It obviously wasn't the goal of their article to isolate to performance issues to help find the problems.
It WAS the goal to install each version separately and test different areas of the performance.
And the fact is that in most areas Linux performance (not just Ubuntu, it's not like they do anything others don't) is going down. This isn't the only benchmark that shows it. Whether it be in new kernel features like CFS, the file system, i/o changes, bad drivers, gcc changes, gtk issues and so on. Linux in general isn't getting any faster, and this is a huge problem that should be looked into by ALLLL distros. Ubuntu, for example, could put an entire (6 month) release cycle, or even 2 release cycles (Apple is doing this with the next version of Mac OS) into performance optimizations but it wouldn't do a lot of good because they would have to be looking into Gnome, GTK, and all the other applications that go into it.
Even for me I have noticed issues, windows resize much slower in the last few years, I can't even use NVIDIA drivers with Firefox as the Ajax performance goes to hell, even writing to USB flash drives is noticeably slower than windows. And it's unfortunate because Linux is all I want to use.
I've hated this whole fragmentation thing all along. It would be so much nicer to have a unified system like LSB4 claims to offer. This can't come soon enough.
I have an iPhone so I can vouch for the fact that this article is stupid. A lot of friends always grab it and play with it and are a bit sloppy with the keyboard and I always assure them that its the kind of thing that you just have to get used to and it takes a couple days.
Anyway, I send texts and emails from it every day and I can type VERY fast (way faster than on a blackjack and especially my 3 year old Razr of course)
#1 - Standardize directories I know it's great how flexible the operating system is but I would want a UNIX standard for everything when it comes to directory structures (where everything is stored) as there are some variations between distros and I've always found that annoying.
#2 - Standardize a packaging system Also I would want a standard packaging system. There are Debs, Yums, Rpms, etc. While this is all fine and good think of how great it would be if all coders had to do is make a single package on all their sites for their apps.
The new Pidgin is a great example: A new version came out and my Windows friend (we've all got em) said "oh yea I just grabbed the new installer". And I gotta admit, I don't usually feel like downloading source code and compiling my own anymore. Since there is no package on the main site I goto apt-get it and as per usual it's not updated. I gotta get it weeks later from backports (I use Ubuntu). This is my biggest problem. The NVIDIA drivers are the only example I can think of right now where the installer works fairly well on a variety of distros. But even that has been a pain sometimes and I had to use Envy (which is awesome by the way).
Those are my main 2 things coming from someone who has used Linux (alongside Windows unfortunately) for about a decade. But I would also say improve ext3, the no noatime, nodiratime crap I always gotta throw on boxes is annoying. But that goes with the usual "speed, stability, and security" stuff.
Yes apt-get/aptitude works amazing. And I'm sure Fedora has its own thing. But another major issue with linux is WHY after over a decade of distros can they not UNIFY a package management system.
Here is an example. Pidgin came out, I have Kubuntu installed on my laptop, I goto download... CAN'T. I goto compile it (I haven't compiled something in years, since I was a die hard Slackware user) and NOTHING is preinstall. Do I wanna install a couple hundred mbs of compilers just to compile an IM client? Not really. So I gotta download a 3rd party deb package for it.
Yes I know thats Ubuntu's fault, and they won't add a package to their repositories but still. If linux had a UNIFIED packaging system it would be amazing. You just goto a site and download either the Windows or Linux version, and your done. Instead of seeing rpms, debs, and those gentoo things.
It really is stupid. And should have been delt with years ago.
I run Linux on my router, my ipod, my desktop and my laptop.
But I am STILL in Windows a decent amount of the time and the fact is I can't live without it.
#1 Reason is software support. I need AutoCAD, OrCAD, Matlab (now its available for linux but not for free through college like the windows version).
#2 Reason is games. Yes Wine works well, but its still has a long way to go for some stuff, and ventrilo doesn't work at all.
Windows XP is a _fast_ operating system. Its just not at all secure. It boots fast, it shuts down fast, and runs games and software fast, mostly comparable to linux. Probably because of the great hardware drivers it has rather than all these open source projects that aren't directly from the hardware vendors. Who knows.
Fact is for those 2 reasons, I cannot use Linux for everything.
Who cares about all this, I got the box set months ago. Read the books if you want the real extended edition.
Besides whats the point it's not like you get to see Tom Bombadil, and its just no fun without old Tom
I mean seriously 3 CDs is insane for this. Only reason why im bothering is because i want an easy install on my new Serial ATA box (and i hope this is easy). Other than that i'll be back to Slackware the second they release one that i can easily install it on my new machine.
i find that quite strange because i use Firebird 0.7 in both Linux and Windows and i never have crashes, and everything works (almost) perfectly.
