in the supported hardware for Ubuntu compared to Apple.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[kennedr2]

Does Ubuntu support PPC?

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[bonch]

Unless you can prove that OS X is taking advantage of hardware features that other operating systems are unable to, your point is baseless. OS X even runs on generic PCs with a few hacks.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, you have to beg apple to fix shit. Glad I have Ubuntu so I can fix problems myself, luckily I don't have problems like you iTard.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[Stormx2]

It used to, but doesn't any more. Lack of demand.

And incase you're saying that PPC support is more important than the tens of thousands of devices linux supports, think again. I've never had a hardware setup ubuntu hasn't worked with. It can be tricky at times, but my digital camera works straight away, my phone does, my MP3 player, web camera, usb headset, usb/wireless mouse, etc etc etc. The hardware support in linux absolutely vast, and support for non-peripheral hardware is going to be pretty tight.

So yeah, linux supporting everything does mean lowest-common-denominator development, as the grandparent said.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[LingNoi]

You know how you find out?

You type "Ubuntu PPC" into Google and it's the second hit.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[Lars T.]

lol, you have to beg apple to fix shit. Glad I have Ubuntu so I can fix problems myself, luckily I don't have problems like you iTard.

Fine - call us when your fixed Ubuntu beats OS X in all benchmarks.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[ShieldW0lf]

It used to, but doesn't any more. Lack of demand. And incase you're saying that PPC support is more important than the tens of thousands of devices linux supports, think again. I've never had a hardware setup ubuntu hasn't worked with. It can be tricky at times, but my digital camera works straight away, my phone does, my MP3 player, web camera, usb headset, usb/wireless mouse, etc etc etc. The hardware support in linux absolutely vast, and support for non-peripheral hardware is going to be pretty tight. So yeah, linux supporting everything does mean lowest-common-denominator development, as the grandparent said.

It's worth mentioning that G3 support was dropped in Leopard, and that PowerPC support was dropped entirely from the developer version of Snow Leopard.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[wastedlife]

Used to, but they dropped official support for it a while back. Not sure if they are bringing back support with the PS3 version though.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[wastedlife]

IIRC, there isn't a normal BIOS on a Mac, and for Boot Camp one is emulated. Theoretically, this emulation could cause additional latency to the hardware access. How much of an effect this actually has is unknown. I am also unsure if Ubuntu on a Mac requires the Boot Camp BIOS.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[ShieldW0lf]

Unless you can prove that OS X is taking advantage of hardware features that other operating systems are unable to, your point is baseless. OS X even runs on generic PCs with a few hacks.

If you have to hack it to even get it to run, how is this relevant in the slightest?

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[eggnet]

If you have to hack it to even get it to run, how is this relevant in the slightest?

Because the hack doesn't slow anything down nor would the "hack" placed in the main OS slow anything down. OSX pays the performance penalty of supporting extreme variation in hardware by having drivers and APIs that abstract functionality. The fact that there are only drivers written for hardware that Apple sells is a moot point in terms of performance penalties.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[nxtw]

Mac OS X doesn't have to accommodate variances in the hardware it is running on in the same way that Linux or Windows has to do. Therefore, it can exploit the hardware better. It's the same principle that applied to game developers targeting the XBox rather than a standard PC. Standard PCs might be more powerful, but the XBox is a non-moving target, so you don't need to write to the lowest common denominator, and can exploit the particular strengths of the hardware better. So, it's unreasonable to expect an OS that is written to work on multiple platforms to compete in this fashion.

The Xbox was always sold with the same chipset. There was no need to have interchangable drivers.

OS X Intel has been sold (so far, and at least) on systems with Intel 945GM, 945PM, GM965, GMS965, PM965, 5000X, 5400 and nVidia 9400M system chipsets. That's two (plus one low-power variation) Intel mobile chipsets with Intel integrated graphics, two Intel mobile chipsets with PCI Express x16 graphics, two Intel server/workstation chipsets, and one nVidia integrated mobile chipset. It supports two generations of Intel GPUs (GMA 950 and X3100), at least three generations of GeForce GPUs (7, 8, and 9-series), and at least four generations of Radeon GPUs (X1k, HD2k, HD3k, and HD4k).
There aren't a whole lot of hardware-specific assumptions or optimizations that can be made without making things only work on on that hardware... which is why hardware-specific code is in interchangeable drivers.

Apple can't even assume that every Intel Mac has a 64-bit dual core CPU; the first Intel Macs had Core Solo or Core Duo CPUs. Apple can assume that every Intel CPU will have SSE2 and SSE3, though, so many floating-point operations are performed using SSE instructions instead of the x87 FPU. But software can be compiled to use SSE on any other operating system as well. (SSE3 is featured on nearly all Intel and CPUs.)

They could write code/compiler optimizations that result in faster execution on some CPUs, but they're already supporting the P6 microarchitecture (the original Core Duo was close in design to the Pentium M) and the Core microarchitecture, and Nehalem will be here soon.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[willy_me]

Ok, you've expressed how much more variance there is in the Apple product line compared to the XBox. Now, just for the sake of completeness, why don't you express how much more variance in the supported hardware for Ubuntu compared to Apple.

Ubuntu obviously supports more hardware but that was not the point. The point was that Mac OS X is not designed to target only specific hardware - it was designed just like all the other operating systems out there. Support for additional hardware can easily be added with a driver should someone decide to write one. It can even run on AMD hardware if you download the patched version.

So the grandparent was correct - the optimizations developers can make for static hardware like the XBox do not apply to Mac OS X. There are simply way to many different Mac hardware configurations out there.

Having said that, Snow Leopard is said to offer many optimizations - but they are not device specific.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[eiapoce]

Mac OS X doesn't have to accommodate variances in the hardware it is running on in the same way that Linux or Windows has to do.

Truth is that OsX DOES have to accomodate variances.

There are several types of CPUs used in macbooks at least 2 different architectures (PCC and CORE 2 - The latter with different steps). Differences in hardware extend also to chipsets, graphic cards, network adapters and other hardware.

Proof that OSX runs flexibly on various platforms is the fact that with proper hacks it can run on AMD cpus that have never been included in apple's hardware.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[Atti K.]

Mark Shuttleworth, is that you?

Jokes aside, at least with OS X performance is the only issue that has to be fixed...

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[Atti K.]

You have to hack it 'cause Apple puts in checks to prevent running it on non-Apple hardware.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[bonch]

It's relevant because you claimed OS X relies on the capabilities of a subset of hardware dictated by Apple, and I pointed out that OS X happily runs on generic PC hardware through copy-protection hacks.

Really, it's bleedingly obvious that it's relevant, and you know that--you just don't have a counterargument for it

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[Atti K.]

Mmmm, wait... does Linux use the BIOS for hardware access?? (excluding the boot process) This is something new to me.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[wastedlife]

Sorry, my brain fell 10 years behind when I wrote that. So the only point of latency would be boot times, which shouldn't affect the benchmarks. Plus, it looks like elilo is capable of booting linux directly from EFI, negating the need for Boot Camp. Although TFA says they used Boot Camp.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[Teilo]

First: Linux has had EFI support since early 2000 via elilo.

Second: The "emulation" as you call it is not emulation in the same sense that Rosetta is emulation. They implemented a BIOS interface in EFI itself. It does not slow anything down.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[Atti K.]

Well I guess (really just a guess) stock Ubuntu doesn't include elilo/doesn't support booting from EFI, that's why they used BootCamp.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[ShieldW0lf]

It's relevant because you claimed OS X relies on the capabilities of a subset of hardware dictated by Apple, and I pointed out that OS X happily runs on generic PC hardware through copy-protection hacks.

No, I didn't. I claimed that OSX does not have any need to deal with the vast number of use cases that Linux or Windows does, and that they can tweak the way their software runs to be more efficient on the small selection of hardware they do support.

The fact that you can run it if you hack it is irrelevant. I could probably run the XBox OS on a mainframe with the right virtual machine, but that doesn't change the fact that the XBox OS was tailored to perform optimally on the XBox hardware, and it doesn't change the fact that OSX was tailored to perform optimally on Apple hardware.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[agrounds]

So, you fixed all the crap linux audio layers yourself? You fix compiz crashes and feature instability too? How about Flash? How is that flash working for you on large videos?

Ubuntu zealots are far worse that Apple zealots. At least the Apple ones admit to the problems without backpedaling to "OMG TEH CODEZ" when there have been persistent problems in Ubuntu for years. You haven't really fixed shit. You just trot out the line like a good little group-think conformist.

You want to talk about a moving target... A six month release cycle that breaks as many things as it fixes? Every release comes rife with new issues that could have been avoided with some decent QA.

Be realistic. Ubuntu is a crap distribution, and I will never understand the fanboy elitism around here that surrounds it. At least with Gentoo it made sense back in the day, since there was actual coding, patching, and real optimization in place. Ubuntu is worse than OpenSolaris, FreeBSD, Fedora, Slackware, or even the Debian it sprang forth from. It is the distribution that a generation of mascara-wearing angst-monkeys lives and swears by in the false sense of "sticking it to the man".

HINT: You are not sticking it to the man. No one gives a shit what OS you run on your home computer. Neither Microsoft nor Apple are pining away for that 0.92% of the market share you and your ilk occupy.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[bonch]

No, I didn't.

Yes, you did. Look, you're about to do it again:

I claimed that OSX does not have any need to deal with the vast number of use cases that Linux or Windows does, and that they can tweak the way their software runs to be more efficient on the small selection of hardware they do support.

You believe OS X exploits the capabilities of a subset of hardware, and the implication is that such exploitation is the reason for OS X's speed over Ubuntu. You even used the word "exploits" in your previous post about it.

The fact that you can run it if you hack it is irrelevant.

You're purposely being obtuse, so I'll spell it out for you. Your argument was about performance on a reduced set of hardware, and I pointed out that OS X runs outside that set of hardware. It runs fast on it, too. Apple isn't taking advantage of some mysterious set of hardware features only they are privy to--an Intel Mac is made of standard PC parts.

You're obsessing over the "hacks" part and ignoring that the hacks are for the copy protection.

I could probably run the XBox OS on a mainframe with the right virtual machine, but that doesn't change the fact that the XBox OS was tailored to perform optimally on the XBox hardware, and it doesn't change the fact that OSX was tailored to perform optimally on Apple hardware.

How many times do people have to point out that OS X runs well on generic non-Apple hardware? Are you just going to keep ignoring it in every post you make?

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[ShieldW0lf]

How many times do people have to point out that OS X runs well on generic non-Apple hardware? Are you just going to keep ignoring it in every post you make?

Being that the subject of the discussion is the validity of the conclusions that are based on these benchmarks, and being that there is an absence of benchmarks that substantiate your anecdotal evidence, I'm likely going to keep ignoring it until you put up benchmarks to prove what you say. Because nothing I've seen here is even slightly conclusive.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[TenDollarMan]

Wharrgarbl!!!

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[Thumper_SVX]

Jokes aside, at least with OS X performance is the only issue that has to be fixed...

You haven't used Finder much, have you?

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[wastedlife]

First: That is true, but I've since read the article and they are using Boot Camp and not elilo.

Second: See my correction following Atti K.'s response. I'm not sure what I was thinking, since the BIOS has only been used for boot and not OS Hardware operation since DOS. Even if the "emulation" of the BIOS introduces any latency, it would only be present until the BIOS hands off the boot process to the OS. So, my bad, I'll stop shooting my mouth off now.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[bonch]

I see, now you're going to jump to a different topic and pretend that the burden of proof is on me when you were the one claiming OS X "exploits" a subset of hardware and only runs well on that subset.

You are the one who needs to provide benchmarks for your claim. Next.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[davidkv]

Can you elaborate on that?

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[glittalogik]

Yes.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[Burz]

Can you elaborate on that?

Yeah, I wish he would just tell us how he really feels.

(Snicker.... :)

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[Rhapsody Scarlet]

Kubuntu 8.04 is working just fine here (though I'm withholding judgement on 8.10 until I've had some hands-on experience), I've heard a lot of bitching about the six month release cycle myself but never had any real problems due to it. Six months to stabilize the revision of Debian Sid they've forked from seems enough from where I'm sitting. Besides, all distros have people who hate them. I was once thinking of switching to Fedora because someone I respect talked about it like it was the best thing since sliced bread, them someone I have equal respect for switches away from Fedora, citing numerous major problems. Who the hell do I listen to? Eventually, I listened to myself, and stuck with Kubuntu. As I said at the start, it's working just fine here, why change things?

BTW, ALSA and Compiz are one thing, but Flash? How the hell are we supposed to fix that when Adobe still insists we can't have the full source code? We're trying our best (re: Gnash, Swfdec) but Flash itself can only be fixed by Adobe. Frankly, if Gnash or Swfdec works for the sites I want, I'm switching in a heartbeat. I'm sick and fucking tired of the Flash plugin crashing and leaving me with nothing but grey rectangles all the damn time.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if everything there is true, it's not as if it's a terminal situation. OSX is improving and so will Ubuntu. If you want to be realistic, everything started out as crap.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[Anonymous Coward]

Be realistic. Ubuntu is a crap distribution, and I will never understand the fanboy elitism around here that surrounds it.

My parents can still use their ~5 year old laptop/PC with 512mb RAM. No resource swallowing antivirus software. No pain (which is the word to describe my parent's former attitude towards their laptop).

One friend of mine even joined a facebook Ubuntu group after his switch. He installed it on his own and he was hardly able to install a Windows hardware driver before (and still now). He didn't phone me about one single problem.

I'm convinced that all the other distros/OS'es wouldn't have the same amount of success.

Only experience? Mayvbe. For me, this is not crap. This is great. This distribution is improving lifes.

And I'm not using it, because just like you I don't need it. But there are people that do.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about?

I've been using Finder since System 6. It is now, and has been since at least then, the best file management interface on ANY platform.

So, as GP said, at least with Mac OS X, performance is the ONLY issue that has to be fixed. And for Finder, that's one of the big things in Snow Leopard - fixing performance issues.

The UI is, hands down, the best already.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[atraintocry]

Your original post made a very broad assumption, namely that since there is less Apple hardware out there than PC hardware, Apple developers can exploit hardware tricks or in general work closer to the metal. I don't know if you think they're making extensive use of assembly languages or non-portable C code, but I can tell you that that's just not the case.

Part of the reason that the hardware switch went relatively smoothly for Apple is because their kernel is portable and is not full of CPU-specific hacks (PPC and x86 are different enough that they wouldn't have gotten away with that, plus, it's not 1980 anymore). And as far as console OSes go...they haven't had to include things like multitasking, memory allocation, or paging until very recently. Again, simply not comparable to OS X.

