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Ubuntu Wipes Windows 7 In Benchmarks
twitter writes "Recent and controversial benchmarks for Windows 7 leave an important question unanswered: 'Is it faster than GNU/Linux?' Here, at last, is a benchmark that pits Ubuntu, Vista and Windows 7 against each other on the same modern hardware. From install time to GUI efficiency, Ubuntu beats Windows and is often twice as fast. Where Windows 7 is competitive, the difference is something the average user would not notice. The average GNU/Linux user is now getting better absolute performance from their computer as well as better value than the average Windows user."
Queue douchebag saying its only a beta.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Can I mod this story as troll?
I'm a linux user but this story is anything but serious benchmarking.
Because I can snap both installation DVDs in half, I submit that I am clearly more powerful than either OS. Not even close, really.
My unpatched Windows system can get rooted AT LEAST ten times faster than Ubuntu. Take that, Open Source!
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
From TFA:
Our test machine packed an Intel Core i7 920, which in layman's terms has four cores running at 2.67GHz with hyperthreading and 8MB of L3 cache.
(Emphasis added.)
Not sure what kind of laymen the authors hang out with, but all the laymen I know couldn't tell you the difference between a CPU and a hard drive, or the difference between GHz and GB ... much less figure out what "L3 cache" is!
I always just figured the speed was gained from not having to run virus software all the time.
With virus software installed on Windows 7 ubuntu would kill it even more.
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
"Measured in seconds. Less is better." That would be fewer.
Grammar nazis asside, this is not real serious benchmarking. It doesn't even take into account WHAT Windows 7 installs and WHAT Ubuntu installs. Is there more default software in Windows 7? Windows 7 is a DVD, isn't Ubuntu still on a CD? One could argue that just means Windows 7 installation is bloated, but that still invalidates the benchmarking from a real "serious" perspective, other than the fact that Windows installs more. Great, now we'll say that Half-Life 2 is bloated because it takes longer to install than Half-Life?
And, were Ubuntu faster - which I don't actually doubt all that much - it still doesn't get over the usual gripes people have about switching to Linux. This or that application doesn't work on Linux or there isn't a comparable one (my favorite to mention is Sibelius's music notation software, aptly named Sibelius [or Coda Music's Finale, but I hate Finale]), it's not as easy to use, hardware, etc. Some are not quite valid anymore, some are still valid concerns. Either way, simple benchmarking isn't going to convince most "average users." What do they care, as long as it works and is easy to use?
I'd rather see some "average user usage" benchmarks. That is, see how easy someone finds Windows 7 vs. Ubuntu to use for actual normal tasks in an office. See if OpenOffice (all software, not just word processing) actual can compete with Microsoft Office (and see if it's slower, due to Java?). Web browsing, including using Silverlight and installing plugins and everything. That'd be a test that would help the "Linux really IS a good alternative," more than "My Linux machine boots 5 seconds faster - see, you should switch from Windows!" does.
Clearly Microsoft has been listening to us. Vista takes up a whole 8.2GB, while Windows 7 takes up a mere 7.9GB. I can't wait to get a crack at this smaller, slimmer version of Windows!
Why would anyone care about install time? The only interesting part of the install is how much of your hardware works out of the box, and how much of it can be made to work easily.
Of course installation is the easiest feature to review, but this is 2009 - there is nothing interesting about OS installation anymore.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Value is an entirely subjective concept and it will vary wildly from person to person. For many people, a computer with a free OS that can't run their favorite program has much less value than a computer with a paid OS that can. The same could be said for people who don't want to learn a new interface or people who don't actually want to take the time to instal their own OS.
Is the gaming benchmarks.
I've been slowly switching from XP to Ubuntu on my work laptop, but I am still stuck with XP at home. I just play too many PC games to give up XP. I really don't care if it boots slower than Ubuntu, or takes longer to shut down. What matters to me is actually using the PC.
MS would get sued if they bundled too much software, and you know it. If MS included Office in windows the first people to line up for the digital lynching would be Linux fanboys.
Installation time? *Mouse clicks* to install? Seriously? Those have got to be some of the most useless benchmarks I've ever seen.
Startup and shutdown time are marginally more useful benchmarks, but still not really very important unless you're talking about embedded devices, which the desktop version of Windows 7 (obviously) isn't even designed for.