Its the best browser ive ever used and its very stable.
perhaps it hasnt gotten the kind of world-wide user testing you are dreaming of. But then again you can't go on forever waiting for a *next version* because you'll never run it. And when you finally do, you'll wish you had earlier.
2.6 is great, as most people on here will tell you. It WORKS. Ive personally been using it since it hit Test1 and even then it was very stable. I dont have to worry about all the major distros releasing it into the world because ive been using it for 9 months (give or take) and it runs on my box without a hitch.
btw, downloading 2.6 as i type this. Now i just need official nvidia drivers, off to minion while i wait.
although XMMS is great for being open sourced i gotta say, Winamp is so much better just in terms of features and coolness.
It would be nice if they ported it to Linux (like they planned on doing 2 year ago), or if XMMS would come alive, and release updates more than once a year.
XMMS is still more than adequate for most uses, but there are definate bugs and features it lacks.
Currently running 2.6.0-test7 & Slackware 9.1 (managed to get the kernel 67kb smaller than test6 w00t) Only downside ive noticed throughout the versions is my throughput seemed to have gone down a bit.
A couple months ago i ran a test (from memory): hdparm -Tt/dev/hda Time buffered cache: 182 MB/s Time buffered disk: 34.2 mb/s
And doing it now im getting: Time buffered cache: 173 MB/s Time buffered disk: 32.8 mb/s
Im wondering if there are some tweaks im missing to get it back up. Kinda strange... other than that everything runs absolutely beautifully.
All you people should learn how to use this operating system and quit with the whinning about RPMs. (i run slackware)
Besides... Fluxbox ownz j00 all =)
yea it definatly does, went from 2.4.21 to 2.6test4 the other night on my Slackware 9 box... very very good stuff so far. The future of Linux 2.6 looks very bright
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't the PS3's Cell processor do more than this, and it came out years ago?
It obviously wasn't the goal of their article to isolate to performance issues to help find the problems.
It WAS the goal to install each version separately and test different areas of the performance.
And the fact is that in most areas Linux performance (not just Ubuntu, it's not like they do anything others don't) is going down. This isn't the only benchmark that shows it. Whether it be in new kernel features like CFS, the file system, i/o changes, bad drivers, gcc changes, gtk issues and so on. Linux in general isn't getting any faster, and this is a huge problem that should be looked into by ALLLL distros. Ubuntu, for example, could put an entire (6 month) release cycle, or even 2 release cycles (Apple is doing this with the next version of Mac OS) into performance optimizations but it wouldn't do a lot of good because they would have to be looking into Gnome, GTK, and all the other applications that go into it.
Even for me I have noticed issues, windows resize much slower in the last few years, I can't even use NVIDIA drivers with Firefox as the Ajax performance goes to hell, even writing to USB flash drives is noticeably slower than windows. And it's unfortunate because Linux is all I want to use.
Yep, The lack of Windows-quality flash support in Linux is the single worst thing about the operating system.
I've hated this whole fragmentation thing all along. It would be so much nicer to have a unified system like LSB4 claims to offer. This can't come soon enough.
I have an iPhone so I can vouch for the fact that this article is stupid. A lot of friends always grab it and play with it and are a bit sloppy with the keyboard and I always assure them that its the kind of thing that you just have to get used to and it takes a couple days.
Anyway, I send texts and emails from it every day and I can type VERY fast (way faster than on a blackjack and especially my 3 year old Razr of course)
The 2 things I've always talked about...
#1 - Standardize directories
I know it's great how flexible the operating system is but I would want a UNIX standard for everything when it comes to directory structures (where everything is stored) as there are some variations between distros and I've always found that annoying.
#2 - Standardize a packaging system
Also I would want a standard packaging system. There are Debs, Yums, Rpms, etc. While this is all fine and good think of how great it would be if all coders had to do is make a single package on all their sites for their apps.
The new Pidgin is a great example: A new version came out and my Windows friend (we've all got em) said "oh yea I just grabbed the new installer". And I gotta admit, I don't usually feel like downloading source code and compiling my own anymore. Since there is no package on the main site I goto apt-get it and as per usual it's not updated. I gotta get it weeks later from backports (I use Ubuntu). This is my biggest problem. The NVIDIA drivers are the only example I can think of right now where the installer works fairly well on a variety of distros. But even that has been a pain sometimes and I had to use Envy (which is awesome by the way).
Those are my main 2 things coming from someone who has used Linux (alongside Windows unfortunately) for about a decade. But I would also say improve ext3, the no noatime, nodiratime crap I always gotta throw on boxes is annoying. But that goes with the usual "speed, stability, and security" stuff.