Forget that there's less Apple hardware out there. It's hardware that's changed greatly over the years, and OS X is a modern OS with a lot of features that game consoles can do with out. It's simply not a good analogy. The idea can be true on a very broad level (more portable code can't run as lean) but it's certainly not always true and in this case it doesn't apply for many reasons.

Just let it go at this point, rather than challenge people for benchmarks when you haven't offered anything in the way of proof for your own argument (there really isn't any, since game consoles are as different from Macs as they are from PCs, OS-wise. Or at least they were until very recently).

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[atraintocry]

I think this was the first comment that really accounted for some of the differences rather than rely on conjecture. Wish I had modpoints.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[Mista2]

It's not just advandages in knowing the hardware, it can sometimes just be the pure work of optimising the code to speed up the slowest parts of the code.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[drinkypoo]

Mac OS X doesn't have to accommodate variances in the hardware it is running on in the same way that Linux or Windows has to do. Therefore, it can exploit the hardware better.

The problem with your theory is twofold. First, today an Apple is a bog-standard PC except for the inclusion of EFI - which is gradually coming to the PC world, or so I hear. Second, the same MacOS runs on numerous different systems and can even be made to run on a PC clone, with a little work.

Also, many games on the Xbox were cross-platform, and the same game engine has to work on PC, Xbox, and Playstation 2; for example, the Grand Theft Auto engine, or the Star Wars: Battlefront engine. While these games may be the exception rather than the rule, rather the converse was the idea; the "Xbox" name grew from the concept-based name of the DirectX-Box. In a way, the Xbox is a hardware manifestation of an API.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[drinkypoo]

There is no reason whatsoever that OSX should run faster on Apple hardware than non-Apple hardware. This is easy to see and to argue otherwise is to completely fail to understand the nature of the hardware in question. I've harped on this before, but anyway; Apple is using Intel processors and Intel chipsets that are in every way identical to the chips used in non-Apple computers. Why should OSX run any slower on a non-Apple machine? There could be only one reason: if it were deliberately crippled. It is easy to see that this is true, because modern operating systems do not need to go to the BIOS (or equivalent.) Apple computers do not contain any special, custom hardware. The only special thing about Apple computers is the case. They also have a superior boot loader, but I'd rather have coreboot with grub than either one, thanks. Your demand for benchmarks is an abandonment of reason.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[Almahtar]

The fact that Apple seemingly painlessly supported multiple generations of ATI, Intel, and NVidia gpus is an interesting testament to the use of well implemented OpenGL.

From what I've heard from those developing Linux GPU drivers and window managers (especially one or two compiz-fusion devs), X's DRI and DRM aren't enough to make full use of OpenGL capability (which is why the NVidia X drivers override a lot of X functionality).

It's not an impossible problem to solve, but it's a category in which we can grow, for sure.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[WhiteHorse-The Origi]

Actually it looks like Ubuntu beat Oh-Sex! in several categories and lost at 3D games, which is a known problem with the Intel GMA945 and has nothing to do with Ubuntu but Intel.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[ShieldW0lf]

Just let it go at this point, rather than challenge people for benchmarks when you haven't offered anything in the way of proof for your own argument (there really isn't any, since game consoles are as different from Macs as they are from PCs, OS-wise. Or at least they were until very recently).

My original argument was that these benchmarks, which are what the article is about, which is what the discussion is about, do not say anything about how OSX runs on non-Mac hardware, and do not provide a fair comparison of the software, because they are inconclusive, and because there is every reason to believe that OSX is designed to work particularly well on Mac hardware. You don't do half an experiment, jump to conclusions on that basis, then when people point out that you only did half the experiment, demand that they do the other half before they contest your conclusions. It doesn't work that way, and no amount of fanboyism is going to change that reality.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[Anonymous Coward]

not admitting an issue is the first step in never addressing it.

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[konohitowa]

Dude, you are SO totally right on this. I agree with you completely man... if she weighs the same as a duck, it means she's made of wood. And therefore.... a witch!

Burn her!!!!

Re:Ubuntu if you want to

[GaryPatterson]

It's been a long time since I compiled a Linux kernel, but I recall performance options for architecture. Have these been removed?

no first posts?

[jandoedel]

can anybody post first please?

Re:no first posts?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone's running Ubuntu or Vista. They're both too slow to get first post.

We musn't fight each other...

[PinkyDead]

Surely we should be united against the common enemy.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[rvw]

Surely we should be united against the common enemy.

It's not fight, it's play. And when one system wins in terms of speed or usability, both systems win in terms of a weaker common enemy.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[aliquis]

This thread will end up getting moderated flame-bait, but what would that common enemy be? Personally I think Windows is rather ok now, Windows 7 will probably be even better, who knows, maybe even better than snow leopard.

The only thing I see as an enemy is ideas which are pushed down my throat no matter what if I want them or not. I want to use my data and my applications in the way I feel like, not be forced to a single method just because someone else thought it was the best one. But that is true for all operating systems and no special "enemy."

I like many things in OS X and in applications for it because it makes sense and makes using the computer more comfortable, I don't like some other things because they don't let me do the things I want to do.

The huge amount of applications for Windows makes it rather likely that you can find one which fits your purpose, some for the window managers and such in the free unix-like oses.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not really about Windows, it's about Microsoft. I don't care if Windows is coded by the best programmers in the world, the problem comes from management and their shoddy business tactics.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Anonymous Coward]

THE JUDEAN PEOPLE'S FRONT?

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, when Barack gives us the $5000 he promised, we'll simply buy the enemy whole.

Right ? You haven't received it either ? Hmmm ...

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[aliquis]

But think about all the good things they have given us!

Such as.. as.. Ballmers monkey dance! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc4MzqBFxZE

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Rik Sweeney]

OK, so who are the following:

Unicron: A giant Steve Balmer head?
Galvatron: OS X?
Hot Rod: Ubuntu?

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[ray-auch]

Yes, but who is "we" and what defines the enemy?

If we == "free software" and enemy == proprietary, then Apple = enemy along with MS.

If we == "good software" and enemy = crap, then...

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off!

Judean People's Front. We're the People's Front of Judea! Judean People's Front.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[mc900ftjesus]

Apple and MS are two sides of the same coin.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Smauler]

And of course the developers developers developers developers :).

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Smauler]

I know, bad form replying to myself... But Microsoft also gave us Windows 1.0... with a clock! And Reversi!

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Koiu Lpoi]

Yeah, one produces great hardware and software while locking you in, and the other is a failing monopoly! Oh, wait, those don't sound the same at all. I'm going to have to ask you to explain yourself.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. Opposite sides.

Microsoft wants to control the world. Apple just wants to control its products.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[DigDuality]

the enemy should be proprietary, drm-loving, software. So excuse me while I puke at people's suggestions that Apple is on the same side as Linux.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Chninkel]

If we == "good software" and enemy = crap, then...

So the second term is always true then ?

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[calmofthestorm]

The free software community is [should be?] about choice. I hate Apple and Microsoft because of all they do to restrict customer's (and others) choices, but in the end people have the right to buy software that isn't free, despite what RMS may say.

In other words, os x isn't the enemy, windows isn't the enemy, both apple and microsoft are.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[calmofthestorm]

I disagree. Both are extremely monopolistic, patent-trolling, and try to remove choice from everyone. The difference is that Microsoft can pretend that Apple doesn't exist to a greater degree than the reverse is true, simply due to market share. In other words, if Apple makes a product that only works on OS X, it better be OS X specific. Consider the difference between Microsoft not making office for OS X vs Apple not making iTunes for windows. The former would be a minor setback for OOXML monopoly, the latter would kill the iPod.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[raisin]

Nader, is that you? Dude, the election is *over*...

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Anonymous Coward]

oh... you read that differently than I did... I thought he was saying Linux users should unite with Microsoft users against the common enemy (Apple).

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Anonymous Coward]

Splitter!

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[pseudonomous]

Windows 7 costs $5000 !?!

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Draek]

I want to use my data and my applications in the way I feel like, not be forced to a single method just because someone else thought it was the best one. But that is true for all operating systems and no special "enemy."

That's not true for any of the Free OSes, like Linux and FreeBSD, where you can do anything, in any way you can think of. It's just that for most methods, there's a step involving "sitting down and writing a metric fuckton of code", but still...

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Anonymous Coward]

Trolls are supposed to be on topic !?!

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple is Closed Source, which is the enemy of freedom and must be extinguished. By any means necessary.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Beat The Odds]

It's the Peoples Front of Judea...

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[not already in use]

How ironic that you would imply that Apple is somehow not the enemy. Their current business practices make pre-antitrust-litigation Microsoft look like Mother Theresa. The only difference I suppose being, that the Apple folks bend over and take it like a champ, and thanks to the genius marketing by Steve Jobs, actually enjoy the reeming.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[PJ1216]

Microsoft has bad business tactics, but so does Apple. Its just people put up with it more from them. There are plenty of things Apple does that Microsoft would never get away with. Open source OSes seem to be the only ones that really care about consumers because consumers have the most say in it (as they end up writing some of the code themselves).

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no MS guy (anymore) but you don't become a monopoly in the market with a horrible product. The argument could be made that it might not be the "best product" out there, but that is largely our personal opinion ... others obviously find value ...

Also a supposed failing monopoly is far from dead and is still has a large user base.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually they are the same side of different coins.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[bonch]

Uh...what business practices? Or is this more generic, liberal, anti-capitalist ranting on Slashdot?

Capitalism made the computer you used to type your post. Get out of the dorm room and into the real world, kiddo.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[bonch]

How is Apple trying to remove choice from anybody? You choose to buy Apple's hardware, or you don't. Your post is just uninformed anti-capitalism ranting on Slashdot.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[LingNoi]

Indeed however if you want to do something on Linux it's probably already been done three times over so there's no need to write any code.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it supports up to 250 cores so I guess it's a $20 license per core.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[not already in use]

Wow, you sure imply a lot from a measly three sentences. I wasn't aware that anything I wrote encompassed an overall anti-capitalistic attitude. My post was specific to Apple, not capitalism, and the business practices I speak of are in regards to ridiculous DRM (as some DRM is acceptable), specifically trying to DRM shoes for their Nike+ product. Other practices include their intrusive and virus-like behavior with Apple update on Windows. I could keep going, but for the sake of overall brevity ill stop now and take some shots at your intelligence.

Capitalism made the computer you used to type your post.

Actually, moron, my computer was made in China. Communism made my computer you socialist pig.

Get out of the dorm room and into the real world, kiddo.

I own a house and, ironically, it's the college kids who live in dorms who have trendy Apple laptops that their parents paid for. To imply that since I'm bashing Apple I'm a college student is... ironic.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Anonymous Coward]

(except in Nebraska)

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Anonymous Coward]

What? The Judean People's Front?!

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[DinDaddy]

No, but once you're the monopoly, your product is free to become horrible.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[AndrewNeo]

He must be using Visual Basic, it's the only one I can think of that supports 'if then' statements, as well as a single = for equality checks.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[jeremyp]

The Judean People's Front?

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Cley Faye]

I'm no MS guy (anymore) but you don't become a monopoly in the market with a horrible product.

Yes, you can become a monopoly with a horrible product if you're (almost) alone on a market, and once it's done, you can keep going for a while without doing much until everything start collapsing.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[aliquis]

Yeah, for the average user there may be situations when it's not implemented in a way which fits you yet.

That it can be fixed doesn't help much, not much is stopping people from rewriting many of the parts they don't like in Windows or OS X either. Sure it may involve rewriting a complete finder like application on your own instead of just changing parts of the source-code, but it can still be done.

Anyway, far from all computer users is capable of writing such code and applications so that old somewhat stupid answer don't help much =P. The good thing with the open ones is that it's easier to fix things the way you want them thanks to available code and eventually more likely that everyone else will reap the benefits of said fix to.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[aliquis]

Yeah I know, I've seen it to and although it's funny it's hard to argue that it was a good thing from Microsoft :D

Especially considering mr Jobs gave us the first mac:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSiQA6KKyJo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ12vNZ5yMY

lol, I had never seen the Apple II ad before, what an annoying voice:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtsvrUqW7_Q

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Draek]

That it can be fixed doesn't help much, not much is stopping people from rewriting many of the parts they don't like in Windows or OS X either. Sure it may involve rewriting a complete finder like application on your own instead of just changing parts of the source-code, but it can still be done.

But the problem is, that may not be completely legal. Applicable laws may vary, I'm not a lawyer, I'm certainly not *your* lawyer, you know the drill, but both Microsoft and Apple's EULAs are pretty fuckin' nasty, and you may even run afoul of the DMCA if you're particularly unlucky.

So yeah, it's a negligible difference for someone who can't write a metric fuckton of working code, agreed, but it *is* a difference, and I personally regard my ability to modify Amarok to build a nuclear device as a feature, thankyouverymuch ;)

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[atraintocry]

I agree with you, but don't forget that Apple does not have monopoly status in the OS space. I would hope that once they did, people would watch them just as closely as they do MS.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Rennt]

With both Microsoft and Apple platforms there are limitations in place that serve the interests of the corporation that developed it, at the expense of the user (you). How is that not "ideas which are pushed down my throat no matter what if I want them or not."?

The only limitations in Ubuntu are either legal or technical in nature.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[aliquis]

Heh, but you can't modify the source code of the closed software anyway? Sure I guess you could "patch" them somewhat.

But as long as you write your own application I don't see how it matters it the OS is closed or not.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Judean People's Front!

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[mjwx]

Yeah, one produces great hardware and software while locking you in, and the other is a failing monopoly!

One seeks to solely lock you into its first party product lines and services, the other was founded by Bill Gates.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Heddahenrik]

The "enemy" is the people and companies trying to steal the control of your computer. They are for example named Apple and Microsoft.

With free software you are in control. Don't let anyone fool you that you don't want that control!

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Smauler]

STOP! In that last ad, correct me if I'm wrong, at 20 seconds it says "the family can invent their own porn games". Now, I'm not sure which market Apple were aiming for at that time, but I'm glad my dad didn't get one.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Anonymous Coward]

This benchmarks have no use for me. Why? Because almost everything that runs on Macs wont run on Linux, whatever distro. Linux still doesn't have some competitive professional apps that keeps Apple beside Microsoft

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[drinkypoo]

How is Apple trying to remove choice from anybody? You choose to buy Apple's hardware, or you don't.

How is Microsoft trying to remove choice from anybody? You choose to buy Microsoft's software, or you don't.

The difference is in the monopoly status. But lately we have sometimes chosen to recognize monopolies with limited scope.