The file copy benchmarks really didn't find a clear winner either, and that was the only arguably significant benchmark. Or are there really desktop users that spend all day copying files between hard drives and USB drives?
I really didn't care all that much about the outcome. I don't have an emotional investment in Windows or Ubuntu, but this was nothing but a pissing contest from someone who wanted to make some poorly constructed graphs showing that their favorite OS beat another OS (and it didn't even do that! Windows won on a few of the tests!)
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Boot up time was also measured from the moment the machine was turned on, and the timer was stopped as soon as the desktop was reached.
Anyone who has ever used WinXP knows that you can't really do anything until all the services and task bar things have loaded. You still have several seconds (20-30 on my machine) once the desktop appears before you can actually do anything.
There, fixed that for you.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
I have no idea why it took so long. It would freeze on each step, even just after selecting trivial things like keyboard and languages. A google search revealed this was a common problem. After about 30-40 minutes of waiting I finally got to the partition section where bizarrely there was no option to create an Extended Partition, so I had to cancel the install and use the Partition program manually. Why???
Then it would be a repeat of all the old steps as I restarted the install sequences, taking about 30-40 minutes each time. Several times there was a new bizarre problem at the partition stage, which caused me to restart several times. After installing I had no large resolutions even though I have a major brand graphics card. A Google search and a download later, that problem was solved but no dual monitor support yet. A google search revealed it was a pain in the ass and I don't have the heart for it yet.
I've installed various distros bunches of times but never had anything as slow as Ubuntu. Obviously the install program is buggy or I have some hardware conflict, but I've installed windows (A LOT) and never had that problem
Now that I've got Ubuntu up and running I should say that I'm very impressed and its running nicely, though it is still slower than windows at graphics intensive operations.
The average GNU/Linux user is now getting better absolute performance from their computer as well as better value than the average Windows user.
Okay, but this is almost meaningless. Tell me instead, how much value would the average Windows user get from GNU/Linux?
It really can do the basics, is FREE and isn't prone to viral infestation.
It's suitable for a lot of people, they just need to
get over their Microsoft vendorlock fixation.
Incidentally, Macs have the same exact benefits minus the FREE part.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
On my old PC laptop, Ubuntu gets very unresponsive, even with every combination of ATI drivers I use. Both Windows XP and Windows Vista boot as fast, if not faster, on it than Ubuntu did. In fact, Windows Vista was generally more responsive during normal use. There were plenty of times where Vista could easily handle stuff like Firefox with Flash and some other stuff open, but Ubuntu would slow down to a crawl.
Mod me down if you want, but I've found Windows to be faster and more responsive out of the box, especially against modern Linux distributions.
People use applications, not operating systems.
It doesn't matter how fast it is if it doesn't run the software that people want. That's the biggest thing that holds up Linux on the desktop.
If Linux for the desktop is ever going to really be a viable option, someone needs to come out with a distro with the goal of, "absolutely, positively, 100% Windows Compatible" via Wine or similar technologies.
That distro would conquer the world.
(Cue people giving the argument, "but Microsoft will just change Windows". Yes, they might, but that doesn't affect the installed base of applications, nor does it affect the myriad third party applications, and if there was a viable target, third party companies would ensure compatability.)
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
that Ubuntu runs benchmarks faster? A copy file is faster? Certainly things that the average user will never care about. Even my parents leave their machines on 24x7 so boot times matter?
Really, I don't care which is more efficient at booting or copying, if Ubuntu cannot run the software I want all of its performance benefits are lost
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I really like Ubuntu, it is fast, it's useful, and it's hugely effective on older hardware. But if you're a power user on Windows you're suddenly a newblet on Ubuntu. Even if you're not afraid of mucking around in text config files that doesn't mean that you can use your tablet as a notepad like you can with Window Journal, it doesn't mean you can connect your computer to the internet through your 3G phone when you aren't near wifi, it doesn't mean you can use the nifty fingerprint reader to login to your system, it doesn't mean you can login to the hidden SSID secure login encrypted access wifi network at your school or office, and it doesn't mean you can play Blu-ray discs on your brand new high tech system with Ubuntu. Don't get me wrong, if Evolution worked 80% as well as Outlook, I'd have switched my work computer to Ubuntu months ago, just to spite Norton Internet Security 2007 and our IT guys who insist on not caring when NIS shuts down outlook, forcing it to restart. In the end, I just need a few things to get better in Ubuntu and I could see Microsoft cease to exist almost entirely, but it's just not there yet. Sure I'd love to help, but I'm a interaction guy, not a driver programmer. And if I was writing drivers, someone would surely kick my ass for doing it poorly.
