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OS Performance — Snow Leopard, Windows 7, and Ubuntu 9.10
BeckySharp writes "With the nearly simultaneous release of Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 'Snow Leopard' (available right now) and Microsoft's Windows 7 (available Oct. 22), you get the inevitable debate: Which is the better operating system, Windows 7 or Snow Leopard? To help determine that, Computerworld's Preston Gralla put both operating systems through their paces, selected categories for a head-to-head competition, and then chose a winner in each category." Relatedly, Phoronix has posted Snow Leopard vs. Ubuntu 9.10 benchmarks. They ran tests from ray tracing to 3D gaming to compilation. Their tests show Ubuntu 9.10 winning a number of the tests, but there are some slowdowns in performance and still multiple wins in favor of Snow Leopard, so the end result is mixed.
Yep. Comparisons of simple benchmark metrics between OS's aren't very useful except for entertainment purposes. I've said it before, OSX running on 2GB of RAM feels snappier, has less HD chatter, and switching between apps is smoother than on Windows using 4GB.
I keep windows around as a gaming platform.
Don't forget that Apple charges for it's service packs, in the long run, even if you own the hardware compatible for the OS, you spend about the same after all service packs/updates are done.
When I buy a machine, I buy for the future. I don't want to have to buy another one for a while, so I pump it up with decent specs. Fully decked out mac pro right now is going to cost over $4k. I spent $600 on a AMD Phenom 9500 Quad, 8 GB RAM, 750GB HDD, 1GB video ram, 650 watt power supply... and 23" 1080p monitor..... do the math.
Friends don't let friends use Windows.
Second of all, those who in theory don't care, when explained why it's important, start to care. When you add up the cost of upgrading from Windows 95 to Windows XP to Windows Vista to Windows 7, along with all of its associated applications (I'm looking at you, Microsoft Office), versus the cost of upgrading through the various versions of Ubuntu or any of the other popular distributions and their associated applications, people really start to notice. One of my favorite things to do when I'm showing off Ubuntu to people is to open the package manager application. I tell them it's like the "Add or Remove Programs" applet, except that you can actually add programs. "All this stuff is available to you for no cost. Just click it, and you're good to go."
This would only be relevant if the products were equivalent. Most the FOSS projects that are worth using have Windows and Mac ports anyway... available to the user.. FOR FREE! For some reason, despite the price tag of zero and the hardcore love of a thousand morons, OpenOffice makes every single document I produce or open from any office suite to any office suite look like total and absolute ass. Maybe it's worth $65 to me for my documents not to induce eye strain. Aesthetics are extremely important in the "real world" (see: the desktop usage scenario where most F/OSS does not exist.)
When you explain to these people how honest competition from really smart people doing really smart things just because they can and because they feel that others should benefit from their collective knowledge is one of the reasons why a lot of commercial closed-source software these days that might otherwise cost hundreds or thousands of dollars is sold for really low cost or given away for free because of how hard it is to compete with volunteer work, it also gets their attention.
Yeah, until they use it...
I could go on, but hopefully you see my point. Free and open source software benefits everyone, even people who don't otherwise care, even people who shun it in favor of commercial and/or closed-source options. And sitting back and saying that people don't care isn't very productive. It's in our best interest to actually educate people so that they will care.
That's absolutely wrong. It's in our best interest to ignore these products until they become worth showing people. Some open source projects have graduated and are worth showing users (ie 7-zip) while others are utterly terrible and only have popularity due to an arbitrary freetard bias (openoffice, koffice, compiz, etc..) so they need to be ignored so the developers don't get the idea into their heads that they've accomplished something worthwhile and (heaven-forbid) stop going back to the drawing board, where they should be firmly planted.
Nah, we are OK with GPLv3. This is just an Apple thing.
Signed,
All Linux-loving folks
How about the freedom to simply get stuff done rather than spending 5 hours unsuccessfully trying to get your sound card to work?
Exactly the point. Each of the three OSs described here are for three distinct audiences. They cannot be compared with any reasonable conclusion that would be useful to anyone.
Windows 7 is for the masses.
Snow Leopard is for a limited set of elitists and the technically challenged with lots of money
Linux is for geeks and people with a lot of time on their hands.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.