Here's just one way Apple is trying to remove choice: Apple wants to dominate the cellphone market with the iPhone, but they place all kinds of ridiculous restrictions on the device, and abuse developers.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely we should be united against the common enemy.

Sure, but that's rapidly becoming Apple.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Weedlekin]

Visual Basic is indeed the only language that supports textual if..then..else tokens and single "=" for equivalence. Except for FORTRAN and COBOL. But no other languages support them apart from ALGOL descendants such as Pascal, MESA, Modula-2, Oberon, Ada, etc. And of course some of those minority languages like Haskell, Eiffel, and CAML. But nobody uses them, so let's throw out those silly Algol descendants, FORTRAN, COBOL. and all the other stuff nobody uses, and claim that VB is definitely the only language with this type of syntax. Because RDBMS data definition languages haven't reached a consensus about precisely what syntax they should have, even though just about all of them use "=" for comparison together with textual if..then..else tokens. Only a fool would even consider including proprietary tripe in discussions of language syntax, and we're not fools, so we won't even consider them as languages, let alone _valid_ languages.

So, once we remove FORTRAN, COBOL, stuff nobody uses, and proprietary crap like DDLs, 4GLs, and various query languages, we're pretty much left with VB as the sole example of this weirdly un-C-like way of writing conditional expressions.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely we should be united against the common enemy.

That has got to be the cheesiest comment I've ever read on /. How old are you? 12?

Oh, and your sig means you suck at Vi too. Get a clue, fanboy.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[GaryPatterson]

Here's just one way Apple is trying to remove choice: Apple wants to dominate the cellphone market with the iPhone, but they place all kinds of ridiculous restrictions on the device, and abuse developers.

So you buy a different phone?

I can't see the problem there. If the feature you want (eg 'freedom' complete with air quotes) is not available, buy a product that has it.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Homer1946]

You should always keep in mind that you only have more control if the "free" software available allows you to do what you want or need in a way that is convenient enough to be useful (which is often governed by person preferences). If proprietary solutions better provide such abilities then they give you more control.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Richard_at_work]

Visual Basic is indeed the only language that supports textual if..then..else tokens and single "=" for equivalence. Except for FORTRAN and COBOL.

There is another, but I guarantee you won't have ever heard of it :) Sculptor.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Weedlekin]

I think Sculptor would be classified as a 4GL, which is a category I mentioned in my post. It was reasonably popular a couple of decades ago (at least in the UK), but I've no idea whether it's still around.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Richard_at_work]

It may be marketed as a 4GL, but I don't think it can be classified as one :) We must be one of the last companies in the UK to be using it.

Re:We musn't fight each other...

[Nazlfrag]

Don't forget the Zune.

I don't get it really

[zappepcs]

It's a lengthy read, and there isn't much in there to say that Ubuntu has any real work to do. Seems like they were comparing two Ferrari race cars and commenting on the differences in interiors... to use a car analogy.

I've just upgraded 8 systems to 8.10 and am quite happy. I was concerned over real world issues about the upgrade from early reports. The old IBM T22 with 256MB RAM was my test case. Guess what? The upgrade went as fast as my Wireless G card would allow it, after a reboot, and then an update last night, it is working a bit better than with 8.04 from a layman's point of view. Yes, it can drag now and then, but is resource limited severely. After the upgrade I did not have to tweak anything, and any problems I was having prior are now fixed. I appear to have fscked up a setting on the wireless networking, but now it's all good. As far as I am concerned, with two older laptops upgraded, and 3 older desktops upgraded, all with ZERO defects, Ubuntu continues to impress me. I will continue to give out CDs free to anyone that wants to improve their computing life.

Now, if you just have to have the 'perfect' gaming machine... go ahead and worry about little things. As for the rest of the world, 8.10 is rocking awesomeness.

Re:I don't get it really

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, comparing these does seem overly fickle. We all know M$ Products generally run like a$$ and take up more space than they should, from their office suite to their O/S.

Where Macs seem to always be built to handle heavier image/audio it isn't going to be as fast for other tasks. So it's one of those swings/roundabouts...

Oh wait it's not though, OS X costs.. Ubuntu costs.. and they're almost identical results?
  Good

Re:I don't get it really

[zappepcs]

Yeah, I forgot to mention that 8 upgrades cost me nothing but time. One thing that I wish Canonical would do is to set up a donation fund where I could donate say $50 per install and know that all the apps that come with Ubuntu would get a reasonably fair share of that money. Is anyone at Canonical listening?

AS it is now, I have to donate separately to those projects which I feel that I use enough to donate to. Trouble is that some projects which I do use are not readily recognizable as such. The Samba project is one such case. Ubuntu and others more-or-less hide its use from the user so they would be unaware that they are using it. I think this would go a long way toward helping various projects. Even if all Samba got from my $50 was $0.75. That is still a donation. In my case it would be eight times that. Yes, I do contribute to F/OSS projects, EFF, and several other groups who have my best interests at heart... well, our interests coincide.

Another thing that Canonical could do, short of setting up such a fund, is write a small app that lists the apps being used on any installation and allow the user to save the list to disk which would include the designated donation web page for that project. That's not quite as good as a donation fund, but would still help the smaller projects by announcing their use and value.

I like a good value as much as the next guy, and there is something satisfying about paying a very fair price for someone's work when it is valuable to yourself. I just wish it was easier to do.

Re:I don't get it really

[Anonymous Coward]

I had one minor problem with the 8.10 upgrade -- on an Asus KV7 (KT600 chipset), under 8.04 the Rhine ethernet would generate "NETDEV WATCHDOG timeout" messages (which indicated a problem I guess but the network wouldn't actually drop off long enough for me to notice). Under 8.10 instead it just drops off the network until I hit a keyboard key, which is annoying because it's not my desktop machine. I'd assume from that that ACPI=off would fix it (machine going to sleep?) but I tried noapic instead (because I like to save power) and it worked. The BIOS is also out of date so that might have fixed it too, but since it works now I'm not going to dick with it.

          I haven't compared but a friend of mine says he noticed about 50MB less memory usage in 8.10. I'm down with that, my systems typically have 512MB.

-------
          As for donations, I think it's a great idea. I bet the problem with this is that Canonical is an actual business, and the taxes and all could get real weird if a bunch of people started donating money straight to this business. If they do want donations I expect they'd take the mozilla route and start like an Ubuntu Foundation as a non-profit.

Re:I don't get it really

[Anonymous Coward]

Another thing that Canonical could do, short of setting up such a fund, is write a small app that lists the apps being used on any installation and allow the user to save the list to disk which would include the designated donation web page for that project. That's not quite as good as a donation fund, but would still help the smaller projects by announcing their use and value.

I don't use Ubuntu so I'm not familiar with whatever deb front-end they've got happening, but wouldn't that package manager already contain a list of the installed packages with their respective webpages? It seems a bit redundant to code something just to present donation links specifically... which are almost always on the frontpage anyway.

Re:I don't get it really

[vigour]

I have to commend you on your honesty and generosity. It's people like you that makes a big difference to the overheads of the F/OSS community. Just like every vote counts (as we saw the other day) every donation counts, and people like me who've contributed neither time nor money benefit greatly from it all.

As you said, it would be nice if there was a centralised portal for donating to the various projects that make up a distro like Ubuntu. The biggest problem is deciding where it goes, and how much would go to each group, essentially deciding how valuable (or valued) a particular project is to the F/OSS community at large.
That's a flamewar waiting to happen, but maybe a worthwhile one.

Re:I don't get it really

[GIL_Dude]

I'm glad your upgrades went so smoothly. I think that is pretty much what most people are saying.

Offered just as a data point, mine didn't go so smoothly. On this Lenvo X60s, it went from 8.04 working fine to 8.10 with no sound. (Actually, it plays the login sound just fine but no apps can play sound). On my older desktop - a P4 Dell with 1 GB RAM and an nVidia 5500 FX card that was working fine with 8.04, it decided the video wasn't working after the update. I did check first, and this is not one of the cards for which support was removed. It had a "low video" message. Took quite some time fiddling and then it all of a sudden began working again. I'm generally impressed with Ubuntu, but both of my upgrades were a little less than successful.

Re:I don't get it really

[fitten]

My 8.04 to 8.10 upgrade (took the upgrade path) did not go smoothly. Well... it was pretty smooth except that it screwed up my X configuration so on the reboot, I got nothing but a text terminal and some errors. I didn't mess with it long, posted some messages, got no answer, and the next day just reformatted / and installed 8.10 from the ISO and it worked fine.

Re:I don't get it really

[Haiyadragon]

Your sound problem is probably caused by pulseaudio. Why that alpha quality software is installed by default is beyond me.

Re:I don't get it really

[Walles]

a small app that lists the apps being used on any installation and allow the user to save the list to disk

You mean like this?

Re:I don't get it really

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I just ask... did you go to RPI? Your test case T22 with 256 megs of ram sounds suspiciously like my own (the mandatory laptop from 2001 at RPI, not that other people didn't buy that configuration or that they weren't sold off to ebay by graduates). Just curious.

Re:I don't get it really

[zappepcs]

Awesome. Duh (slaps forehead) Google is my friend. Should have Googled before posting that. Thanks for the reminder :)

Re:I don't get it really

[KamuZ]

I know this is not a fault from Linux itself but the companies not supporting it, but sometimes you have hardware (ie. X-Fi sound card, some new wireless card), all the good integration and stability ubuntu have with supported hardwares goes out of the window. Lately, i don't feel comfortable using my PC as flash crashes a lot, sometimes mplayer or other media player freezes and i know it is the soundcard drivers. But to tell you the truth, with the gaming i do, there is one less reason to boot in Ubuntu. I have been thinking in getting a laptop from Apple just for work because all hardware is support out of the box and then i will just boot to Linux to play around. Don't get me wrong, i have been using Linux for about 15 years (started with Slackware) but the less free time i have, the less time i have to fiddle with hardware and software issues, i just want to boot up and work or entertain myself and so far, Linux is not giving me that. I need a laptop or PC certified to work on Linux to switch again.

Re:I don't get it really

[Stewie241]

The other thing to mention, is that stock Ubuntu was used, and of course, stock OS/X. OS/X is presumably customized and optimized for that particular hardware, while Ubuntu was not. Now, what if you want to run OS/X on other hardware? Well, even if you get it installed and running, there is no chance of optimizing for that hardware. While Ubuntu, you can recompile everything if desired and you are ready to roll.

Apple has made it very difficult to do proper benchmarking, because there is no way to throw both on a few different random boxes and see how they compare.

Re:I don't get it really

[qnetter]

Yeah, I forgot to mention that 8 upgrades cost me nothing but time.

I'm always surprised when people say things like this. Isn't your time worth money? I know that, for instance, if one product cost me $300 and an hour to update, and the other cost me four hours, the cash will come out in a second.

Re:I don't get it really

[mhall119]

One thing that I wish Canonical would do is to set up a donation fund where I could donate say $50 per install and know that all the apps that come with Ubuntu would get a reasonably fair share of that money. Is anyone at Canonical listening?

I think Canonical tells people to donate to Debian if you want to support the development of the software.

http://www.debian.org/donations

Re:I don't get it really

[BertieBaggio]

This is a great idea. If honest, principled people like yourself had an easy way to get money distributed to FOSS projects it could be a real boon.

Searching Ubuntu's brainstorm gives this: #10747 - Donation for "free software"

It's not quite what you outlined, but at least other people have the same idea. A comment there mentions cofundos (http://cofundos.org/), which looks like Kiva for Open Source.

If you put what you wrote here as an Idea on brainstorm it might (or might not) get implemented, but at least it will be discussed. As sibling poster said, we need more people like you in FOSS communities.

Re:I don't get it really

[zappepcs]

Guess what? I spent less time on those upgrades than I'd have spent on upgrading them to Win XP. I mention it because time was all it cost me. I did 3 of them concurrently while drinking beer and watching past episodes from Comedy Central. It's not like I lost that time somehow, not more than a few minutes anyway.

You're just trying to find a way to make Linux sound like NOT free software. Do you really make > $100/hr at home?

I could have, and will, set up a repository here at home, so all machines get the same code, and I download it only once. ooohhh boo hoo, that will cost more time. I often feel sorry for people whose only complaint is about time. You spend time no matter what software/OS you upgrade to. How much is up to you. If you read, I had zero problems on 8 upgrades. I'm doing the fresh install test on an old AMD 1.2GH machine today, so far, I've spent about... ughhhh 5 minutes on the install. I don't expect to have to spend more than 10 minutes more.

So, go on, tell everyone how wasteful of your time installing Linux is. Buying a car takes time. No matter what car you buy, unless you're willing to listen to just anyone tell you that a new Pontiac is the car everyone buys that wants a user friendly car. Good luck with your Pontiac.

Re:I don't get it really

[zappepcs]

Done! thanks

Re:I don't get it really

[nine-times]

and know that all the apps that come with Ubuntu would get a reasonably fair share of that money.

There's the problem. I doubt it would be too hard to Canonical to set up something where it could take in money which then flows out to a set number of people/groups, since that's a problem that lots of industries have dealt with in terms of royalties. The problem is always going to be who gets how much. Let's say you donate $50 and I donate $50, but each of us has totally different priorities. How does Canonical distribute my $50 to pay for my priorities while spending your $50 to pay for your priorities?

Honestly, I'd love for there to be a systematic method for easily supporting the FOSS that's important to you. It would be especially nice IMO if there was a clear-cut way to support not just the projects you like, but the building of features you want. Like, "I'd like to put $50 towards making Linux boot faster" and then anyone could work on that for money and bill against the account of everyone who has contributed for that feature.

But then you need someone trustworthy and skilled in administration to run that whole thing and keep it from being corrupt. Also, in the interest of being open, you wouldn't particularly want a single body to have complete control of how FOSS projects get funded, so you'd actually need multiple organizations doing this. Plus, lots of people in FOSS don't like the idea of bounties, because they think it corrupts the priorities of project from "what's best" to "what random people want".

So I don't know... I do think it's a weird problem that there may be people who would be willing to donate, but who aren't willing to take the time to figure out who to donate to. I've donated to projects before, but I'm sure I would donate more if I could be certain that (a) I was sure my donations were going to the right people; and (b) I felt confident that my donations were encouraging work on the things that I'd like to see improved.

Re:I don't get it really

[Anonymous Coward]

if one product cost me $300 and an hour to update, and the other cost me four hours, the cash will come out in a second.

Do you stare blankly at the monitor during the update, or do you, for instance, go have dinner?

Re:I don't get it really

[DiegoBravo]

I'm a full day Ubuntu user (yet with 7.10). When there is any Ubuntu "performance comparison" the only single thing that comes to my mind is the sluggishness of Gnome/Compiz after some hours of continued work (even in my Core2-duo laptop.) Even that is not necessarily related to Ubuntu.