Hey I have carpel tunnel and mouse clicking is a very important benchmark you insensitive clout.
This will probably get me a troll mod, but I have to say that it doesn't matter how much faster Linux is than Windows in raw speed. All that matters is what the user perceives. And I have to say it doesn't look that great for Ubuntu or Fedora or any modern linux distro right now (but that's improving!). Right now I have Fedora 10 on a brand new dual core AMD 4550e (low-wattage, but still) with 4 GB of ram.
Let's start with the GUI since that is most visible. Without compiz, Fedora's Gnome GUI is quite fast, but to the user feels slow. You can see widgets redraw and reorder themselves. When you size a window you can see the contents adjusting. You can see tearing of the edges of window decorations. When moving the windows around you often get tearing. These artifacts actually make the desktop feel slower even though it really isn't at all.
With compiz-fusion on, things get a little bit better. But still resizing a window is very painful, especially one with a lot of widgets in it. Moving a window around is usually fast enough, though. I believe compiz's rendering engine is synced to screen refresh which helps a lot here (OS X did this for years). Still thought the system often just feels slow. Windows take some time to pop up some times. Sometimes I get a window of garbage (instead of a popup menu) and then the menu appears in it. Sometimes the effects (fade in, fade out), are delayed. Fancier effects like beam-in, beam-out (kind of cool and makes windows users take notice!) work well sometimes and then sometimes stutter or are delayed.
Maybe this is related to the recently-talked about I/O kernel bug, but my Fedora 10 box stutters all the time. My cron script that renders my background Earth picture with the proper clouds and day/night lighting will cause video and audio to halt for a complete second *every* time it is run. This never happened on my older, single processor Athlon with Fedora 8. PulseAudio also seems to cause audio to stutter at the slightest hint of any i/o. In this machine, anyway, with Fedora 10 and compiz-fusion, my Gnome desktop is very disappointing from the perception of performance pov. In raw speed I'm sure it beats Windows Vista or 7. But when you're frustrated with the inability to play back video and audio without skips, and the stuttering and delays in rendering GUI elements, none of that matters.
Now use a Vista computer with decent hardware with the effects turned on. Everything is silky smooth. Window resizes, moving windows (even with translucent blurring). Popups are timely and smooth. The system just feels more responsive than my Fedora Gnome desktop. Things like audio and video have a high priority and never stutter.
How can we improve this? Several ways. First GTK with client windows goes a long ways to solving the resize problem. Rather than having asynchronous messages being passed to each and every widget's window by X11, we only deal with events to the main window. Sub windows are all managed by GTK internally, eliminating the sync problem. This should hit mainstream soon when some corner cases are taken care of. From what I've read, KDE users might already enjoy this as Qt is supposed to already do client windows on X11. Then we need to get pulseaudio fixed somehow. And the kernel bug. Development on compiz after the merger with Beryl seems to be stalled as well. Seems like 80% of the work is done, but the last 20% always struggles to get done, especially in open source software. Finally I hope that issues regarding RGBA and ARGB in GTK in particular get addressed (if they still exist). Then hopefully more apps (KDE already can do this) will use ARGB visuals appropriately.
Should have been fair and included FreeBSD in the comparison.
( in my personal experience, its noticeably faster then any Linux distro on the same hardware, )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The average GNU/Linux user is now getting better absolute performance from their computer as well as better value than the average Windows user.
Depends on what you value. I value not having to hunt down and configure obscure software to sync my phone. I value the ability to use third party software when it's released, not when they get around to making a Linux port. I value having drivers that are updated regularly, and a wide variety of quality software options, with actual support, and a user community that doesn't tell me I'm stupid because I couldn't get figure out how to connect to my WiFi network (the solution for which depends on what minor version of the windows manager I'm using, which affects which connection manager is installed by default, etc., etc.)
