Submitted by Jasjeet Sekhon benchmarked Linux and MacOS X on the MacBook Pro using his statistical software, and finds that “Linux is found to be much faster than Apple’s OS X for statistical computing. For example, in one benchmark Linux is more than twice as fast.” Earlier, he ran tests on a G5 and an Opteron, and conlcuded: “Those results were terrible for OS X and not particularly good for the G5 (970) chip. For example, my 2.7 pound Pentium-M Linux laptop is faster than my 44 pound G5 running OS X. The floating point performance of the 970 chip leaves much to be desired, but OS X makes the performance problem significantly worse.”
Apple has positioned their OS as the touchy feely, looks good OS. They’re more concerned with what’s on the outside than on the inside.
I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, it’s just their business strategy. They’re catching up in benches. OS 10.0 was molasses slow wheras 10.4 is pretty nice and 10.5 will be even better/faster.
Linux is technically superior in many many ways, and new DE’s like KDE4 and GNOME 2.14 along with things like XGL and others are slowly bringing up the bar in the same kinds of ways in the linux world.
That’s why Linux has more users in the business world. It gets the work done faster.
What about CoreImage, CoreVideo, CoreAudio & CoreData? How is linux technically superior to these services? CoreAudio is a very very low latency system, CoreVideo can layer several effects including 3D deformation, over HD video in real time. Linux doesn’t even have equal quality graphics drivers.
That’s why Macs have more users in the creative content world. Macs get the work done faster.
“If you think CoreImage, CoreVideo, CoreAudio & CoreData”
These are APIs lol, its not like the user would notice their (alleged) superiority.
“CoreAudio is a very very low latency system”
No more so than ALSA which is built into the linux kernel (being in the kernel makes it even lower latency)
“Linux doesn’t even have equal quality graphics drivers.”
True for some hardware, I benchmarked my nvidia card on UT2004 under linux and windows with the latest driver and they were always VERY close, sometimes linux even won. If someone is building a linux box and they want good 3d preformance, they know to use nvidia.
You have obviously have been reading apple’s marketing pages a bit too much
I agree fully with the root comment, but I was just highlighting that people buy Mac hardware not because it’s faster than Linux, but because they want OS X. Linux users look at figures too much and not at productivity enough.
“These are APIs lol, its not like the user would notice their (alleged) superiority.”
It’s not like Final Cut Pro speaks for itself or anything, no.
Edited 2006-05-07 16:25
or maybe in the linux world, performance == productivity…
there are many kinds of productivity in this world. and if we can get more true open standards used, it will not matter what os or platform people use as long as it can talk said standards. that way people can select the platform that cover their need…
but then there is a default human need to be king-of-the-hill in all areas, no matter if their hill is interesting for others or not…
> No more so than ALSA which is built into the linux kernel (being in the kernel makes it even lower latency)
Call me back when ALSA can play multiple audio streams. This *is* 2006, you know.
Oh, and … you know nothing. Being in the kernel doesn’t necessarily guarantee that something will automatically be lower-latency than an API that was designed with low latencies from the start.
ASLA supports software mixing (through the dmix plugin[1]) and hardware mixing[2]. I would expect most modern distributions to do the necessary configuration. I know from experience that manual configuration is a little byzantine.
[1] http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=DmixPlugin
[2] http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=Hardware%20mixing,%2…
Haha, you can’t possibly think it can’t.
I mean frick if it couldn’t, out of all the “omg Linux is not ready for the desktop” arguments, it’d be close to #1.
ALSA doesn’t have a software mixer for sound cards that don’t support mixing in hardware. Don’t have such a card? Have fun with some conf files for hours.
JWZ says it well: http://jwz.livejournal.com/490051.html
ALSA has dmix for software mixing. Works fine for me and I didn’t tweak my config files at all.
aoss can redirect OSS applications into using ALSA (and dmix). Flash website? aoss firefox.
Some distros (I think SUSE?) even preload the aoss libraries right inside the Firefox launch script.
Call me back when ALSA can play multiple audio streams. This *is* 2006, you know.
ALSA on Fedora Core 5 does that by default through dmix.
These are APIs lol, its not like the user would notice their (alleged) superiority.
Yes they are APIs, but they are very nice API’s the likes of which simply aren’t available in Linux. And while end users might not notice the difference, they notice the difference in the apps written with these APIs.