I think for most users the OS performance is a non-issue. It's the applications that matter. Of course, on M$, its more about the stupid background antivirus and other "utilities".

Re:I don't get it really

[Faryshta]

You can post this on Brainstorm or LaunchPad.

Re:I don't get it really

[pbhj]

There's also

$ popcon-largest-unused

provided by the "popularity-contest" package it lists, as you may have guessed, the largest unused packages.

Re:I don't get it really

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, there's nothing that stops you setting up a site devoted to showing what projects make up larger projects, and showing how to donate to those projects and metaprojects.

I'm not being glib - you've obviously thought about this, so would be a good candidate for structuring it. If you're too pressed for time to do it on your own, you could meet with your local LUG to find a few like minds, and perhaps pay a young programmer a gratuity for spending the evenings putting the site together. Call it "thanks.org" or whatever.

Or some better idea. My point is you've identified a need well, and by yourself or with a small group you could establish a very useful site that addresses it. Draft up a RFC.

Re:I don't get it really

[zappepcs]

Yes, I've been thinking that since I posted. Just have to figure out a few things I think. Will try to put time into it this weekend. Hopefully before then someone will chime in and say "Oh, just go to ubuntu.somesite.net and donate." I'll have to research more before putting hands-on effort into it.

Re:I don't get it really

[drinkypoo]

I could have, and will, set up a repository here at home, so all machines get the same code, and I download it only once. ooohhh boo hoo, that will cost more time.

At this point I feel compelled to cry about just how much time this could cost you. I have tried three different packages and STILL don't have a GOOD solution to this problem, although I have got it working.

This is because the documentation for apt repositories is pure shit. If anyone out there who worked on it is reading this, I'm sorry, but it's still true. On the other hand, it's still better than using anything based on rpm :D

Re:I don't get it really

[salmonmoose]

Could there not be a part of Ubuntu where you donated in the OS, which in turn could scan aptitude, find out what's installed and report that for the purpose of splitting the cash?

Re:I don't get it really

[Daengbo]

You choices are, in order of difficulty,

1. apt-zeroconf
2. approx
3. apt-proxy
4. apt-cacher

Re:I don't get it really

[jonaskoelker]

Is anyone at Canonical listening?

Have you put it on brainstorm?

If not, go to brainstorm.ubuntu.com, sign up, submit your idea. I think it'll get many up-votes.

Ubuntu is dog slow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing new, move along. Want a sleek and fast linux ? Slackware's the answer.

Re:Ubuntu is dog slow.

[BrokenHalo]

Want a sleek and fast linux ? Slackware's the answer.

You sound like a recent convert. :-D

I've been a huge fan of Slackware ever since it was Soft Landing Systems, but since my preferred GUI is Gnome rather than KDE, I fairly recently got tired of waiting for updates to the excellent Dropline Gnome distribution for Slackware while it looked as if it was going nowhere, and tried out Arch Linux, and I haven't looked back.

It's optimised for 686 architectures, the package manager, like Slackware's, is nice and simple, but with much more powerful features for retrieving packages plus dependencies online and on-the-fly. And best of all, it has nice BSD-like init scripts with which any Slackware user will feel comfortable. It's less intuitive for the newbie to install than Slack, since there's a certain amount of manual editing of config scripts required, but neither is really designed for the newbie in any case...

Re:Ubuntu is dog slow.

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like a recent convert. :-D

I admit I jumped a bit late in the linux wagon, waiting for the release of Slack 3.0 before moving :-p

But man, did it rock my 486DX33 ! Never looked back !

Re:Ubuntu is dog slow.

[drinkypoo]

It's optimised for 686 architectures

Uh, which 686? Core Duo? Core 2 Duo? Or just the Pentium Pro, like most Linuxes? Your average Linux distribution is compiled for i386 and maybe i686 with only the compatible optimizations from later cores. Or in other words, there really is a benefit to running gentoo (which I don't do any more - I'm on Hardy right now, planning a move to Intrepid.)

Re:Ubuntu is dog slow.

[BrokenHalo]

Uh, which 686?

In my original post, I was drawing a comparison with Slackware, which is currently built for i486 architectures and beyond. It hasn't, in fact, been very long since Pat dropped i386 builds. My point is that most CPUs these days are i686 for all useful purposes (for which I am conveniently disregarding 64-bit jobs, since I personally don't have any pressing need to address more memory than I can afford), so the distro hits the sweet spot for the majority of reasonably recent machines.

Re:Ubuntu is dog slow.

[chemaja]

Do Arch Linux binary packages include GNU Info documentation of upstream packages which provide it, yet?

Re:Ubuntu is dog slow.

[BrokenHalo]

Do Arch Linux binary packages include GNU Info documentation of upstream packages which provide it, yet?

I'm not quite sure what you mean. GNU info seems to be there and, as far as I can tell, it seems complete. I personally tend to hop straight to manpages, so I hadn't had any cause to notice much more about info.

If you're referring to the handling of dependencies, the pacman package system is a bit like Slackware's in adopting a simple tgz format for the binaries. It does pull down dependencies on a loose broad-brush principle, but leaves you to handle details, and that's very much the way I like it. Nice and simple.

Re:Ubuntu is dog slow.

[chemaja]

Well, for example, if you ran a command like

$ info coreutils dd

you would not see the Texinfo manual for dd. While the documentation viewer (ie. /usr/bin/info) may have been installed, the actual documentation (eg. /usr/share/info/coreutils.info.gz) was not.

The rationale given (again, IIRC) by Arch Linux for the exclusion of the Texinfo manuals was that the manuals added too much bloat. My problem with this was that the Texinfo manual of a package is often the canonical (or more complete, or up-to-date, take your pick) documentation, at least for many GNU packages.

The last time I tried Arch Linux was around 2004 or 2005; I was just wondering if things have changed since then.

Survey of 1

[Anonymous Coward]

OS X is WAY prettier but gets in the way too much.
Ubuntu is more efficient but the icon style sucks.
Both camps are headed towards half-assed full automation a la MS, they just have better OSes with which do it.
Drooling fanbois of both camps can bite me.

Re:Survey of 1

[Anonymous Coward]

*chomp*

Re:Survey of 1

[galoise]

oxygen icons are beatiful. Heck, kde4 is frickin' awesomw, actually; and i bet you cant make gnome look even good with little effort.

and the difference between mac osx and windows vs linux, is that this automation you speak about is optional in linux of any flavour. that's a HUGE adventage if you find a problem, or if you ever want to use you machine to do something different to what the manufacturer intended.

More of a summary

[ojintoad]

Apple's Mac OS X 10.5.5 "Leopard" had strong performance leads over Canonical's Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex" in the OpenGL performance with the integrated Intel graphics, disk benchmarking, and SQLite database in particular. Ubuntu on the other hand was leading in the compilation and BYTE Unix Benchmark. In the audio/video encoding and PHP XML tests the margins were smaller and no definitive leader had emerged. With the Java environment, Sunflow and Bork were faster in Mac OS X, but the Intrepid Ibex in SciMark 2 attacked the Leopard. These results though were all from an Apple Mac Mini.

Also worth mentioning are the collection of posts from the last thread that convincingly argued various problems with the Phoronix Benchmarks.
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3

Speed tests are good, let's make sure we're doing them right

Re:More of a summary

[Milyardo]

Apple's Mac OS X 10.5.5 "Leopard" had strong performance leads over Canonical's Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex" in the OpenGL performance with the integrated Intel graphics, disk benchmarking, and SQLite database in particular. Ubuntu on the other hand was leading in the compilation and BYTE Unix Benchmark. In the audio/video encoding and PHP XML tests the margins were smaller and no definitive leader had emerged. With the Java environment, Sunflow and Bork were faster in Mac OS X, but the Intrepid Ibex in SciMark 2 attacked the Leopard. These results though were all from an Apple Mac Mini.

Also worth mentioning are the collection of posts from the last thread that convincingly argued various problems with the Phoronix Benchmarks. Example 1 Example 2 Example 3

Speed tests are good, let's make sure we're doing them right

Every one of those examples are fail at reasoning weaknesses in the Phoronix Test Suite and this is why:

Example 1

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.

If you look closely you'll notice that (a) the laptop the benchmarks are run on effects in no way, the validity of the benchmark as long as they are run consistently on the same laptop and (b) some benchmarks like RAM bandwidth have theoretical limits that are not effected at all by the Operating System but in actual practice, is entirely limited by the operating system you are using.

Example 2

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.

All of the benchmarks were testing the hardware and should have showed variation. The compilers used on all the benchmarking applications are all the same. But the compilers used to build the Operating Systems are all completely different versions. Therefore the compiler on each distro will compile the same "algorithm" slightly different way. That is assuming there were no changes between implementation of packages between distros (of which there were actually hundreds of thousands of changes in the code itself, build options, and runtime configurations)

Example 3

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.

The Phoronix-Test-Suite Only uses its PHP back-end to aggregate benchmarking information. If a compilation with GCC took 5 seconds, its going to take 5 seconds no matter what version of the PHP runtime is used to to start the sub-shell that GCC runs in. It's take the same amount of time if you invoked GCC from bash, from perl, python, java, tcl, C, or C++. It doesn't matter because GCC is its own process just like every other benchmark.

What exactly are they testing? The whole distro?

Yes.

The kernel?

Yes again, since that is a part of the distro

If they're testing the released kernel, then they should run static binaries that *test* the above, comparing kernel differences.

No, what wouldn't prove anything as most of the binaries with ea

Re:More of a summary

[chrb]

If you look closely you'll notice that (a) the laptop the benchmarks are run on effects in no way, the validity of the benchmark as long as they are run consistently on the same laptop and (b) some benchmarks like RAM bandwidth have theoretical limits that are not effected at all by the Operating System but in actual practice, is entirely limited by the operating system you are using.

a) Well that depends on what you mean by validity of the benchmark. If you only run tests on a single laptop, then any statistically significant results you find apply only to that single laptop - not even that laptop model, but that specific laptop. Who knows, maybe this specific laptop has some faulty memory or hard disk? Maybe the PSU is under-powering the system leading to slow down? The point is that without wider testing, you just don't know. To draw general results, you need randomised testing across different hardware platforms.

b) You should see very little variation between operating systems when hardware is the limiting factor. "RAM bandwidth" is certainly not "entirely limited by the operating system you are using".

All of the benchmarks were testing the hardware and should have showed variation.

I believe you were missing the OP's point: when hardware is the limiting factor in a test, then there should be very little variance in the test result. If you are seeing a lot of variance, then you need to quantify why, because it is unexpected.

Wrong. You isolate it down to one independent variable, its called the scientific process. And there was only one independent variable involved, the distro. Everything else is dependant on that variable.

You then need to go and find out why you're seeing the results you see. Scientists also constantly question their own test methodology - you need to verify that the results you observe are indeed caused by significant differences between the systems under test, or by the test setup itself. And you also need randomised tests, otherwise your results can't be generalised. Oh, and you don't need to isolate it to one variable - see Factorial experiments.

Re:More of a summary

[bonch]

You're like the third person to reference the previous Slashdot discussion as some sort of scientific debunking of the benchmarks. Slashdot comments are the most biased, unreliable sources of information on the internet.

Remember, folks, the iPod mini will fail! Nobody will buy one of those things!

Re:More of a summary

[PitaBred]

The main problem is that half of the benchmarks they're running are server-style benchmarks, and they're using a desktop-optimized kernel.

Phoronix should install the ubuntu-server kernel and see what changes happen when they're running server-style loads.

Obama picks Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff

[Anonymous Coward]

So much for trying to reconcile with the nearly 50% of the country that rejected him. I guess he owed a favor to the Jews in the media that carried him into office on their shoulders.

Captcha is "Prophecy." How appropriate, when posting about the Messiah.

Re:Obama picks Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't recall any Republicans talking about reconciling with the 50% of the population who didn't vote for Bush in 2000 or 2004.

Summary

[GauteL]

... for those that can't be bothered to read this lengthy yet information sparse piece.

1. MacOS X is faster in graphics intensive benchmarks.
2. The other benchmarks are fairly even with Ubuntu coming out on top more often than OS X (one notable exception is SQLite).

This is hardly anything new. OS X has a well optimised graphics system with good drivers for the intel chips (which up until now was used in both Macbooks and Mac Minis).

Also SQLite is AFAIK integral to many features of OS X, and for this reason it makes sense for Apple to have optimised for it.

Overall the benchmarks suggests that Linux (not just Ubuntu) needs some work on the graphics system and the Intel drivers. What a shock.

Re:Summary

[bill_mcgonigle]

2. The other benchmarks are fairly even with Ubuntu coming out on top more often than OS X (one notable exception is SQLite).

Ah, very interesting. Firefox 3 doesn't work in networked OSX environments because the Mozilla devs don't want to turn on a SQLite feature to make it compatible with AFP for performance reasons. Seems like some testing is in order.

Re:Summary

[Gilmoure]

Firefox 3 doesn't work in networked OSX environments...

Firefox 3 is the default browser on Macs at my work (OS X 10.4 and 10.5) and we have about 1500 networked. How is Firefox 3 supposed to not be working?

Re:Summary

[bill_mcgonigle]

Firefox 3 is the default browser on Macs at my work (OS X 10.4 and 10.5) and we have about 1500 networked. How is Firefox 3 supposed to not be working?

Do you have local home directories or are you fully networked?

Re:Summary

[Chaos Incarnate]

Firefox 3 works fine if profiles are on the local machine under OS X, but has issues if they're on a remote machine.

Re:Summary

[JesseMcDonald]

I think the GP was referring to networks where the user profiles are stored on a remote file server. It more likely has something to do with locking, which tends to be haphazardly implemented among network filesystems. (That's not a criticism of the developers; it's a more difficult problem than local file locking.)

Re:Summary

[nhanced1]

Firefox 3 doesn't work in networked OSX environments...

Firefox 3 is the default browser on Macs at my work (OS X 10.4 and 10.5) and we have about 1500 networked. How is Firefox 3 supposed to not be working?

I ran into an issue with this also. It has to do with how AFP shares are used for home directories in an LDAP environment. It seems like Firefox is not comfortable writing its profile information directly to an AFP share. I was able to work around it by storing the profile data on the local HD, but as I recall, others were having the problem too.

Re:Summary

[Gilmoure]

Local home for now. I see what folks are saying about FF3 and networked directories. Yeah, that'll suck unless they get it fixed.