I also appreciate a uniform interface and application model, which Windows provides. It neither looks nor performs like a hodgepodge mix of new and ancient components, regardless of what may be present under the hood. I appreciate a clipboard which performs as expected. I've also had, by far, more success installing Windows on a wider array of hardware than Linux, including Ubuntu. Oh, the LiveCD won't work for that hardward. Oh, there's no wireless driver for that NIC, but you can wrap this other driver and then do this, and it will work most of the time, except when it doesn't.
A value to me is not saving 7 minutes on the install, or clicking 12 fewer times, (in what should be a one-shot deal anyway), or an OS footprint that saves me 0.01% of my available storage space. Value to me is reliability, choice and quality of software, and minimal fuss with configuring devices and hardware. With XP, Windows reached a level of maturity/stability that I now expect of any OS residing on my desktop (or laptop). That I have to actually pay for the OS and keep Avast resident is an acceptable tradeoff for those things.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Boot up and Shutdown times are equally irrelevant. I shut the PCs down on weekends. Am I going to notice or care that it takes a few more seconds for a machine to boot up or shut down. Also, these times are highly variable. Even on the same machine I suspect the variation is way outside the differences between the OS. 30 years ago we cared a little bit about boot up times. But then, we were reading from disk or tape, so these times were significant, and we might shut down a machine several times a day. When Apple made the Mac a super fast boot up machine, it was to solve a problem. Now it is just to win a juvenile contest. if there is not an order of magnitude difference, it does not really matter.
File copy time can be an issue, but not for everyone. I am going to make what may be a controversial statement. When I copy a multi Gigabyte set of files, and it takes a half an hour, that does not bother me. Neither do I care that for a large movie one OS might take a 30 seconds, while the next might take two minutes. What annoys me are those little daily copies of a small file that take a minute or so. Clearly there is some overhead. Sure, know how long to copy 1000 files is cool, but when does that happen.
What we don't have is how long it takes to set up a printer, something that I find I do way too often. Or how long it take to print to a printer, which has some OS dependence. Or how long it takes a save a file in MS Office versus OO.org. Or how long it takes to setup email. Or how long it takes to load a web browser. You know, the things that people do every day and tends to eat away at a persons limited time.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Dear Slashdot editors,
We understand perfectly your needs about traffic generation and advertisements.
But please, why publish another stupidity like this... when too recently you had a highly criticized "story" about some random guy that found Ubuntu downloads faster than Vista in his home PC's. Please avoid that kind of sh... (how to name it???), that only ends turning people away for your site in the long term.
Eventually, if you can't stop from posting about so called "comparative benchmarks", please do it in the "idle" section.
regards,
And about a month ago, I setup a dual-boot Ubuntu/Windows machine. Ubuntu was done in about 30-40 minutes. Windows on the other hand, I spent most of a day to install the OS, track down the necessary drivers, install office suites, anti-virus, etc..
This is why anecdotes are useless, for every anecdote that shows one thing you can find one that shows the opposite.
My example above was not fictional. The Windows install was seriously complicated by the fact that my CD (XP with SP3 slipstreamed in) did not recognize the SATA hardware and the system did not have a floppy drive installed (or even space for a floppy drive). This was not bleeding-edge hardware.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
> 2- Video editing. Super simple video editing.
Not sure what you count as super simple, but have you tried http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/ ?
I do. I haven't bought a whole computer since 1987 and paid for and installed several versions of DOS and Windows. Quite frankly, Windows is a complete and utter pain in the ass to install. It takes hours (XP was the last one I bought so YMMV with later releases) and you have to babysit the whole process; you never know when something will pop up and ask for something.
Mandriva takes maybe half an hour, asks everything up front at the start of the process and you only have to come back to change CDs. For sniggering windows fans, it takes several CDs because all the apps get installed at the same time as the OS, whereas with Windows you have to install each and every app separately.
In short, it matters to anyone who has to install the OS. I'd guess since slashdot is "news for nerds" that's almost everybody here.
Free Martian Whores!
Its ok, the article's first half is a bunch of benchmarks that are utterly meaningless on Windows anyway. Who cares if Window's takes twice as long to install as Linux? I mean seriously, I'm waiting. Are operating installs a frequent event? I can count on my hands and feet the number of times I've performed them.