/* “If you think CoreImage, CoreVideo, CoreAudio & CoreData”
These are APIs lol, its not like the user would notice their (alleged) superiority. */
(rant)
Users Will notice the api’s through superiority of applications, with applications such as Motion and Final Cut pro you get real time hd video effects, have you ever done any video editing on a pc? rendering effects can be painfully slow, on a Mac its done in REAL TIME, these api’s add more versatility and power to image and video editing, to dismiss them is sheer ignorance.
ALSA does not support standard audio interface specificatios such as ASIO, I dont think i have EVER seen a linux box in a recording studio, whereas I’ve seen macs in 50% of the studio’s i’ve worked in. These ‘api’s’ allow developers to create software such as Guitar rig which are definately noticed by users.
I may come accross as a prime candidate for the jobs RDF, but I’ve used the majority of main stream operating systems for over 7 years, linux included, and I’ve not found one system that is as complete and robust as mac os x.
oh yeh ….. and mac os x can be slower at kernel level ……. thats a fact and no-one denies it
(/rant)
I can’t argue with you about pure audio editing, but I do a lot of video editing on a Linux PC and I perfer to to Premier on the Mac. I use cinelerra: http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3
ALSA seems to fufill my needs.
Of course, as always, to each his own.
———That’s why Macs have more users in the creative content world. Macs get the work done faster.————
Like Pixar for example?
This article was silly in alot of ways. Linux has zero foothold on the dektop yet the author acts as if it is somehow competing with Apple in that space. So what if it’s faster? its just meaningless if we are talking about desktops and not servers. People buy Macs for the whole package. The hardware, the OS, the built-in apps. and the great commercial apps. Linux doesn’t hold a candle to any of that. Not to mention he way pverstates the speed of OS X being an issue when it just isn’t these days.
Actually, there’s more users worldwide using linux than Macs. By Apple’s own numbers, there’s only 25 million mac users. There’s more linux users than that.(not including servers, because linux has double digit share in that area)
A few years ago both Gartner and IDC were talking about how linux would overtake the mac as #2 OS by userbase somewhere in the 2004/05 time period. It’s 06 now.
Edited 2006-05-07 14:29
Here is the problem with that comparison: there are only four major versions of OS X in use, and a significant portion of the userbase is on one of the two most recent. Saying someone uses “Linux” is absolutely meaningless, because there are just so many distros and versions of those distros. If there were 30 million people running Kubuntu, that would be different.
Things like Klik and Autopackage promise to bridge some of these chasms, but they are not wide-spread enough yet to count.
but most often the only diff between distro X and distro Y is a diffrent package manager and installer.
the rest are stuff like the linux kernel (very important, alltho there will probably be some patching diffrences), kde/gnome, firefox, thunderbird, gimp, evolution, and on and on and on. basicly its mostly packaging, the content is still the same…
belive it or not, but there is less variation then there is similaritys between the mainstream distros. reason for that is that all are based on 2-3 base distros and then have evolved from that.
“but most often the only diff between distro X and distro Y is a diffrent package manager and installer. “
Actually one thing that makes or breaks a distribution is what software versions the developers chose to use, and how much care they put into testing those. There are slight variations between distributions, but there are also significant personal touches and substantial differences in quality assurance from one distribution to the next.
That said, it’s not fair to penalize Linux just because there are more versions of that than there are of OS X or Windows. At most only two or three different distributions (with a few rare exceptions) can be tied to one company. Distributors take the software that’s already there and bundle it, the majority of the collaborative development work is done on a different level.
———-Here is the problem with that comparison: there are only four major versions of OS X in
use———-
Apple’s peg of 25 million assumes OS9 and 10.
At least, I’ve never heard any spokesapple or jobs himself point out the difference.
If there were 10 mil OS10 and 25 mil OS9 I’m sure they’d have brought both up.
———–Saying someone uses “Linux” is absolutely meaningless, because there are just so many distros and versions of those distros.———-
Not necessarily. If you read what I typed I didn’t say “25 million mac os 10.2.2.1″ users”. I simply said “mac users”.
So “mac users” vs “linux users” is a fair comparison in terms of userbase size. I suppose if you’d wish it, you could get specific and technical about this. OS10 vs linux 2.6(based distros) users, Suse users vs OS 10.2 users, Fedora vs OS 10.3 users, Ubuntu vs 10.4 users. But that’s all… Isn’t that a waste of time to get down in terms of those numbers?
Linux has zero foothold on the dektop yet the author acts as if it is somehow competing with Apple in that space.
Well, not to rain on your parade, but it’s not like OSX has a foothold that much greater than Linux’s.