Re:Summary

[bill_mcgonigle]

Ah, I see a patch went in on 10/24. Not sure if it's for 3.0 or 3.1 - haven't learned mercurial yet...

Re:Summary

[Erikderzweite]

Well, graphic benchmarks are faster because of Linux's bad intel drivers and not-so-well-optimized mesa (much work is being done in that direction). A shock on a first glance if you think that intel drivers are open, but it seems logical if you know that they are currently rewriting a lot of stuff. It'll get better sooner or later (hope it'll be sooner though).

As for SQL&: "On 10.5 it's no longer F_FULLFSYNC, which means that SQLite does not do full fsync by default on Leopard, which might be the case on Ubuntu, which might be the reason why it is much slower there."

Interesting is, that 64-bit ubuntu is (sometimes notably) faster than 32-bit one on most tests. So there might be performance reasons to use 64-bit even if you have less than 4Gb of RAM.

it's not simply the OS, it's the distro

[slashnot007]

For things like compilations, there's a bunch of file opens, caching the compiler and loader, gobs of Mallocs, and so forth that probably intersect the OS. Then there's the driver and video layer tests that look at frames per second. Leopard had 2 to 4 times faster frames per second. then there's the supporting distro services. Tests of My SQL were 4 times faster on the mac. And then there's things like the optimzation of VMs like JAVA where again Leopard excels. THese are clearly optimization problem and can be improved. the purpose of comparing it against a mac is not simply to say "oh yeah mac is faster than unbuntu", but rather to give a bench that shows how much room for optimization ubuntu has. Conclusion is that in almost every aspect Ubuntu is severely unotimized. Since older Linux seemed to be more optimized it suggests that feature bloat is probably either screwing up the design of linux or no one is paying attention to optimizing those features.

Re:it's not simply the OS, it's the distro

[slashnot007]

correcting my post above: actually java on ubuntu is noticably faster than mac.

Re:it's not simply the OS, it's the distro

[Abcd1234]

Since older Linux seemed to be more optimized

Based on what, exactly?

Oh, yeah, nothing but your own bias that Linux is experiencing "feature bloat".

Re:it's not simply the OS, it's the distro

[hattig]

Yeah, I think that's down to Apple only shipping Java 5, not Java 6 which has a lot of performance enhancements. Java 6 is available now, so they should have used that.

The SQLite benchmarks are an embarrassment for Ubuntu, or Linux in general. However I do know that Apple have done a lot of work on this, for the iPhone, etc, and I'm sure their enhancements are taking time to filter back into the mainstream repository.

All that really matters for desktop use is the user perceived performance however. My Ubuntu feels fast enough - Compiz helps a lot of course - espectially compared to XP on the same machine.

I've just switched my Ubuntu theme to Dust from ubuntu-art.org and it actually makes the desktop environment pleasant. Maybe the font is a little bit too large, but it's not jarring. I'm not normally a fan of dark themes but this theme is very promising.

One thing the Ubuntu Appearance manager should do is maintain a base theme selection and the changes separately, so if you switch the theme, the same changes apply (e.g., Cleartype, font choices, compiz effects, etc) instead of you having to go through and change them all again.

Re:it's not simply the OS, it's the distro

[getaceres]

Based on this: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_bench_2008&num=1

Re:it's not simply the OS, it's the distro

[Chaos Incarnate]

Apple is shipping Java 6, but only for 64-bit Intel Macs. PowerPC Macs and 32-bit-only Macs (like all Mac Minis before the Mid-2007 model—I don't have the exact date of release handy) are stuck with Java 5.

Re:it's not simply the OS, it's the distro

[Abcd1234]

You mean the benchmarks that were discussed a while back here on Slashdot, where most people concluded that things like aggressive power saving features were most likely the cause for the performance degradation, and *not*, in fact, bloat?

I mean, FFS, how can you conclude that bloat is the issue when MP3 encoding, which is about as raw a CPU test as there is, became slower? Power saving features are *far* more likely the culprit.

Run the tests on a proper desktop machine, and get back to me. Until then, I declare their conclusions, at best, suspect.

Re:it's not simply the OS, it's the distro

[bonch]

You mean the benchmarks that were discussed a while back here on Slashdot, where most people concluded that things like aggressive power saving features were most likely the cause for the performance degradation, and *not*, in fact, bloat?

Wow, they were discussed on Slashdot! That means they were scientifically disproved because some people made up some conclusions that they thought were "likely" so that they could get modded up!

Re:it's not simply the OS, it's the distro

[Abcd1234]

I never said they were disproved. I said the presumption that that benchmark demonstrates "bloat" makes no fucking sense given that CPU-intensive operations, which are unaffected by bloat as people tradititionally define it (ie, excessive memory use), was significantly impacted in the move from 7.10 to 8.04. As such, your "proof" isn't.

'course, if you can't understand this basic, logical thinking, then perhaps you should refrain from participating in this discussion, as it's clear you're not sufficiently educated in the topic.

Re:it's not simply the OS, it's the distro

[bonch]

I never said they were disproved.

Then why did you bring up Slashdot comments? You said "Oh, you mean the benchmarks that some random Slashdotters concluded were skewed because of so-and-so reason?" Why would mention the comments if you weren't implying that the comments disproved the benchmarks?

'course, if you can't understand this basic, logical thinking, then perhaps you should refrain from participating in this discussion, as it's clear you're not sufficiently educated in the topic.

You're mad that I called you out for relying on random Slashdot comments.

Re:it's not simply the OS, it's the distro

[Abcd1234]

Why would mention the comments if you weren't implying that the comments disproved the benchmarks?

Fair enough. I suppose I could've simply stuck to debunking the claims, not mentioning the Slashdot article at all, but I figured it would be useful to demonstrate that I wasn't the only one who found those tests to be, at best, poorly interpreted, and at worst, flat out misleading. IOW, I wasn't citing the aforementioned discussion as proof... I simply felt they added weight to my argument.

Interestingly, I note that you haven't attempted to counter my points. I'll take that as an admission that you consider them valid, despite your continued bitching.

You're mad that I called you out for relying on random Slashdot comments.

How's that overinflated sense of self-importance working out for you?

Re:it's not simply the OS, it's the distro

[bonch]

Interestingly, I note that you haven't attempted to counter my points. I'll take that as an admission that you consider them valid, despite your continued bitching.

The fact that you have to declare yourself "right" means you had no rational argument to begin with. You're flailing at this point.

Next.

Re:it's not simply the OS, it's the distro

[Anonymous Coward]

SQLite on Linux in general is configured to sync every change to the disk. SQLite on the Mac will happily corrupt your data to get more performance.

Just build SQLite with fsync turned off. It will run faster. It's easy to corrupt your Firefox profile in case it crashes though.

Re:it's not simply the OS, it's the distro

[westyvw]

"older linux more optimized"
I disagree. Newer kernels have improved for me while indeed adding more to them. It really does depend on how you tune them. It IS the distro however. KDE has been getting faster over time, and the choice of using Gnome over KDE does have an impact.
Examples?
My current distro is DVD based (and Debian based), so its a larger install, yet FASTER then ubuntu by a factor of 2 to 1 in install speed.
Launch time is MUCH faster to the login, and log in to a fully running KDE is about 2 to 1.
Packages load quicker, windows management is snappier, etc. Even the GLX_Gears at the same resolution is faster.

SQLite inserts?

[zoid.com]

What's up with the SQLite inserts? Is EXT3 really that bad? I would be interested in seeing PostgreSQL benchmarks.

Re:SQLite inserts?

[Zan Lynx]

I am pretty sure Apple cheats on fsync which SQLite uses a lot. To get a real fsync from OS X you have to use the special secret F_FULLFSYNC fcntl.

"Cheat" may be too strong, but Linux fsync sends a command to disk to flush all disk buffers and OS X does not.

Re:SQLite inserts?

[argent]

Is this because it doesn't do an fsync, or is it vecause it returns from the fsync once the journal is written?

If it's the latter, why is that cheating?

Re:SQLite inserts?

[coolsnowmen]

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man2/fsync.2.html

You are right, and that is not what I expected.

Note that while fsync() will flush all data from the host to the drive (i.e. the "permanent storage
          device"), the drive itself may not physically write the data to the platters for quite some time and it
          may be written in an out-of-order sequence.

          Specifically, if the drive loses power or the OS crashes, the application may find that only some or
          none of their data was written. The disk drive may also re-order the data so that later writes may be
          present, while earlier writes are not.

          This is not a theoretical edge case. This scenario is easily reproduced with real world workloads and
          drive power failures.

          For applications that require tighter guarantees about the integrity of their data, Mac OS X provides
          the F_FULLFSYNC fcntl.

Re:SQLite inserts?

[Space cowboy]

I read it as the other way around. Linux, Windows, the Mac, just about everything cheat on fsync(). Posix allows this, and even allows a null implementation. Note that linux implements fsync() as a no-op for some filesystems, and that some versions (I don't know which) of Windows can remove fsync() functionality via a registry setting.

On the Mac, calling fsync() does the same thing as it does on anything else with a working fsync() call - it flushes all the data out to the drive and returns.

What the mac also provides is the F_FULLFSYNC fcntl, which does an fsync() then resets the drive controller to force the in-built RAM caches on the drive to be purged out to the physical disk platters. This is glacially slow, compared to the 'normal' fsync(), but under some circumstance may be worth it.

See here for more info, specifically section 9.2.

Simon

Re:SQLite inserts?

[nick58b]

Appears the default is different between 10.4 and 10.5 too.

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/CoreData/Articles/cdPersistentStores.html

"Note that the default behaviors on Mac OS X v10.4 an 10.5 are different. On Mac OS X v10.4, SQLite uses FULL_FSYNC by default; on Mac OS X v10.5 it does not."

Re:SQLite inserts?

[Zan Lynx]

I do not know where you got the idea that Linux cheats fsync() as a rule. It may, on some less-used file systems, but fsync() on the ext3, reiserfs and reiser4 (those three I know personally) and I believe XFS, does send a special barrier IO into the disk queue.

This barrier IO uses nice SCSI tricks with SCSI and nasty slow tricks with IDE and SATA. With those last two, the barrier flushes the disk buffer, sends the IO and flushes the disk buffer again, waiting to determine if any IO errors occurred.

This is very reliable and guarantees in-order write operations but is slow, slow, slow.

SCSI can generally run a barrier operation as part of the command queuing, so it doesn't slow down as much.

On ext3 the journal is also involved and fsync() generally has to write out and clear the entire journal before completing because ext3 has no way to pick out any particular prerequisite that applies to the file, and the journal must be written in-order.

If Linux didn't do the "real deal" for fsync(), there wouldn't have been so many Firefox 3 bug reports complaining about 30 second pauses on page loads -- caused by ext3 and fsync() being used by SQLite.

Re:SQLite inserts?

[Space cowboy]

If you read the link, I "got the idea" from the authors of SQLite. It's their claim, not mine.

Simon.

Re:SQLite inserts?

[Zan Lynx]

From the SQLite link: "Some historical versions of Linux contain versions of fsync() which are no-ops on some filesystems"

On Linux systems in the last two to three years at least, using ext3, reiserfs, reiser4 or xfs, fsync() is not a no-op and does commit data to disk oxide.

So "Recent versions of Linux contain versions of fsync() which are fully functional on most filesystems." would be a much better way to put it, and it explains why Linux appears slow in database benchmarks against OS X.

It's just that they way you put it made it sound as if Linux routinely uses no-op implementations of fsync().

Why is Ubunto so popular?

[Viol8]

Apparently its easy to set up? Is it? I've read that when things go wrong its a pig to sort out. I've used Suse for years now and wifi aside I've never had any issues getting it to work on desktops or laptops (we won't mention the KDE 4.0 debarcle in 10.3). And as an added bonus it has a half decent colour scheme, grown up name and has a standard system setup (uses nice and simple inittab instead of yet another over complicated replacement called upstart).

Is Ubunto really nothing more than Linux for Dummies or does it have anything extra a power user might want that the other dists don't?

Re:Why is Ubunto so popular?

[y86]

I've read that when things go wrong its a pig to sort out.

See any other linux distribution. I've run linux since Redhat 4.1 in 1997 and I've slutted around with slackware(which is my fav for simplicity), debian, Suse, Caldera, and many others.

I've never run into a distro that ISN'T a pig when something goes wrong except SLACKWARE. And slackware is only simple since it offers almost no package management and no autoconfiguration.

The easier it is the use, the bigger nightmare it seems to be when it breaks. See windows registry for another great analogy.

Re:Why is Ubunto so popular?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that you can't even spell the name properly tells me that you don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about, aside from the fact that you've seen this "Ubunt-thing" mentioned on Slashdot. At least do some basic research on your own before asking other people to help you out: http://www.ubuntu.com/

Either that or you're trolling. Seriously, "SuSE" is a "grown-up name" and "Ubuntu" isn't? And it "uses nice and simple inittab instead of yet another over complicated replacement called upstart"? I'm laughing, but it's not because you're funny.

Re:Why is Ubunto so popular?

[JJNess]

Grown up name? How is Suse (which brings to mind a certain doctoral author of children's books) any more grown up than Ubuntu (a foreign language word representing the philosophy behind the distribution and FOSS as a whole)?

Re:Why is Ubunto so popular?

[galoise]

my reasons for ubuntu (not trying to sell it to anyone...)
deb based, debian derivative
huge community with tons of use-cases that help troubleshoot almost anything
huge software repo
nice release cycle and upgrade system
different desktops available without too much hassle

and i had a terrible experience in my n00by years with rpm systems, both in fedora and suse flavours (although that was mainly an ati card being a bitch).

my only gripe is that although they offer a kde version, development is pretty much gtk-centric, and i hate gtk and gnome with its habit of treating the luser as a complete moron. i hear that opensuse is kde based, but i already put my chips on canonicals side, so i'm pretty happy with *buntu.

Re:Why is Ubunto so popular?

[Viol8]

I was thinking more of the childish release names - Intrepid Ibex , Hardy Heron etc. Who are they aimed at , 8 year olds?

Re:Why is Ubunto so popular?

[Viol8]

"'ve never run into a distro that ISN'T a pig when something goes wrong except SLACKWARE. And slackware is only simple since it offers almost no package management and no autoconfiguration"

I'd agree with you, though of course with Slackware a lot of stuff never goes wrong because its not there to start with! Even USB stick automount isn't enabled by default in 12.1

Re:Why is Ubunto so popular?

[Anonymous Coward]

Joe Camel says childish marketing works.

Re:Why is Ubunto so popular?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice flame, FYI Ubuntu is debian with more up-to-date packages...

Re:Why is Ubunto so popular?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell Debian proper is named after characters in Toy Story

Re:Why is Ubunto so popular?