Its all well and good that Ubuntu can install itself faster, but it doesn't matter, because it is by definition an infrequent workload. This is theoretically true for Ubuntu to. After all, wasn't the infinite in place upgradability something that has long been touted as a strength of Debian and co. Thats even more important with Ubuntu, because I sure as hell don't want to reinstall and OS every 6 months.
Same goes for startup and shutdown. Windows Vista was explicitly designed with the idea that in general, the OS is going to be suspended/hibernated, not rebooted. I'd be much more interested in seeing benchmarks of a comparison between the speed with which Windows and Ubuntu are able to hibernate/unhibernate. I've always been curious about this, as subjectively, an older Ubuntu installation hibernation seemed faster than in Windows. Alas, I guess in order to give us that benchmark, the reviewers would have to actually find hardware Linux could suspend on. How does one plot a hard lock on resume anyway, time for the system to reboot and come back up?
The other thing they failed to mention on the I/O benchmarking side is whether or not the drives were set to write cache mode or not in Windows. AFAIK the default for removable media to disable write caching in Windows, but to enable in Linux.
Oh, and why the !@#$ are they benchmarking compute intensive tasks in Python? Is it to exacerbate differences, because the chosen runtime is so absurdly slow? But, in reality, there is no reason for compute intensive tasks to vary on the same hardware. This test is highly dependent on the system services running and the python version. I would consider this more of a benchmark of python instead of Windows/Ubuntu.
...Ubunghole is only beta-quality...
Not too shabby for an alpha.
What a stupid article and even stupider summary.
#1 Install time and mouse clicks do not a benchmark make.
#2 If you really want a real word comparison that effects many people, then here is a real world benchmark. First get two timers and two identical machines. Second, go out and buy two copies of World of Warcraft and both expansion packs. Now have two people moderately knowledgeable people sit down next to each other. The test is to see who can install and play WOW first, and then who has better performance. One on Windows7 the other on Ubuntu.
I don't want to spoil it, but I would guess it takes the guy running windows7 under an hour from start to playing WOW. The other guy 3 days to 4 weeks, and possibly never when he gets sick and tired of trying to get it to work with Wine and just finds it infinitely easier and a lot more fun just to hang himself with his shoelaces instead.
Can't speak for Windows 7, but I'm writing this from Firefox, running under Ubunut (sitting here building a new Ubuntu system for my kids). I have about 4 dual boot systems, and I'm to the point I'm not booting XP much anymore.
I'm obviously a fan, but here is my honest to goodness feeling on XP vs. Ubuntu: Straight out of the box, XP is just as fast as Ubuntu.
However, after you install a virus scanner, have 10 different little malware scanners you have to run to catch everything, and then every mother f'n program you installs on Windows thinks it needs to run as a service...hell yeah, Ubuntu is faster.
Man, Windows users just don't know how wonderful it is to have a hard drive that doesn't have CHURN 90% of the time. It's freaking awesome!
And games? As stated, all my systems are dual boot. I find my kids playing games in Linux about 3 out of 4 times I see them on a computer.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Man, it's been a while since we've broken out the classic story of the benchmarks!
Tomorrow: Windows-centric website refutes claims of this benchmark, posts its own.
Saturday: Linux geeks refute claims of yesterday's benchmarks due to funding by Microsoft and/or lack of actual data, and post their own.
Sunday: Microsoft fans declare themselves independent, refute Saturday's benchmarks, and post their own.
Monday: Mainstream media refutes Sunday's benchmarks and posts their own claiming Ubuntu is far faster.
Tuesday: Hardcore gaming website refutes Monday's benchmarks, claims Windows 7 is so much faster, claims XP is faster still, wonders why Ubuntu was invented if it can't play Counterstrike. Benchmarks are provided to show how much faster Windows 7 is and how much Ubuntu doesn't run Counterstrike out of the box.
Wednesday: Business news site refutes Tuesday's benchmarks and claims, announces it is switching to Ubuntu. Benchmarks are provided to show how much faster Ubuntu is when dealing with MySQL and Apache.
Thursday: Another business news site refutes Wednesday's benchmarks and claims, announces it is giving up on Ubuntu, claiming MySQL is stupid and the previous news site is stupid for using it. Benchmarks are provided to show how much faster Windows 7 is when running MSSQL and IIS.