So what if it’s faster? its just meaningless if we are talking about desktops and not servers.
The problem is that Apple IS also making servers. Therefore, OSX’s performance in that area is very important. Apple also targets OSX to schools and universities, and therefore scientific performance (incl. statistical research) is very important.
Not to mention he way pverstates the speed of OS X being an issue when it just isn’t these days.
For you as a desktop user probably not– but guess what, there’s a whole world out there (really?), filled with people who DO care about this version of speed and performance.
“Not to mention he way pverstates the speed of OS X being an issue when it just isn’t these days.”
OS X is the most memory hungry OS I have ever tried. Consider that many Macs come with a default 500 MB RAM and that upgrades are very expensive, then speed can indeed be an issue.
Considering ram is hovering around 1 gig for $100 you are full of it.
Considering I can stick a piece of PC RAM in my current Mac and it works 99% of the time you are full of it as well.
Don’t buy RAM from Apple.
He was talking specifically about statistical computing, not Grandma May’s desktop. Linux and OS X do compete on the desktop in that space. Linux competes in it by virtue of its UNIX heritage (a lot of science/mathematics/engineering stuff moved to Linux because they already had *NIX versions), and OS X competes in it by virtue of its relatively recent move into scientific computing circles.
Another issue of this benchmark is that the R package does not aim at providing top notch optimizations. From what I see everyday, the G5 is pretty close to the AMD64 architecture, but the big difference is that for the G5, programs absolutely have be compiled with the XLC/XLF compilers, otherwise it’s damn slow. And my feeling is that R was compiled with GCC…
The G5 is pretty close to AMD64 in floating-point, if you use XLC/XLF 8.x. These compilers are not available on OS X. The old version of XLC (6.x) that does run on OS X is not appreciably faster than recent versions of GCC (GCC/PowerPC’s FP performance has improved a lot since the early days of the G5).
But its ugly interface will decrease productivity. Oh c’mon, it’s notebook, do you want to use it for intensive computing that run for a week? I’ll leave it to server for that kind of work. I use MacBook for coding, writing and presenting. OOo needs 10 years to catch current features of iWorks, so I don’t want to install linux on my MacBook.
But its ugly interface will decrease productivity.
Really? Is that why 90% of desktops are stilling running Fisher-Price MyFirstOS, erm, I mean Microsoft Windows XP? Because they want lower productivity?
Because they have no choice.
Oh, but they do have a choice: I’m referring purely to the default theme on XP. They can use the Win2K interface without downloading, resizing, installing, paying for, typing, or learning anything. But they don’t use it.
@twenex
Really? Is that why 90% of desktops are stilling running Fisher-Price MyFirstOS, erm, I mean Microsoft Windows XP? Because they want lower productivity?
If it’s so fisher-price then why is the KDE team cloning the XP interface down to every last details? It’s because it works fine.
why is the KDE team cloning the XP interface down to every last details
They are? Strange. The buttons on the Keramik titlebars are smaller, there’s a more tasteful font, a less garish shade of blue, and now the Plastik interface is the default instead. Not very clonelike at all.
It’s because it works fine.
I didn’t say it didn’t work fine. I said it looked like crap.
If you ask me which Linux desktop environment I prefer (between GNOME and KDE) i’ll say KDE. If you ask me which interface I prefer (out of all of them) I’ll say Aqua or Enlightenment.
Oh, and to go with your single-button mouse, please accept this single-button keyboard ;-).
“If it’s so fisher-price then why is the KDE team cloning the XP interface down to every last details? It’s because it works fine.”
This is also why most linux users use GNOME. Just look at most distros most of them use GNOME as the default
(good bye karma)
This is why i stoped useing KDE 2 years ago and started useing GNOME
(good bye karma)
Seriously twenex, can’t you think of anything better to do than try to patronise people? Some people really are not as bothered as you obviously are about the look of their desktop. So be it, what’s it to you?
Some people like their desktop cluttered with icons, some people like it clean and neatly organised – so what? Let other people do what they *want* to do, without needlessly patronising them.
If you want to do something productive, spend less time berating people on the internet and more time showing people the benefits of using an alternative operating system.
Well, THAT certainly deserves a modding down. I won’t do it, though; make of that what you will.
Certainly, people have a right to make their desktop look like they want it to look. Nor am I “trying to patronise people”. I’m simply pointing out to the person who started this thread that I don’t see how the Mac makes one more productive.
Addendum: I reread your comment, and now I see which comment you were objecting to.