KTorrent has had this for a while too, big deal.
Yes apt-get/aptitude works amazing. And I'm sure Fedora has its own thing. But another major issue with linux is WHY after over a decade of distros can they not UNIFY a package management system.
Here is an example. Pidgin came out, I have Kubuntu installed on my laptop, I goto download... CAN'T. I goto compile it (I haven't compiled something in years, since I was a die hard Slackware user) and NOTHING is preinstall. Do I wanna install a couple hundred mbs of compilers just to compile an IM client? Not really. So I gotta download a 3rd party deb package for it.
Yes I know thats Ubuntu's fault, and they won't add a package to their repositories but still. If linux had a UNIFIED packaging system it would be amazing. You just goto a site and download either the Windows or Linux version, and your done. Instead of seeing rpms, debs, and those gentoo things.
It really is stupid. And should have been delt with years ago.
I run Linux on my router, my ipod, my desktop and my laptop. But I am STILL in Windows a decent amount of the time and the fact is I can't live without it. #1 Reason is software support. I need AutoCAD, OrCAD, Matlab (now its available for linux but not for free through college like the windows version). #2 Reason is games. Yes Wine works well, but its still has a long way to go for some stuff, and ventrilo doesn't work at all. Windows XP is a _fast_ operating system. Its just not at all secure. It boots fast, it shuts down fast, and runs games and software fast, mostly comparable to linux. Probably because of the great hardware drivers it has rather than all these open source projects that aren't directly from the hardware vendors. Who knows. Fact is for those 2 reasons, I cannot use Linux for everything.
Who cares about all this, I got the box set months ago. Read the books if you want the real extended edition. Besides whats the point it's not like you get to see Tom Bombadil, and its just no fun without old Tom
How many stupid democrat geeks there are. Wake up people
I'm bulling the BS card on this whole article
Been using Slackware with a GUI for 5+ years for all my computing needs (other than playing WoW beta). Its the only distro i would ever use.
Nuff said... I used Redhat once... a while ago, that was an unpleasent experiance.
I have Slackware or Debian on all of my boxes, and i prefer Slack
I mean seriously 3 CDs is insane for this. Only reason why im bothering is because i want an easy install on my new Serial ATA box (and i hope this is easy). Other than that i'll be back to Slackware the second they release one that i can easily install it on my new machine.
i find that quite strange because i use Firebird 0.7 in both Linux and Windows and i never have crashes, and everything works (almost) perfectly. Its the best browser ive ever used and its very stable.
Just drink less.
perhaps it hasnt gotten the kind of world-wide user testing you are dreaming of. But then again you can't go on forever waiting for a *next version* because you'll never run it. And when you finally do, you'll wish you had earlier.
2.6 is great, as most people on here will tell you. It WORKS. Ive personally been using it since it hit Test1 and even then it was very stable. I dont have to worry about all the major distros releasing it into the world because ive been using it for 9 months (give or take) and it runs on my box without a hitch.
btw, downloading 2.6 as i type this. Now i just need official nvidia drivers, off to minion while i wait.
although XMMS is great for being open sourced i gotta say, Winamp is so much better just in terms of features and coolness.
It would be nice if they ported it to Linux (like they planned on doing 2 year ago), or if XMMS would come alive, and release updates more than once a year.
XMMS is still more than adequate for most uses, but there are definate bugs and features it lacks.
Fuck Gator.
www.minion.de has some driver patches ,they work perfect for my Geforce FX card, i dunno about GF Go chips but worth a try
Currently running 2.6.0-test7 & Slackware 9.1 (managed to get the kernel 67kb smaller than test6 w00t) Only downside ive noticed throughout the versions is my throughput seemed to have gone down a bit.
/dev/hda
A couple months ago i ran a test (from memory):
hdparm -Tt
Time buffered cache: 182 MB/s
Time buffered disk: 34.2 mb/s
And doing it now im getting:
Time buffered cache: 173 MB/s
Time buffered disk: 32.8 mb/s
Im wondering if there are some tweaks im missing to get it back up. Kinda strange... other than that everything runs absolutely beautifully.
I definatly agree with you, ill always prefer going to the smaller local shop before some big glorified chain as you described.
;-)
However i gotta admit, once in a while i do goto BestBuy to drool over the mass quantity of cool stuff and to pick up a few dvds
All you people should learn how to use this operating system and quit with the whinning about RPMs. (i run slackware) Besides... Fluxbox ownz j00 all =)
yea it definatly does, went from 2.4.21 to 2.6test4 the other night on my Slackware 9 box... very very good stuff so far. The future of Linux 2.6 looks very bright