Friday: A lone Amiga geek refutes everyone's claims, brags about how much faster and better life is with Amiga, promises a new version any year now.
Saturday: (no claims or benchmarks; Linux and Windows camps simply issue condescending stares at Friday's Amiga geek)
Sunday: Linux website refutes Thursday's claims...
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
Every time those words appear on the Front-Page of Slashdot, Bill Gates kills another kitten.
But seriously, are we expecting an objective and balanced news article from twitter on Microsoft? There's "provocative" reporting, then there's the "Fox News" of reporting. This article sinks below both.
throw new NoSignatureException();
They didn't say whether or not they turned off these two services for Vista and 7. They sacrifice some hard drive performance for safety and convenience. I'm familiar with using Ubuntu, but I don't know if it has the linux equivalent of these running by default (I'm fairly sure system restore isn't in Ubuntu)
The fact that boot up times were so close to each other would attest to Windows being at least on par with Ubuntu in hdd read performance. The sudden drop in hdd performance after boot up may be attributed to the above two features.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Ah... someone else who couldn't understand Linux. Please, sir, there's no need to bitter about it. *nix-based operating systems ARE user friendly, they're just picky about who their friends are.
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
I think the Jamaican version is called "Mondriva", mon.
Free Martian Whores!
Silly rabbits, an OS isn't supposed to be better or work faster, it's supposed to sell required graphics card and memory chips for your vendor partners!
After all, if an OS actually improved, people might get some work done instead of waiting for the cool graphics to indicate the OS was still not finished.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Install time? Clicks per install? Installed footprint? Does anybody care about those?
The file copy tests were marginally useful, but not exactly controlled. But it certainly looks like the Linux USB drivers and related I/O code is better than what exists in Windows.
Then again, on what is possibly the most useful and meaningful benchmark, Windows wins. The Richards thing is not disk I/O bound, so we're talking about memory allocation/deallocation and probably some underlying C library calls. Since we're on identical hardware, the difference is either due to the Windows memory manager, faster library routines, or a more optimized version of the python interpreter. (Which wouldn't really be a win for Windows per se.)
I'd like to see something like...oh...a standard database benchmark (e.g. TPC) run on a couple different databases (Postgres and Oracle would be fine) installed under both Ubuntu and under Windows 7 on identical hardware. This would, of course, be influenced by how well optimized these database implementations are on each operating system, but there's little we can do about that. The test would essentially be Windows+Oracle vs. Ubuntu+Oracle, or Windows+Postgres vs. Ubuntu+Postgres.
You're going to love Windows 7. I installed it in 30 minutes on my 5-year-old laptop and all the questions were at the beginning except for user setup.
Linux - Yay Yay! fast boot, fast shutdown, fast file copy, etc...
Windows - Boo Boo! slow boot, slow use, slow copy etc..
I'll pick Windows any day. I don't have to spend weeks trying to get my hardware working with it. I don't need to find some obscure driver, or sudo apt-get some library that only exists in Peru to make my tv-capture card work.
I am encouraged by the strides that these modern distros have made and I would use linux as my desktop machine if only (and I wish so much) that they would work without making a colossal waste of my time to set up.
I'll put up with the parasitic seconds of waiting in windows, for the hours of time it takes me to configure my system correctly in linux.
As a long time Linux user, I say let's be fair. Try running Photoshop on both Windows and Linux and see which is faster. Now let's run Final Cut Pro and do the test and now try Logic.
My point is "who cares" you buy operating systems so you can run applications, not bench marks.
I really do which Aperture, Logic 8, Photoshop and iTunes ran on Linux.
That said, I do software development on this Linux system but I'll be moving to a Mac Pro maybe this year or next when this dual xeon system gets replaced.
And from the Windows user point of view, who cares how fast Linux is if it can't run some game you want
I have the same graphics card as you. The problem is obviously on your side and you're doing something wrong, because I have no clue what you're talking about.
This is the worst response to a bug complaint I've ever seen. This is on a fresh install with the newest nvidia drivers provided by Jockey... that's it. Using the X configuration present when my system rebooted with the new drivers. That is all. It even tears without Compiz. My Powerbook Pismo has hardware accelerated display and does not tear in Mac OS X like my brand new desktop-- maybe it has something to do with the fact that their windowing system was designed for the desktop!