[Haiyadragon]

Those are code names. Like Longhorn was for Windows Vista. Officially it's just Ubuntu 8.10, Ubuntu 8.04 etc.

Re:Why is Ubunto so popular?

[Culture20]

I tried to like Suse and opensuse post Novell, but the mono-based auto-update system kept hanging, and I had to write a cron job to force kill the processes and restart the auto-updates. Not to mention that SLED didn't ever get mozilla thunderbird packages because they thought evolution should be good enough for anyone. I switched to a more grown up distro after a year of trying to get Suse to work as Novell intended.

Re:Why is Ubunto so popular?

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

Ubuntu (a foreign language word representing the philosophy behind the distribution and FOSS as a whole)?

and i always tought it meant "can't install debian properly".

living and learning...

Re:Why is Ubunto so popular?

[RiotingPacifist]

nice troll, im sure others have shot down most of your bull, but ill point out that upstart is backwards compatible with sysv, so you can just use a nice simple inittab if you don't want to take advantage of the added features (not that there are many yet)

Re:Why is Ubunto so popular?

[Eunuchswear]

No, Ubuntu is Debian sid with less up-to-date packages.

Re:Why is Ubunto so popular?

[BrokenHalo]

Seriously, "SuSE" is a "grown-up name" and "Ubuntu" isn't? And it "uses nice and simple inittab instead of yet another over complicated replacement called upstart"? I'm laughing, but it's not because you're funny.

I agree that the parent poster is probably a jerk, but when I first played with Ubuntu, I did find that particular choice asinine. Anyone who knows their way around Linux in general knows to look for /etc/inittab. Anyone whose only interaction with the system configuration is through a GUI doesn't need to know what the file is called. So why change it? This isn't a show-stopper by any stretch of the imagination, but it is an irritation for an experienced *nix user unfamiliar with Ubuntu's idiosyncrasies.

Re:Why is Ubunto so popular?

[JesseMcDonald]

Those aren't release names, they're code names. The release names are "Ubuntu 8.04", "Ubuntu 8.10", etc., which are perfectly professional. Proprietary software often has code names which are just as "childish" (your word, not mine); you just don't see them because the development is done behind closed doors.

Re:Why is Ubunto so popular?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Ubuntu is Debian sid with less up-to-date packages.

A stopped clock is still correct twice a day.

Give it time. StaleOS is growing even more stale as I write this.

obama has already been tested

[Anonymous Coward]

and the porch monkey failed.

not 10.3 , 11!

[Viol8]

Duh , that should have read 11, not 10.3.

Give credit where credit is due

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubunu isn't getting slower, Mac OSX is getting faster.

Do any of you recall Mac OSX 10.0?

The day I installed Apple's first "modern" OS, I thought X marked the spot of Apple's demise.

Apple has done an admirable job bringing MacOS into the 21st century, and their future looks promising.

Re:Give credit where credit is due

[galoise]

really true. i haven't played with a newer mac in a long time, but from what i recall, OSX was SLOOOOOOOOW

if they have sped it up a bit, good for them.

Re:Give credit where credit is due

[Anonymous Coward]

Except you're wrong. Tiger ran a hell of a lot better on my iBook than Leopard. If I didn't need Leopard to run the iPhone SDK then I would be back to Tiger in a heartbeat.

Ubuntu on the other actually is about the same as it always has been but the CPU scaling and CPU power management stuff totally sucks. This isn't a problem with Ubuntu so much as Linux itself. To see the true performance of Ubuntu you must disable all CPU frequency scaling (see below).

The problem with the CPU scaler on Linux is that it reacts slowly. Typically you're running a bunch of processes and if you have multiple cores/CPU's then the frequency scaler will constantly bounce between the cores and seriously degrade performance. Even a single high CPU task will not run at maximum performance.

System->Administration->Services, click Unlock, scroll to "CPU Frequency Manager" and disable that bitch.

Re:Give credit where credit is due

[Mista2]

OS X Initial Speed: Many people buy the base spec machine, then say, Oh it was so slow!
Just like any modern machine, for best performance you are really going to need 2GB RAM for anything other than basic office and browsing tasks on a desktop. Espcially if you use iTunes, as this little beast will eat 500MB of RAM or more if given the chance. I have entire VM images that use less memory than iTunes.

Re:Give credit where credit is due

[westyvw]

Your right. Ubuntu isnt getting any slower. Its always been about as slow as it can be.

Re:Give credit where credit is due

[Anonymous Coward]

You know these things aren't mutually exclusive, you can have both OSX getting faster and Ubuntu getting slower.

What you're saying contradicts Phoronix's previous tests involving the current and several past Ubuntu versions that conclude Ubuntu is getting slower.

Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[glennrrr]

Next year, we will be seeing how much the extreme emphasis Apple is placing on performance will affect comparisons like these. Apple has figured out that since they can no longer hope to use differences in the CPU to differentiate themselves with generic Windows boxen, they will be using Microsoft's extreme backwards compatibility needs against them when it comes to fully using all the cores--whether they be in a CPU or a GPU--in a computer, and making full use of the 64-bit instruction set. GPGPU programming can give a huge performance boost to certain algorithms and the cleaner, more register rich, 64-bit instruction set is intrinsically faster in addition to allowing larger data sets.

That's why they stopped selling non 64-bit capable computers a couple years ago, and why the new MacBooks have much improved integrated graphics. That's why they are moving their developers to include 64-bit compiles as part of newly shipped universal binaries. Next year is when all this latent potential gets switched on.

Linux has the opportunity to do the same; perhaps more opportunity as it has less of a legacy binary issue, although Linux has to deal with a multitude of graphics chips, Apple only has to optimize for a handful.

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[TheRaven64]

Leopard has already improved performance in a lot of areas. In particular, mmap performance no longer sucks. I had an interesting experience where I wrote two back ends for some of my code, one with aio and one with mmap. On FreeBSD they were within 5% of each other. On OS X 10.4, the mmap one was an order of magnitude slower (and aio ran slower on the OS X machine, but that's not a very fair test - the OS X machine had a faster CPU but a slower disk). I extended this pathological case to a simple program which mmap'd a 2GB file and then touched one byte in every page in turn, 200 times. On 10.4, this completely killed the machine until it finished running, and didn't finish when I left it overnight. On 10.5, the machine stayed responsive (some slowdown, but not much), and finished in about an hour. Now that it's certified as fully complying with SUS'03, Darwin is a pretty nice OS, although too many parts of it (audio subsystem, for example) are closed for it to really be useful without OS X.

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[scorp1us]

So many people are going to call BS on this, but...

I was in the mac store the other day, and I swear I could tell the difference between the new Mac books with the NVIDIA chips and the ones without. From just looking at the scaling performance of the doc as you mouse over it, it looked so much more solid.

I tend to be very sensitive to visual artifacts. I hated my MythTV box because of the tearing (memory bus issue) and blocking on Comcast (so glad I now have FIOS, which still blocks, but only for static or oceanscapes).

Things like a dock where it feels "solid" (better servicing of repaints) just give a better impression of stability and performance, even if its just a simple scale operation. Having no flicker in position or delay in rendering make an impression on people who may not even be aware of what they are seeing.

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[Lumpy]

Yup right after they piss off 1/2 their user base by abandoning the G5's and G4 processors.

There are a crapload of G5 and G4 apples still in use daily. I know of at least 30 that still create the TV shows and TV commercials you all watch.

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[Anonymous Coward]

cry me a motherfucking river. you're whinging about a platform that hasnt been available to buy for over 2 years. furthermore, it's been known it was going to be deprecated for over 4 years. waaaaa! waaa! I'm a sooky fucking baby! waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[BrokenHalo]

I've been using *nix machines for decades, and still use Linux on my desktop and server machines. But since since I inherited a Mac laptop (actually, two now) I have become something of a fanboy for Mac. It is very pleasant to have a (nearly) consistent, intelligently designed interface to a system where everything "just works" with a minimum of effort.

Yes, Linux supports much more hardware, but I can understand why "Joe Sixpack" (or even maybe "the Plumber") would find OS X easier to deal with.

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[bendodge]

I heartily agree. I always feel nervous when I see bits of redraw gunk flash by when I open a menu or mouse over something. I get this nagging feeling that I'm about to get a driver error (I've spent too much time trying to fix nv4_disp BSOD's). I honestly would feel much better about using Linux if it responded more like XP Pro with the Classic interface (no menu delays, no artifacts, clicks registered immediately). There's something psychological about smooth UI responses, and it's my biggest con of KDE4.

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[Just Some Guy]

Yup right after they piss off 1/2 their user base by abandoning the G5's and G4 processors.

Abandoned how? I have a G4 eMac that runs great with Leopard. Snow Leopard won't work on it, but I'm not upset that I'm "stuck" with 10.5. What would a new OS give me that the current one doesn't, other than support for new hardware that my system doesn't have?

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[freedom_india]

Actually you are right and wrong.
I have G4 iBook. I upgraded to Leopard last week from Tiger.
Tiger was the fastest OS i had.
The upgrade failed. iBook became terribly slow (no, spotlight was done).
I had to wipe and install.
Somehow it seems slower and less colorful now.
Panther was slow. Tiger was fastest. Leopard is like XP.
powerPC is something i like. It is a different architecture than the staid crappy x86. It was beautiful.
I don't know whom to blame: arrogant IBM or impatient Apple or us suckers.

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[nxtw]

Did both machines have two DIMMs inserted? I've noticed a significant different in Aero on Intel GPUs when the machine only had one DIMM (that is, 1x1GB DIMM was noticeably slower than 2x512MB DIMMs.)

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[nine-times]

Apple has figured out that since they can no longer hope to use differences in the CPU to differentiate themselves with generic Windows boxen, they will be using Microsoft's extreme backwards compatibility needs against them...

Yeah, I'm glad you raised this issue, because I think it's an interesting component of this whole thing: backwards compatibility. Apple does try to maintain backward compatibility to a certain extent-- continuing to support 32-bit and PPC versions of their software, but they've shown a much greater willingness to simply cut things off than MS. Linux is somewhat different, in that by being open source, the door is open for the backwards compatibility to be configured in as-needed. Therefore, if legacy code is slowing things down, there's the option of simply dropping it out for systems that don't need that legacy code anymore.

In that sense, it seems like OSX and Linux currently have an advantage over Windows when it comes to making quick progress. But it may be that the advantage is just now opening up, in that OSX is done transitioning to 64-bit x86 and Linux has finally caught up to Windows on the desktop (IMO), and so it's only now that the respective developers can really focus in on making advancements and fine-tuning everything.

I'm not sure whether the advantage is significant or real though. I guess time will tell.

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[Floody]

I've been using *nix machines for decades, and still use Linux on my desktop and server machines. But since since I inherited a Mac laptop (actually, two now) I have become something of a fanboy for Mac. It is very pleasant to have a (nearly) consistent, intelligently designed interface to a system where everything "just works" with a minimum of effort.

Yes, Linux supports much more hardware, but I can understand why "Joe Sixpack" (or even maybe "the Plumber") would find OS X easier to deal with.

Indeed, I'm in the same camp. It's comfortable feeling to have a clean, workable and immediately usable interface (although certainly not perfect) on top of a unix paradigm that we (old *nix heads) are already comfortable with.

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[St. Alfonzo]

Leopard runs beautifully on my (Intel) MacBook.
Perhaps their new software was designed to run on their new hardware? Just a thought.

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[Anonymous Coward]

> and it's my biggest con of KDE4.

Man, no kidding - I upgraded to the latest Kubuntu the other day, and after experimenting for a while, had to get rid of it. I'm back to 8.04. That user experience sucks, plain and simple. I wouldn't mind all the tricks and gadgets (most of which I disable) if things weren't so friggin' slow.

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[DiLLeMaN]

Their new software is still based on their old software which was designed to be portable. It runs on PPC, Intel and Arm. Apple is not "sabotaging" OS X on PPC just to get you to buy a new shiny Mac.

Leopard runs mighty fine on the (PPC) mini and eMac here. Too bad I can't run Snow Leopard, even worse that I can't run an increasing amount of software -- recent Java, several emulators, stuff like that. Not stuff that makes my daily Mac life less pleasant, but stuff I'd just "like to have".

But I'm sure that until scrape together the money to get an Intel Mac, these two will serve me just fine.

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[freedom_india]

Probably true. One thing that is better is wifi is better, and the battery life a little longer, although spotlight kicks in and re-indexes my whole drive.
But am not buying an intel mac.
I own an AMD X2, and i would rather hack Leopard to run on it.
Seems fair enough. After all i have a family license, so i can run it on another machine.

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[drinkypoo]

What would a new OS give me that the current one doesn't, other than support for new hardware that my system doesn't have?

Support for applications that come out after the new operating system is released. Just take a look to see how many applications will still run on OSX 10.1. Apple keeps adding new functions, and developers keep using them, which is called progress... which will leave your G4 behind.

Let's not also forget that when Apple abandons PowerPC, lots of application developers will as well. So you'll be limited to point updates; there won't be any major updates for you.

Luckily for the world, Linux will continue to give those PPC-based macs meaning long after the Apple world has left them behind. This is especially lucky for the world since those machines likely aren't RoHS compliant due to their age, although they very likely do have recycling stamps on their plastic parts. Apple has always been very good about that.

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I could tell the difference between a MacBook with nvidia and an old one, too: The nv MacBooks have an alu case.

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[Anonymous Coward]

powerPC is something i like. It is a different architecture than the staid crappy x86. It was beautiful.

can you follow that with even a single reason why you believe ppc was so beautiful? are you writing assembly, or is that just uninformed fanboy drivel coming out of your mouth?

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[Anonymous Coward]

But am not buying an intel mac.
I own an AMD X2, and i would rather hack Leopard to run on it.
Seems fair enough. After all i have a family license, so i can run it on another machine.

Well that's just stupid. What's so amazingly wonderful about the X2 that makes all that work hacking OS X to run on it justified over just getting an Intel Mac?

For the record I'm not biased towards either the X2 or Core 2, they both seem to work well.

I just find it hilarious when people dribble on things that are 'beautiful' and then go out of their way to create an ugly kludge to work around a problem that doesn't exist.

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[Just Some Guy]

Well, I can't really fault them for progress. It'd be nice if computers were forward compatible, but at some point the world moves on. And as others mentioned, Apple announced their plans well in advance, so the only people caught unawares have 4-year-old Macs. Since almost all software sold today still runs on those systems, the deprecation scenario hasn't played out yet. That's a reasonable lifetime for a computer when considering that the end isn't apparent yet.

