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Ubuntu NVIDIA Graphics Driver: Windows Competitive, But Only With KDE
An anonymous reader writes "The NVIDIA Linux driver across multiple GeForce graphics cards can compete with Microsoft Windows 7 on Ubuntu, but only when using the KDE desktop and not the default Unity/Compiz. It turns out based upon recent desktop environment benchmarking, Ubuntu's Unity desktop is now noticeably slower than GNOME/KDE/Xfce/LXDE with multiple GPUs/drivers. Sam Spilsbury of Canonical/Compiz acknowledges the problem but it may take longer than one Ubuntu cycle to correct."
Linux advocate:
"It may be slower, but you're not stuck with anything Windows-like and you can fix the code yourself!"
Prospective user:
"Wait... It's slower, AND it doesn't work like Windows, AND you want me to fix the code myself?!"
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Im sorry, but can we finally admit that Unity is a mistake. I tried (REALLY TRIED) to like unity. Its not that bad after all, but it was a step BACKWARDS. Couple that with all of the GNOME devs going Batsh**t crazy and creating GNOME3 and we have a problem. KDE is where I live now, but I miss my GNOME2. For me this is just one more nail in the coffin of Unity. Dont get me wrong though, I can see myself going to Unity in a few years, but that is a LOOOONG time as far as Linux is concerned. There are just too many issues with it right now.
I've said for a while now that desktop Linux's biggest problem is that the de facto primary consumer distro doesn't use KDE by default.
The average desktop user is disappointed when they only get 347 FPS instead of 422 FPS on their 1080P 3D-accelerated desktop? This is news to me.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
This is a problem with Ubuntu on the desktop, not Linux. Install Debian and whatever window manager you want and you have a perfectly useable Linux desktop.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
What are they doing wrong that results in a slow desktop? Re-rendering all text from HTML on every frame cycle of a drag? The graphics power available in modern GPUs has orders of magnitude more power than needed to manipulate a set of flat windows and icons.
I am on Slashdot and I do not hate Unity as of 12.04.
I could not stand the Unity that came with 11.10 - I run a lot of MATLAB, and there was no functional way to switch between multiple figures. People would moan and complain about Unity taking a few more clicks or whatever; for me it was actually impossible for me to switch between windows as needed on 11.10, try as I might. I was fearing a forced switch to Unity, since Ubuntu wouldn't be an option for me anymore.
Unity on 12.04 is a completely different story. While I still don't love its window-switching behavior, the super-W feature of displaying all windows is wonderful.
Unity might not be as polished as KDE 3.5 yet, but 12.04 was so much better than 11.10 that I'm willing to see where Canonical's headed.
Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.
I refused to update for the longest time when Ubuntu switched to Unity, but then I got a new laptop and figured I'd give it a shot first. I was pretty set of just using Mint but really wanted to give Unity a try before switching. I was surprised that I actually sort of liked it, especially once I learned the keyboard shortcuts. My task bar always got cluttered with lots of windows in Gnome 2, and their order wasn't consistent which was a minor annoyance. Realistically, Unity feels a lot like Windows 7 to me (though I've only used Windows 7 briefly on other people's machines, I really liked the UI), and it got rid of all the clutter. I like that Gnome Do is essentially integrated into Unity, and there are some other nice features as well.
That said, I haven't seriously tried Gnome 3 yet. I installed it and loaded it up, and then did a wtf when I couldn't really figure out how to use it and wondered why it was so ugly before switching back to Unity. It felt like a very incomplete product. I've since read that you need to use a lot of add ons (or whatever the correct term for them is) to make it more usable, but at this point it's not worth the investment in time when Unity works well enough for me.
ubuntu is fine one you rip out unity. Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu with mate desktop, all work great just because unity and gnome are a flaming pile doesn't make the rest bad. apt-get purge unity && apt-get install anything-else(except gnome3) problem solved.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
You keep saying "linux" when you really mean "desktop linux". Two points on that:
1. Linux is an entire world of computing, and desktop linux is actually a small part of that world. Linux is first a multi-user unix-like OS, and second everything else. Since when has a multi-user unix-like OS excelled at being a consumer-oriented desktop system? Never. They excell at being workstations and servers, and require a competant admin. That's just the reality of it, so why do you think it needs to be changed?
2. You (and others) keep implying that desktop linux is worthless ("period"), when people like me have been using it for 15 years and wouldn't even consider switching to a consumer OS. What you really mean is that it doesn't hold up as a consumer-oriented OS, and I'll be the first to admit that you're right. CONGRATULATIONS.
No one is gonna call the article a troll or shill for pointing out a serious problem? I'm shocked! In the end the problem with Linux is NOT the UIs, or any of the pretty on top, in fact in many ways they have surpassed Windows and OSX in those areas.
Nope, the same damned problem that plagued Linux 10 years ago STILL plagues it to this very day, and it all comes down to drivers and kernel devs constantly futzing with low level internals with nary a thought to QA, QC, or backwards compatibility. Whether anyone likes it or not SOME backwards compatibility IS required, because most software companies and ODMs aren't gonna pay a team of devs to constantly rebuild their products because some kernel dev got an itch.