Well, I’m sorry but I DO think the XP interface looks childish. Very. And it’s especially disappointing and surprising, considering that I actually think the W2K interface looks very professional. If you have a particular liking for XP, or you simply object to my comment, then I’m sorry, but that won’t change my opinion. Equally, however, I don’t expect you to change yours.
———-But its ugly interface will decrease productivity.——–
That depends on who you ask. The interface isn’t all that far behind OS10, and it’s ahead of windows.
The whole point of upgrading hardware is to get increased performance.(and productivity)
Some of us upgrade software for increased performance.(and productivity)
Performance and productivity are linked, believe it or not.
I agree about OOo though, it needs massive work.
you’re coming off as a troll.
anyhow, I don’t know how you define productivity, but personally I’ve found that the prettier and more distracting the interface, the less “real” work I often find myself getting done. especially since the emphasis on looks tends to mean less of an emphasis on ergonomics (osx is terrible for having more than 4 xterms open at a time I’ve found. ok ok, that’s not really something important to say a graphics designer perhaps…). that’s why I’m (currently) using OSX at home where my computing needs are much more light and less production oriented, whereas at my work, it has to be linux. even more particularly, with an extremely spartan, but _highly_ efficient and ergonomic window manager, in my case, wmii http://wmii.de/
Hmmm. I don’t find that at all. I work from home 100% and use my mac to most of my development, then push it back to my XP or Redhat machine at work to test. I COULD set up the equivalent environment here on my mac (apache, OAS, etc.) but I am just too damn lazy.
I have seen no decrease in my productivity and am so “mac os x-ized” that I have trouble when I switch back to Windows or even linux for any amount of time.
I guess it is just what you are used to. The pretty interface, as you put it, is nice on the eyes.
“But its ugly interface will decrease productivity.”
That’s a troll, no two ways about it. Linux isn’t ugly, I like the look of KDE much better than that of Windows or OS X, and I’m sure many Gnome users could say the same about their favourite desktop environment. If you think Windows or OS X is prettier that’s fine, it’s subjective; however, saying Linux is ugly is absolutely flamebait.
“it’s notebook, do you want to use it for intensive computing that run for a week?”
When the Linux wifi drivers for my laptop support wep or wpa, then I’m replacing Windows simply because I like Linux better. Believe it or not people are entitled to like Linux, whether you like it or not.
“OOo needs 10 years to catch current features of iWork”
That’s more flamebait. Right now OO.o is competing with Microsoft office in the home and business markets, MS Office is a giant, and OO.o is progressively taking away from it. iWork is a simplified approach to an office suite which Joe Average can use for basic office tasks. Even KOffice is more powerful than iWork (which is why I’m surprised Apple didn’t port it).
While I agree OOo needs massive work to catch up to anything, GNOME Office and KOffice are far ahead of iWorks IMO. I’m able to be much more productive with their suites at least.
…uses Linux for their renderfarms, on G5 X-Servers of course.
Before Steve Jobs returned to Apple and the release of the G5 processor, Linux was used on X86 PC’s.
No big deal, use the best tool for the job. My Dual 2 Ghz 64 bit G5 will smoke these pitiful new Intel 32 bit Core Duo’s and it’s over 3 years old!
And I know it’s been said before, Mac OS X is a user OS, not a server OS.
… reading this article only show us a linux fanboy irritated by the Apple’s publicity …
“Starting today, the Intel chip will be set free, and get to live life in a Mac… running Linux. Imagine the possibilities.”
Yes, I imagine that, dropping all my cool stuffs for making statistical compute faster.
So good …
Leave it to Apple crowd to defend the indefensible: that performance does not matter.
My Mac is pretty. How could *anyone* get anyone work done with those ugly interfaces!
Have you seen KDE 3.5.3 or Gnome 2.14? They are very easy to use and have a wealth of very high-quality apps that come with it out of the box and they cost you nothing to boot.
KDE: Amarok, Konqueror Kile, K3B, Koffice (that’s 8 apps), Kdissert, Tellico, Kontact PIM, Kdirstat, Akregator, Ark, Twinkle, Konversation, Kopete, the whole KDE-Edu apps suite.
Sure, you can’t get any work done with those, can you?
Gnome: Nautilus, evolution, GRAMPS, Gnumeric, GIMP, Inscape, liferea, Rythmbox…
The market will speak in the end. Most people want to get work done and want cheap computing. I work as a consultant but I am good friends with two executives at a big OEM and know the kind of razor-thin margins that they have, simply because lots of people are not willing to pay the prices Apple charges for its hardware and a second-rate OS.