Having said all that, I'm coming at this from the luxury position of the Mac being my third computer. At work I use an Ubuntu 8.10 system, and at home I spend far more time on an Eee PC. Perhaps I'd be more annoyed if my only computer were being phased out, but even then it's had a respectable life already.

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[freedom_india]

Its not a question of ugly duck or swan.
I understand Apple is a mix of hardware and software: for which am thankful to Apple for my iBook.
Long after my friends' Dell DVD drives had stopped working, my iBook is still running smooth despite having to change my keyboard (my son pulled out each key meticulously) and hard drive (dropped from bed).
I also know the hassles of making it work on non-Apple machines.
But having paid $199 for 5 licenses, i want to use it.

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[badkarmadayaccount]

Hmm, what attracts you? THe non-working /etc/fstab? The borked by Unix standards driver frame work (which pretty much duplicates functionality in netbsd)? The kludge of a kernel that has some hellish SMP issues (15 fold slower creating of threads, or something to that effect) last I heard? To everyone his own, but I'd first run HP-UX, then AIX, then Plan 9, THEN Mac OS X/Darwin(same command line) for my ultimate Unix enviro. BTW, I'm 15. Wanna guess how much free time I have?

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[drinkypoo]

I can't really fault Apple for it, but it is just one more reason to put your support behind Linux rather than MacOS when given a choice.

Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance

[freedom_india]

PowerPC architectire was based on economisation of movement. Like Judo.
Intel is based on kickboxing. maximisation of movement.
When Xcode compiles your code for PowerPC architecture it optimizes it for power savings, jumpings and lastly performance. With intel it is reverse. Check out the Rings too.
Check out the decompiler output and if you want look it up in the IBM's original documentation of the 6088 processor.
Am not a fanboy. I own both AMD PC and PowerPC iBook.

Stay away from Intel graphics

[Tangamandapiano]

The worst Ubuntu performance in the tests was on the OpenGL benchmarks. There's a lot of improving coming on the Intel drivers (GEM, UXA, etc.), but it's sad to notice that it's taking so long for the performance on Linux being on pair with Windows and Mac OS X systems (in the same hardware). I have a GM965 (Intel X3100 card), which support is even less mature than the Mac Mini's integrated card. Based on my experience, I'd not recommend buying those laptops with this IGP to anyone interested in 3D, even for basic stuff like Google Earth or Celestia - unless if you don't mind waiting some more months (or years) to the drivers improve.

Ubuntu -- Obama Linux Distro

[y86]

Ubuntu has become the defacto Linux distribution for the common computer user.

It came from nothing to something in a very short period of time.

Kind of like Obama.

I hope Obama performs as well as ubuntu.

Re:Ubuntu -- Obama Linux Distro

[andrewd18]

It came from nothing to something in a very short period of time.

I wouldn't call Debian "nothing".

Re:Ubuntu -- Obama Linux Distro

[y86]

I wouldn't call Debian "nothing".

Good point, it was a slow moving ugly mess not suitable for normal users and not suitable for average users. :-)

Re:Ubuntu -- Obama Linux Distro

[PiSkyHi]

Remember when Redhat came with the new incompatible version of rpm inside one of its own rpms ? One had to search for the tarball to upgrade rpm. That pretty much killed it for life for me, I've been using Debian based systems ever since. I think the idea was, back then redhat users frequently re-installed from scratch.

Re:Ubuntu -- Obama Linux Distro

[tlacuache]

Also, both are brown.

Re:Ubuntu -- Obama Linux Distro

[Anonymous Coward]

So... Whats your point?

Re:Ubuntu -- Obama Linux Distro

[Smauler]

not suitable for normal users and not suitable for average users.

Ok, I agree it wasn't suited for average users, but surely it was suitable for normal users. Or was that the other way around?

Re:Ubuntu -- Obama Linux Distro

[Kjella]

Good point, it was a slow moving ugly mess not suitable for normal users and not suitable for average users. :-)

Ah, but what about typical users and ordinary users? Won't anyone think of the common user?!

Re:Ubuntu -- Obama Linux Distro

[swillden]

I wouldn't call Debian "nothing".

Good point, it was a slow moving ugly mess not suitable for normal users and not suitable for average users. :-)

Nonsense. Debian was and is very fast-moving. If you run sid, you get new packages before pretty much any other distro, including Gentoo. At the same time, it was and is very polished and reliable. If you run stable, you get rock-solid reliability, and everything just works.

What Ubuntu did was to take Debian as a base and build another distro that's in between stable and sid in terms of development pace (about where Debian testing sits, except that Ubuntu only updates twice a year, rather than continuously), and added some polish to make it more accessible to non-geeks.

Ubuntu is a valuable addition, but to say that it was build on a "slow-moving mess" overestimates the amount of Ubuntu's contribution to the Debian base.

Re:Ubuntu -- Obama Linux Distro

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the laugh.

Re:Ubuntu -- Obama Linux Distro

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama did not come from nothing to something in a short period of time. His media-driven hype began four years ago, and he was carried through with nary a critical or skeptical word written about him by the press. Even the Associated Press was forced to write a story on Election Day acknowledging the bias.

People will tire of the Democrats very quickly and will give the Congress to the GOP to fix the mess (like they did with Clinton, whom they eventually pressured to lower the capital gains tax, leading to the prosperous era of the 90s).

In the meantime, I hope everyone enjoys the one-party supermajority government. That sure worked out so well last time. And we'll get higher taxes during a recession--genius!

Re:Ubuntu -- Obama Linux Distro

[znerk]

It came from nothing to something in a very short period of time.

I wouldn't call Debian "nothing".

... unless you ask Joe Sixpack what he thinks about Debian... and then when he's done explaining that he hasn't a clue what Debian is, ask him his thoughts on Ubuntu. What are the chances he'll have at least heard the name, and may have even seen it in use?

"Coming from nothing" was an indication of publicity, in this instance - or at least, that's how I read it.

Re:Ubuntu -- Obama Linux Distro

[Anonymous Coward]

You're giving Ubuntu way too much credit (as far as the actual tech, that is). Debian is the mothership that makes Ubuntu possible.

I use both Ubuntu and Debian every day, and Ubuntu has really no advantage for anyone who is knowledgable. AFAICT, the biggest single difference in philosophy is that Debian keeps everything out in the open for the benefit of its programmer-users, whereas Ubuntu hides details behind GUIs so as to not intimidate novice users.

The two distros are very nearly identical in function. Ubuntu is just the proverbial "Debian presented nicely". I think the real reason for Ubuntu's popularity is just as much the Debian under the hood as it is the non-threatening interface. People may try Ubuntu because it is "easy", but they stay with it because, after all, it is basically Debian and Debian rocks.

Re:Ubuntu -- Obama Linux Distro

[Dionysus]

Yes, the upgrade from 5 to 6. Made me discover Debian

Why is Fruit of the Loom so popular?

[MasterOfMagic]

Distros are like underwear - everyone has their favorite kind, some have none at all, but odds are you'll dislike someone else's brand because you are used to your own.

Re:Why is Fruit of the Loom so popular?

[Viol8]

I have no problem with people liking Ubunto and saying so , but it seems to have a huge momentum behind it with all and sundry proclaiming it as the greatest dist yet built. From what I've seen however its no better or worse than many others so I'm just wondering what the big deal is.

Re:Why is Fruit of the Loom so popular?

[Dystopian Rebel]

Distros are like underwear

Gentoo has the nastiest skid marks.

Re:Why is Fruit of the Loom so popular?

[BrokenHalo]

Not so sure of that; more experienced Linux users will recognise strengths (and weaknesses) of most distros, without necessarily insisting that one is mecessarily better than the other.

For instance, while I recognise that the dependency-checking features inherent in package managers like deb or rpm can be valuable or useful, I find that they get in the way of how I like to work. Similarly, I don't expect my mongrel hybrid of self-compiled applications and tgz distro packages to satisfy requirements for someone who doesn't want to ever think about dependencies.

And those of us who mess around with init scripts are even more polarised. I personally shun sysvinit scripts and prefer something more BSD-ish, while others feel the reverse is more elegant. But that's personal preference. Both get the job done.

Re:Why is Fruit of the Loom so popular?

[mR.bRiGhTsId3]

Where have you been... Ubuntu is the tantamount to the second coming, to save us from the encroaching darkness of t3h m1cR0$h@f][.
All Ubuntu actually has are some good "community managers" that managed to get a whole bunch of people super worked up about an average distribution that leeches off of debian.

Re:Why is Fruit of the Loom so popular?

[Hatta]

Distros are like underwear

They should be changed often, and for the same reason?

Re:Why is Fruit of the Loom so popular?

[rar]

Distros are like underwear

- you want to stay far, far away from people who try to push theirs on you.

Re:Why is Fruit of the Loom so popular?

[AndrewNeo]

Not if you don't compile it with them!

OS X is better in many other ways

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if Ubuntu were faster than OS X, who cares? Audio and video decoding? Is there any decent software available for Linux that does this? What about Photoshop for Ubuntu? All Ubuntu can do is run a server, a web browser, play choppy media with illegal codecs, sport some of the worst font rendering in existence, and consistently fail to recognize my USB 2.0 devices. At least with OS X, I can actually DO something.

Re:OS X is better in many other ways

[rmadmin]

Sadly, I have to agree with this. I'm still running XP on my work laptop and workstation at home. Why? Every damn time I install ubuntu, there is ONE vital thing that just doesn't work for whatever reason. Be it buggy nvidia drivers for my card, not having a certain package I'm using at the moment, any number of show stoppers... Sorry Ubuntu, you haven't won the desktop yet. Side note: I have more than a dozen Debian/Ubuntu/FreeBSD servers at work. And a ubuntu box that controls video playback on Channel 7 of our cable TV feed. =)

Re:OS X is better in many other ways

[BrokenHalo]

Audio and video decoding? Is there any decent software available for Linux that does this? What about Photoshop for Ubuntu? All Ubuntu can do is run a server, a web browser, play choppy media with illegal codecs, sport some of the worst font rendering in existence, and consistently fail to recognize my USB 2.0 devices. At least with OS X, I can actually DO something.

Hmmm. Some of your other criticisms might (with some arguments to the contrary) have some foundation, but I am now convinced that font rendering in Linux is at least equal in quality to that on OS X or Windows, if not better. And I strongly suspect that if your USB devices are not being recognised, there is most probably a hardware issue. (I've had recent experience of this.)

Java

[Anonymous Coward]

They used Mac OS X's 1.5 version of Java, while OS 10.5.5 does include Java 1.6 (64-bit only). I wonder how things would have changed had they selected this version as the default for Mac OS.

- Mg

7-zip benchmark? WTF??

[catmistake]

I ceased RTFA when I saw this. Anyone using this bullsh!t compression is a gullible fool; who cares how fast stupid is?

Re:7-zip benchmark? WTF??

[Errtu76]

Well .... you _were_ pretty fast to stop reading the article ;)

But apart from that, what's wrong with 7zip?

Re:7-zip benchmark? WTF??

[Anonymous Coward]

BULLSHIT BULLSHIT BULLSHIT

You can say "bullshit" on Slashdot. Or any other curse word you want. There's no filter here. If you don't want to use that word, then use a different one; you only make yourself look stupid when you censor yourself like that.

Also, 7-zip is a perfectly good compression algorithm.

Re:7-zip benchmark? WTF??

[PiSkyHi]

Bullshit because ?
7-zip offers better ratios for the CPU endowed ?

Re:7-zip benchmark? WTF??

[mikael_j]

My personal opinion on 7zip is that it's kind of like ace, another compression scheme that's popular with a handful of loudmouthed advocates. I have yet to encounter any *nix software that came in a .7z file, everyone is still using gzip or bzip2 (and even bzip2 is fairly "new") when distributing things in the *nix world since gunzip and bunzip2 are installed by default pretty much everywhere (and if they're not installed by default then I'd be willing to bet money on 90% of machines running an OS that doesn't include gunzip or bunzip2 having at least one of these installed in /usr/local or /opt).

Also, the small gains from using 7zip just isn't worth "converting", gzip and bzip2 are working perfectly fine. Any "normal" user (that is, someone who isn't working with petabytes of archived data and such) could probably gain a lot more by using more efficient formats for the original files (excluding things like source code and raw data, the first is generally not using enough space to justify the saved space from using 7zip and the second is, from what I've seen, rarely compressed anyway since if you're processing huge amounts of raw data chances are you'd rather not waste CPU time decompressing your data).

/Mikael

Re:7-zip benchmark? WTF??

[Anonymous Coward]

everyone is still using gzip or bzip2

I'm sure I saw a .lzma compressed package in Gentoo's portage tree a few months back.

Re:7-zip benchmark? WTF??

[Ant P.]

Also, 7-zip is a perfectly good compression algorithm.

Bullshit.

7-Zip is a container format, not a codec.

Re:7-zip benchmark? WTF??

[catmistake]

1) negligible compression gain
2) processor intensive
3) not ubiquitous
4) just another format to support with no great purpose

Re:7-zip benchmark? WTF??

[kill-1]

I have yet to encounter any *nix software that came in a .7z file,

Imagemagick has .7z and .lzma tarballs: ftp://ftp.imagemagick.org/pub/ImageMagick/

Also, the small gains from using 7zip just isn't worth "converting",

I would consider 30% smaller files (almost 50% compared to gzip) pretty impressive.

Re:7-zip benchmark? WTF??

[Hatta]

7z is actually pretty impressive. I recently converted a bunch of ROMs from 7z to gz for use with mednafen. I don't remember exactly, but the gzipped roms were close to 50% bigger than the 7z. FWIW, 7z uses both LZMA and bzip2 compression as appropriate. The only real reason not to use it, is that you can't expect people to have 7z installed just yet. But bzip2 overcame that obstacle, and 7z should too. This comparison should interest you.

It's also worth noting that the gui windows 7-zip program is the best archive manager I've ever used on that platform. Easy to use, powerful (great context menu entries), supports most existing formats, and is entirely free. There's no reason 7z shouldn't take over the world. But I guess that makes me a loudmouth advocate, huh.

Is it just me....

[tsnorquist]

Or do you all feel that the Federation (Windows systems) and Klingons (Nix systems) should join forces and fight the Borg (Apple systems). Then we can all take on Species 8472 (Google).

Ubuntu fast enough for me

[Eravnrekaree]

I have not noticed performance problems from Ubuntu. Sometimes I think these small differences are pretty much unnoticeable to the common user. I would say that while Linux always seems fast and snappy to me, its Windows which has a truly noticeable sluggish feel.

I certainly do not think it is a good trade off in an OS to sacrifice features for an increase in speed which really is not noticeable. In most cases this is not necessary as many parts of a system can be made optional. The schedular and some core kernel systems effect the speed of the whole system, but most other components are optional, like X, like drivers, like Gnome, and so on.