For proof I direct you to this page of over 100 show stopping bugs which just FYI but every. single. bug. has links showing that yes this IS a problem and its not just one person's opinion or experience and damned near every. single. problem. on that list can be traced by to devs fucking with internals and breaking shit. Now compare that page to the same page from 3 years ago and see how much has NOT been fixed in over 3 years.
All the DE wars, Gnome 2 VS Gnome Shell and KDE 3 VS KDE 4? That's all turd polishing because if the guts are constantly breaking nobody will care about the pretty and as long as the devs are given carte blanche to fiddle with anything without a thought about what its doing to the stability of the overall ecosystem things just won't get better.
That is why I had such high hopes for Ubuntu, I had hope that Shuttleworth would do like Google did with Android and just fork the thing away from the devs so that real stability and central management could be brought to bare instead of the cat herding we have now, but it was not to be.
Linux has beautiful UIs, and tons of software, but retailers like myself won't ever touch your product if we install it on a system and 6 months later its broken its own drivers because some dev got a bee in his butt to futz with some low level system files and trashed my customer's WiFi or sound...ohh God sound, WTF were they thinking with Pulse?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
> I remember when I studied physics (years and years ago), that the human eye can only perceive about 60 cycles per second.
Wouldn't that be biology?
The point stands though. 60fps is as fast as you need to go for smooth animation. However, if a scene can only be rendered at 60 fps, adding more complexity, bad guysm, explosions, etc could push the render time over the VSYNC delay period. That's a bad thing, as you drop not to 59fps, but to 30fps, which is very noticeable.
Crazy FPS speeds aren't always an e-penis waving contest, it simply means you have plenty of GPU horsepower left in reserve for more complexity or more bad guys on screen without dropping below that VSYNC interval.
Not even Ubuntu, but its desktops. TFS says KDE is faster than Windows, which seems right to me -- I'm running W7 on a year old notebook and kubuntu on an ancient tower, and the tower (with a much slower processor and less memory) is faster than the notebook. The tower is running kubuntu.
Free Martian Whores!
This is exactly right. So many people are bitching about Unity and Gnome3, all this would be moot if they'd just dump that crap and make KDE the default desktop, and different distros customize the many configuration options in it to their liking. KDE can be made to look and act very different with the config options and themes (and of course users can use that as a starting point and make further tweaks easily in "System Settings"). People who want something lighterweight can use XFCE or whatever, so that can be offered as an alternative to KDE in some distros.
Why all the distros are so in love with Gnome, I have no idea.
Say what you want about it, call me a shill, whatever. I actually like Unity.
AccountKiller
ubuntu is fine one you rip out unity. Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu with mate desktop, all work great just because unity and gnome are a flaming pile doesn't make the rest bad. apt-get purge unity && apt-get install anything-else(except gnome3) problem solved.
user@gateway ~ $ apt-get install anything-else /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Could not open lock file
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), are you root?
user@gateway ~ $
???! :(
Right on! The sad truth is, many problems in the Linux arena are created by the community itself.
One would hope Ubuntu to be the distro that unites the community (Shuttleworth - it must be said - has a vision) but they turned around and made a dumb choice, with a subpar GUI choice that went wrong in two different ways: 1) failed attempt to emulated Humanized's Enso modal interface; 2) failed attempt at "simple is better" with a horrible looking piece-of-shit no modern Windows 7 or Mac user would see the point in even going near the thing (hey, what's up with those horrible OpenOffice icons?). That stupid Unity interface is what you get when you take CSS web developers and let them design a desktop GUI...
KDE is competitive. KDE has usability studies.
This insistence on Gnome is insane.
KDE is written in C++ this is a competitive advantage (compared to Gnome). That Gnome-based stuff is out-of-date is demonstrated by the article.
Linux developers: are you gonna loose the C++11 bandwagon, too? If you do, you are dumb beyond belief...
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Sorry, but another vote for Unity here, FWIW, and I used to be a huge Unity nay-sayer (I even switched to linux mint for half a year out of protest) until I actually tried it and was pleasantly surprised. I find it's an excellent power-user interface with an emphasis on the minimal, and that suits me just fine -- any interface that provides more vertical screen realestate gets my vote. The dash panel works great for me, too -- I find typing much faster than hierarchical GUI menus, and Unity makes it possible to do everything via the keyboard if you want.
I should add that I've only used the incarnation of Unity present in 12.04 -- it's quite possible it wasn't always as polished as it is now. But personally, now, I would hate to switch back to any other interface. I've used a hell of a lot of WMs and DEs over the years, and Unity's very much my favourite so far.
Unfortunately, stock KDE has all that "semantic desktop" bullshit. What's needed is for someone to take it and make it the default, but tuned it right. Kinda like what Mint does with Gnome3 (though the necessary changes would be much smaller here).
Now that is funny, a Debian fanboy telling someone -else- to keep up. I'm sure the packages in stable are probably older than you are.