And to preempt the typical response: Not everyone is a musician, movie-maker or graphic artist.
I am tired of the same “but we have photoshop” crowd, when most of them have neither paid for photoshop nor need it for any real work.
I will give Apple one thing: it knows how to market its gear and has found a niche among people that value aesthetics over productivity.
Edited 2006-05-07 15:11
“And to preempt the typical response: Not everyone is a musician, movie-maker or graphic artist.”
And not every one is a geek who wants to run on linux.
Not everyone who uses Linux is a geek, don’t be ridiculous. I provide ubuntu linux installation and tech support for people from all walks of life.
Have you seen KDE 3.5.3 or Gnome 2.14? They are very easy to use and have a wealth of very high-quality apps that come with it out of the box and they cost you nothing to boot.
Seems like we have different standard. I’ve tried both of them, and I hardly can say that they satisfy the standard quality.
KDE: Amarok, Konqueror Kile, K3B, Koffice (that’s 8 apps), Kdissert, Tellico, Kontact PIM, Kdirstat, Akregator, Ark, Twinkle, Konversation, Kopete, the whole KDE-Edu apps suite.
Sure, you can’t get any work done with those, can you?
Gnome: Nautilus, evolution, GRAMPS, Gnumeric, GIMP, Inscape, liferea, Rythmbox…
Wow, there are so many applications. Which one is good? Ok, I try them all. Hmm, this application is good, but I need features from that application and that application. SoI use them all. Ah, it’s not fast enough! I have to download the source and recompile with -O3 -ffast-math -march=Opteron option. Huh? The kernel is not 2.6.15? …
Linux is only free if …
I call troll. This isn’t the case. Period. You want easy package management? Use a debian distro. While I don’t know if the average person should know enough to do this, if you however know about “-O3 -ffast-math -march=Opteron” it means you should be smart enough to do a tad bit of research (plus, can you recompile your adobe/ms apps?). It’s rather easy, especially if you’re an Osnews reader, to realize that Ubuntu is meant for simplicity. So, perhaps you could instead apt-get install the programs listed. Even synaptic for simplicity, or the new “add-remove programs” applet in Ubuntu Dapper when it comes out.
I agree there’s some work involved, but at the same time, the programs are all free. Everything has a price. Nothing is so free as to require no effort AND no money AND no work.
“Think different’ (to use a good apple term). That’s all Linux requires. So to answer your sentence “Linux is only free if…you’re willing to think different.”
Where you see ‘too many options/programs’ we see true freedom.
Should you decide it’s too frightening you’re free to remain back in, well, 1984.
Where you see ‘too many options/programs’ we see true freedom.
So you got the point. I assume you’re frequent reader here, you must have read an article about how one waste the time in his journey finding best mp3 player/manager by trying 16 applications.
Should you decide it’s too frightening you’re free to remain back in, well, 1984.
This is not true. Are you trying to say that free software is continously developed, while non-free is stagnant? E.g., OOo is 10 years behind iWorks. Yeah, you’re free to follow RMS’s way, and I also free to pick free or non-free, but in this case I choose non-free.
you must have read an article about how one waste the time in his journey finding best mp3 player/manager by trying 16 applications.
What if you don’t like the only app you have access to, or it doesn’t do the one thing you want? If you try to force the same solution on everyone. someone somewhere is going to want to break out. That is the lesson of dictatorships.
YMMV. Amarok on Gentoo is horrid, never works (and before anyone chimes in, mostly stuff on Gentoo *does* work). On SuSE, however, it is a thing of beauty and (hopefully) a joy, forever.
How is someone to choose an mp3 player on, say windows? I know for a fact there are far more than sixteen.
OH! The BEST? I think that the same problem would exist elsewhere. Windows Media? iTunes? Real? Winamp? Etc.?
The 1984 reference was one back to the Apple Superbowl commercial of some fame. The year was 1984 and it was a reference to Orwell’s novel of the same name. Google it if you care to understand my point.
OOo is 10 years behind? Really? 10? That’s a number you just yanked out. Completely baseless.
Those of us in the FOSS world don’t need to pledge allegiance to a single man. You’re missing the point again. While all Apple fans must follow the cult of Jobs (again, satire. I’m not saying apple fans are a cult per se only again trying to illustrate a point), FOSS users are free (that damn word keeps coming up…) to follow whomever they wish – or nobody. RMS does not speak for all of us…or even most of us.