Which also is the nice thing about X: the designers of X decided not to try to build in a bunch of heavy user interface junk into the X server, ironically which many people criticise. Excluding memory leaks in some drivers not related to X itself, the X protocol and server system is actually very efficient by todays standards and does not use much memory. Most memory usage is in caching and in bad drivers full of crappy code. Therefore you can run our own window manager without carrying a bunch of stuff you wont use. But the eye candy is there if you want it. People should choose how many features and memory or how little they wish to use.

Re:Ubuntu fast enough for me

[freedom_india]

Try using the 64-bit version. Run it for 7 days and feel it slowing down regularly every 3 hours. Clockwork. On an AMD X2 64-bit 4200+ CPU. With Gnome. True it still is fast compared to 64-bit Vista (hell, AIX is faster than Vista), but this slowdown is clockwork and lasts for 2-3 mins max. No disk activity. memory spikes yes.

Their methodology is broken

[chrb]

Overall the benchmarks suggests that Linux (not just Ubuntu) needs some work on the graphics system and the Intel drivers.

Since they only tested on a Mac Mini, what the results actually suggest is that an operating system distribution that's been finely tuned for a very small set of hardware beats a generic distribution that's currently running on thousands of different hardware configurations. If they actually wanted to draw some generic conclusions about Ubuntu versus Mac OS X, then they should've installed both on as many different hardware platforms as possible, and then run their benchmarks and aggregated the results.

So what might be happening is that Ubuntu Linux isn't as optimised to run on a Mac Mini as OS X - imagine the surprise.

Another problem with the Phronix methodology is that they've made no effort to identify exactly why they're seeing differences. For example, see page 8 of the results. The "Bork file encrypter" should either be limited by CPU and memory bandwidth for the actual encryption, or by the speed of the hard disk if it's reading files, encrypting, and writing them back. Given that the limiting factors here are hardware, there's no way that MacOS X should be 27% faster than Linux on this benchmark. Or on the same page, the Java Scimark v2.0 benchmark shows OSX being 370% faster than Ubuntu x86. Given that the performance of Java code is dominated by the JVM performance, this is indicating a massive regression between java 1.5 (OSX) and 1.6 (Ubuntu). Has Sun really allowed this to happen? Or is the Phronix testing methodology broken? My money's on the latter.

Why turn off Compiz?

[argent]

Since OS X doesn't have an option to turn off compositing, shouldn't it be comparing Ubuntu with Compiz enabled?

Re:Why turn off Compiz?

[rsmith-mac]

It would only serve to further hurt Ubuntu. There's something about the Linux graphics subsystem where it doesn't multitask very efficiently among multiple applications requesting 3D acceleration. Keeping Compiz on means that their 3D benchmarks are all that much slower, if not causing rendering errors too. It's not exactly "fair", but anyone here who's serious about Linux knows that it's a good idea to kill Compiz before gaming.

Re:Why turn off Compiz?

[argent]

What happened to Berlin/Fiesta?

Re:Java 1.6 for OS X - available

[drerwk]

I noticed recently that Java 1.6 for OS X is now available on Intel 64 bit.
http://developer.apple.com/java/
I'm not waiting for it to run on my PPC macs...

It's not about speed anymore.

[ACMENEWSLLC]

When cars first came out, they were very slow. Today my four door econ car can do 0 to 60 in about 9 seconds and can go about 3 times as fast as my states law allows on most roads.

Computers are there too. My Mac is a core 2 duo with an 8600M GT DDR3. I can dual boot it into OS X or XP. It sits at 0% resource usage 99% of the time.

It's not about how fast you are, it's about what you get done.

With my Mac OS X side I can get a lot more done than my Windows boot side. XP requires me to think more about C:\ http:/// and internal workings of the computer. The OS X side lets me forget about that and just do my work. On XP I know my pictures are in c:\documents and settings\username\..... I have no idea on the Mac. They are in iPhoto for all I care.

If I want to put an image from a web page into a document or into an MP3, I just click on the image (for example, on Google images) and drag it onto the document or MP3 I want it added to. Do that in XP and I get the URL, not the image. So in XP I have to right click to save the image to My Documents, then figure out which of Microsofts Insert options to use to insert a saved JPG. Insert picture? Clip art? Smart Art? If I want to move it around do I need to insert it into a table so it will go where I want it?

I struggle to make XP do what I want. OS X, it just works.

Re:It's not about speed anymore.

[Anonymous Coward]

You may want to go over the basics of cut/copy/paste.

Re:It's not about speed anymore.

[Shados]

I'll agree with the anonymous coward here. While it may not be as simple as drag and drop... if I take a picture on the web, right click => Copy, go in my document, right click -> paste... bang! the picture appears! MAGIC! Also, you may want to stop comparing an 7 years old version of Windows with the latest version of an operating system that didn't even exist until early the year that that particular version of Windows came out.

You don't need to care where your images are anymore (and if you DO want to care, they're usually in C:\users\username...none of that documents and settings bullshit anymore). From a non-technical user's point of view, they're just in "Pictures" (the default explorer view will not show you the actual paths anymore unless you go in Computer).

Oh oh oh, and for moving it around... let see! Well, by default it behaves just like any text (which is probably what you want 99% of the time). Want to put in somewhere else... well, let see! Hmm, that looks hard... the bar at the top (which automatically shows up if I click on the picture) has suggestions with relatively big images to ask me where I want to put it...select ANY of them, and then I can drag & drop it anywhere I want! OUF! That was tough!

Something tells me you're still using obsolete versions of Windows software... WinXP and Office 2003 were unbearable when they CAME OUT, nevermind today...

Re:It's not about speed anymore.

[AndrewNeo]

They're in /home/Username/Pictures/, probably. On Vista it's in C:\Users\Username\Pictures\ which is a lot better than XP (C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\My Pictures\).
Also, when you drag and drop, it's up to both the program you're dragging from and the program you're dropping into, to handle it correctly. At least in Windows. So it's not Windows' job, at least.

Re:It's not about speed anymore.

[TenDollarMan]

lol, I thought it was Ubuntu that "just works"...

Disk intensive operations

[loufoque]

Ubuntu loses on any disk intensive operation, especially when it is required to perform synchronisation (with sqlite, for example).
That's not surprising at all, given how the default ext3 Ubuntu partition is set up.

On the original test...

[MSG]

In Phoronix's original test, Ubuntu 7.04 (and sometimes 7.10) performed twice as fast as later releases. When later compared to Fedora, they showed that Fedora's numbers were fairly consistent over the last two years, and close to the same as recent Ubuntu releases. It seems like either something was wrong with the benchmark run on the 7.04 release or there was a huge change after 7.04. Has anyone explained that?

Benchmark Aren't the Whole Story (as you know)

[aaaaaaargh!]

I use Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10 daily on my laptops and OS X 10.5.5 on my iMac. In most daily tasks the actual speed is quite irrelevant, what counts is the 'snappiness' of the user interface. From this point of view I must say that OS X fails miserably and I'm seriously considering to install Ubuntu and forgetting about OS X on my iMac.

Fact is, Ubuntu on my old thinkpad T42 with 1GB RAM (already used when bought) feels much faster in daily use than OS X on my iMac 2Ghz Dual Core with 2GB RAM. Cocoa apps in general and particularly Mail.app feel slow and sluggish in comparison to the default Ubuntu apps like Evolution. Sorry Apple, but you've got to try harder if you want to keep your 'power users' in the long run!

Re:Benchmark Aren't the Whole Story (as you know)

[mjwx]

In most daily tasks the actual speed is quite irrelevant, what counts is the 'snappiness' of the user interface.

To most people the "snappiness" of the UI is irrelevant. Most people will ignore a delay of 2-6 seconds when loading a program. What matters is when a use is trying to perform an action, saving a file or processing for example, this is when a user is paying attention to delays (I.E. when a user is waiting for a specific result). How quickly a UI opens a program is irrelevant as the user is not doing anything.

Re:Benchmark Aren't the Whole Story (as you know)

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry I really have to disagree with that. Not that I have time to dig out a study to prove this, but I do believe your claim is empirically wrong. People judge the perceived speed of a program or OS by the "snappiness" of the UI and for most people this "snappiness" is the main criterion and not the actual processing speed.

Check it out yourself, switch daily between Ubuntu and OS X and you can see for yourself that the general GUI responsiveness of Cocoa applications is too slow. Especially Mail.app sucks in that respect. By the way, there is also a reason for that, namely that Apple makes most of their money by hardware sales.

It's not the distro either, it's the compiler.

[ciroknight]

Older Linuxes are built on GCC 3.x or GCC 4.1.x. Since 4.2.x, GCC has produced absolute garbage code when the Gentoo flags are not enabled.

Since most distros don't ship with --funroll-loops -O19 --ZOMG-MAKE-CODE-FAST, almost everyone has experienced a huge code speed drop. Meanwhile, Apple, knowing that all of their x86 machines support SSE2 or better has no qualms doing said incantations and benefiting from the speedups in autovectorization and other areas where the GCC hackers and Apple have been spending time.

This leads us to the conclusion that a) Older Linuxes were better optimized (by the compiler, not the coder), b) Newer Linuxes are able to benefit but... c) Newer Linuxes are not benefiting because of their one-size-fits-all nature.

Re:It's not the distro either, it's the compiler.

[Abcd1234]

Older Linuxes are built on GCC 3.x or GCC 4.1.x. Since 4.2.x, GCC has produced absolute garbage code when the Gentoo flags are not enabled.

None of which has to do with "bloat" as most people define it.

But nice job arguing against a point I never made.

Re:It's not the distro either, it's the compiler.

[TheBig1]

Very interesting... do you have some sources for this? I believe that it is true (I have seen Linux, well at least Ubuntu, seem to slow down quite a bit in the past few years), but I would like to see what studies have been done to document this.

Very much appreciated!

Cheers

Re:It's not the distro either, it's the compiler.

[ChrisA90278]

An easy way to test your theory that if is just compiler switches would be to re-compile __everything__. Back in the old days of Linux I usd to ony install from source code and costom compile my Kernal with a minimum driver set. Now days I find the CPU is never the bottle neck and I don't care.

But a simple re-compile could test your theory. Anyone want to try it?

Re:It's not the distro either, it's the compiler.

[jamesswift]

Can anyone here explain why O2 is usually default?
I suspect there is a good reason but haven't heard it yet.

Re:It's not the distro either, it's the compiler.

[drinkypoo]

The short form, which is as much as I understand about it, is that optimization of -O3 and higher is the first place where the compiler is likely to do something wrong and create an error when it's trying to optimize your code. There are things you do can do to explain to the compiler how to correctly optimize your code when you crank up the optimization, but if you haven't done then, -O2 is still usually safe.

Re:It's not the distro either, it's the compiler.

[jamesswift]

So I suppose the gcc team promote optimisations from O3 to O2 after a reasonable amount of time and testing? I always use O3 (or even O5 on Solaris) so I'm wondering now if I should worry more about errors.

Re:It's not the distro either, it's the compiler.

[Anonymous Coward]

If there are any miscompiles at all with -O3, that's a severe bug and should be reported to and fixed by the gcc developers quickly.

-O3 is not just a version of -O2 that's riskier for a higher reward (this is gcc I'm talking about). At -O3, gcc enables the inlining of functions (as well as other optimizations). This can make some code faster, but what it also can do is make code larger. Larger code might not fit into cache and thus would be slower.

Optimizations aren't "promoted", per se. There are just different types of optimizations (each individually selectable at any optimization level, incidentally) that are enabled at the various levels. Don't assume -O3 is simply faster.

Re:It's not the distro either, it's the compiler.

[jonaskoelker]

Since most distros don't ship with --funroll-loops -O19 --ZOMG-MAKE-CODE-FAST

Jeez, why do people always say that? Try a version of Gentoo that's not, like, five years old. It's just like dependency hell: WE ARE OVER IT.

Nowadays, you use -funroll-loops -funsafe-math-optimizations -O1337 -fZOMG-MAKE-CODE-FAST -falign-functions -fturbo-button -fmodulo-sched -foptimize-register-move -fctrl-alt-cokebottle -funsafe-loop-optimizations -Omore-leet -funswitch-loops -ftree-vect-loop-version -fsyntax-only -fno-pc-lusering.

Just put than in your /etc/makefile.zomg. Not rocket surgery, everybody knows this.

Right? Right?

Re:It's not the distro either, it's the compiler.

[jamesswift]

Thanks. I foolishly didn't consider the effects on caching from increased code size.

I think I'll do some profiling on Monday :)

top 500

[LingNoi]

The only benchmark that matters when it comes to speed and optimisation is the top 500..

Linux - 378 - 75.60 %
MacOS X - 2 - 0.40 %

Microkernel

[mechsoph]

No one's said it yet...

So it seems like we have the following:

• Ubuntu's Graphics drivers are bad
• Ext3 is surprisingly slow. Would have been nice to see those tests run with XFS or Reiser3
• Something strange is going on with SQLite, possibly the false fsyncs mentioned above.
• OSX's quasi microkernel is causing general slowness

Well, yes.

[SanityInAnarchy]

It's happened in the past -- in certain benchmarks, OS X was pitifully slow on a G4 vs Linux on the same machine.

Linux Monopoly, what would happen?

[jonaskoelker]

I would hope that once [Apple has an OS monopoly], people would watch them just as closely as they do MS.

That leaves an interesting question: what happens if everybody runs Linux?

I can imagine hearing the whiners "Linux has a monopoly, antitrust, rabble-rabble blah blah!"

But would there be something to it? How far does the argument "but you have all the source" take you?

On the other hand, as long as there's Debian GNU/NetBSD and Debian GNU/HURD, there isn't a *Linux* monopoly. And as long as there's epiphany, firefox, konqueror and edbrowse, there's no browser monopoly; there's two implementations of X floating around, ....

Ever heard the people bitch that there are too many choices with Linux? One cynically wonders how many of them would bitch about too few choices if they had fewer choices... ;)

What do you guys think? If Linux takes over not only the Desktop but the world, what would happen?

Re:Linux Monopoly, what would happen?

[Xabraxas]

Monopolies aren't illegal perse but abuse of a Monopoly position is. I think it would be quite difficult to leverage a software Monopoly when everyone has the source. Besides it would only be considered a Monopoly if a sole Linux company controlled the OS market and that seems quite unlikely.

pong

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

pong games.

And the ad is not from Apple, but from a store selling Apple IIs.

I'd guess, from the content of the ad, it was a store in California. (And I don't mean from the address.)