Slashdot Mirror
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.
The most thoughtful article I read that truly explains what the technical tradeoffs are with dock/taskbar design: here.
On a similar topic, if you want to work on the home page GUI for Android, there is an on-going project as well.
The good news for consumers is that both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are great-looking OS. Computerworld is just wrong to give a point to Apple on price :-)
the freedom involved in using ubuntu (or other distros) over mac and windows
Someday we'll hit the human carrying capacity. And the band will just play on.
These sorts of comparisons are fun from a head-to-head desktop performance perspective (with all the skewing that can bring, regardless of how impartial the tests might claim to be), but they're rarely reflective of how each OS would perform in mixed environments. I'll keep Mac OS X on the desktop, Ubuntu on the server (along with Debian), and Windows on someone else's computers, thank you.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
The first category of their "comparison" is the OS name? Really? That's enough for me to stop reading. The article doesn't even take itself seriously.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
: For testing Windows 7, I did a clean install of Windows 7 Ultimate Edition RTM on a Dell Inspiron E1505 notebook with 1GB of RAM and a 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo processor. To test Snow Leopard, I did an upgrade from Mac OS X Leopard on my MacBook Air, which is loaded with a 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB of RAM. So the Windows machine is worse in just about every way. It doesn't even have the same type processor (Core Duo vs Core 2 Duo). He should have just installed both on the Macbook with Bootcamp.
The article linked to in the quote block is a terrible little summary of Snow Leopard and Windows 7, split unnecessarily over 5 pages, with nary a benchmark to be seen. Most of the comparisons are subjective, vague, and really not very useful to anyone.
The only benchmark I care about is porn downloading performance. My porn folder has several thousand files. In Windows, the "Save Image" dialog in Firefox always opens snappily. In Ubuntu, the same dialog somehow takes several seconds when there are many files. This makes porn downloading very painful. Until Ubuntu fixes this bug, I'm afraid I can't use it seriously.
I don't care about Ubuntu, but it's users seem happy. Anyway, Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are both performing very well for me on less then bleeding edge (3 years old) hardware and have fixed various irritations in their predecessors. Both MS and Apple seem to have created OS's that are well worth the cost and time to upgrade from earlier versions.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
99.997% of the people using these computers don't care.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
"Windows 7, on the other hand, remains the corporate standard"
That's fast, considering it was just RTM'd a few weeks ago and won't see a general release until Oct. 22nd.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
How many people are still upgrading their systems often enough for this to be relevant to them anyways? I was a pathological upgrader for years, but I honestly have spent on average less than $100 on hardware per year over the past 5 years. Granted this is partially because of how my financial situation changed in that time, but also because from my vantage point it doesn't seem that there has been any great progress made in the past 5 years in terms of hardware or software that requires new hardware.
Honestly, with the exception of the gamers that want to run Half Life 7 or Quake 9, are many people really bothering to upgrade anymore? From my vantage point it will be surprising to see Windows 7 do well commercially - not because of vista - because there haven't been great reasons to upgrade from the hardware and software of 5 years ago.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
First of all, I think that number is way too high. While it may seem that way sometimes, people do care. Maybe not even a majority of them, but enough that it does make a difference.
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."
When you explain to these people how there is absolutely zero technical reason why they can't have a movie or song play on the DVD player in their living room, their iPod, their computer, and anywhere else (and anyway else) they want to play it, but that thanks to DRM systems incorporated into Windows 7 and Mac OS X, they are artificially restricted from doing so because some third party has decided to "manage their digital rights" for them, it definitely gets their attention.
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.
When I show people my web browser (Firefox with AdBlock) and how I don't see particularly onerous ads on web sites because the person who wrote my browser isn't beholden to financial interest or corporate mandates, it has raised a lot of eyebrows.
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.
Apple has confirmed that you can install the $30 upgrade version on top of Tiger.
At an Apple store I asked if the $30 dollar was an upgrade or a full install disk. I was told it was a full install disk and no copy of leopard or even tiger was required. I installed it successfully on my sisters computer AFTER wiping it clean (Read: no previously purchased OS installed.) It is a full blown OS for only $30 (not an upgrade disk.) They do sell a more expensive copy that comes bundled with iLife and iWork.
Apple doesn't have an in between system. You have their all-in-one, but if you want to go past that, the next thing is a high end workstation. So suppose you want a quad core with a reasonable graphics card. Bare minimum price from Apple is $2700 for a quad with 3GB RAM, a 4870, and a 640MB HD. So if you want a similar thing from Dell you get a Core 2 Quad, 4GB RAM, a 4870 and a 750MB HD for $1150, less than half the price. Now you'd be correct in pointing out that the Mac Pro has hardware the Dell doesn't, like a second CPU slot. Ok, but what if you don't need that? Well too bad, you have to pay for it anyhow.
That is a big problem you get in to with Mac prices. In a very large segment of the market, they have no good offerings. You have to buy much higher end hardware which drives the price way up. You can argue all you like that it isn't "equal" it doesn't matter. If those extra features aren't needed or wanted, then all you are doing is driving the price up.
Under section C.
Given that the license terms for OsX force (by the terms, nothing else) the user to run it on Apple hardware
Thats not strictly accurate.
The OSX EULA specifically states that it must be run on "an Apple labeled computer".
Since the OSX disks come with a sticky "Apple" label one must assume that they intend for the end user to stick this label on the machine that they install OSX onto. And that sticking this label onto that computer is a EULA requirement.
Its when you DON'T stick the label onto the machine which you install OSX on that you violate the EULA.
The EULA does NOT say "Apple *manufactured* computer".
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.