You’ve got a lot to learn before you’ll be in a place where you can comment on such matters and maintain any shred of credibility.
10 years behind puts it around about equivalent to Office 95/97. Respectable suites, not only for their time but even today. Office 97 might be old but lets face it, there’s only so much you can do with an office suite. Not to mention, a large majority of users (which will consist of a large number of corporate-types) will use MS Office as a simple word processor, for making spreadsheets and giving powerpoint presentations.
er… I know that sounds a little negative, but my point is if OOo is equivalent to say Office 97, I’m happy about that.
“I will give Apple one thing: it knows how to market its gear and has found a niche among people that value aesthetics over productivity.”
You have got to be kidding me. I used Linux for two years, and have now been using OS X for a couple of months. I can already get things done faster in OS X than Linux.
I have never had to wait an hour for a software package to compile on OS X. Other than the few Unix apps I have installed on OS X (I think three of them actually) through fink, I have never used the command line (and I could have used fink commander to install them had I wanted to). I get a much better Office Suite, that doesn’t take 15 seconds to start every time. I’m sorry, but it’s pretty sad MS Office 2004 starts faster on my G4/400MHz that I bought used than OpenOffice 2.0.1 does on my Athlon XP 3000 running Linux.
For any person who has never used a command line, installing any software not included in your distro’s package manager is a PITA. I don’t have to ./configure, install some missing libraries, ./configure, install more missing libraries, ./configure, whoops, that library isn’t in the database, scour the internet for some obscure missing library, ./configure, gcc begins spitting out errors, time to give up or go and start posting bug reports…..etc, ad nauseum. The longest program install on OS X was about 4 minutes of Photoshop, as opposed to 2 hours for some crappy Linux app that ended up being buggy and useless in the end. A crappy OS X app takes me about a minute to install, and even less time to uninstall.
Take your grandma and stick her in-front of a Linux box and an OS X box, give her an iPod, and see which computer she gets it running faster on. Hell, try Windows in that test too.
I installed Linux for my Mom, my Aunt and my Grandpa. They all used it for on average about two days. My Aunt then bought her first Mac, my Mom and Grandpa are back on Windows.
And let’s not even get into the whole drivers thing. I never did get my scanner working in Linux, it took me about 2 minutes on OS X. Sound on my PC is an absolute pain in the ass in Linux, but on my Mac it works out of the box.
Is this Linux’s fault? No, its the hardware manufacturer’s fault. Do end users care who’s fault it is…..nope. Does it still lower my productivity….yes.
So yep, those are my thoughts on the matter, from someone whom has used OS X for a far shorter time than Linux. I left Linux and went back to Windows, and later OS X, simply because I wanted to get more work done on my computer, not less. Not everyone cares enough about computers to take the sheer amount of time required to master Linux, and I really wish people would start understanding that.
And let’s not even get into the whole drivers thing. I never did get my scanner working in Linux, it took me about 2 minutes on OS X. Sound on my PC is an absolute pain in the ass in Linux, but on my Mac it works out of the box.
I got Kooka up and running without configuration on Kubuntu on x86/HP Scanjet and PPC/Epson. My sound problems went away with the 2.6 kernel. The Macally iShock II joystick that requires a driver in OS X (and a new driver because the first one ate 80% or worse of all the CPU cycles)? Recognized, by name and model, out of the box in Kubuntu’s Joystick control panel (all architectures).
Sounds to me like you’re describing a distro from 2 years ago.
“For any person who has never used a command line, installing any software not included in your distro’s package manager is a PITA. I don’t have to ./configure, install some missing libraries, ./configure, install more missing libraries, ./configure, whoops, that library isn’t in the database, scour the internet for some obscure missing library, ./configure, gcc begins spitting out errors, time to give up or go and start posting bug reports…..etc, ad nauseum. The longest program install on OS X was about 4 minutes of Photoshop, as opposed to 2 hours for some crappy Linux app that ended up being buggy and useless in the end. A crappy OS X app takes me about a minute to install, and even less time to uninstall. ”
What an extraordinary, alas all too typical, rant. I have installed many many applications not in my several distributions. They fall into two categories, the very common ones which are in the format of your distros package manager, such as apt or rpm. They just install, about in the same way that Windows apps install, and once in, they work.
Then there are the far smaller number of specialist apps that you have to compile. And here I have always found that the usual recipe of configure, make, makinstall works fine. No, not always, not with the reliability of rpm or apt, but you have to consider, you are installing, free, apps of a range not available on any other OS. So it is not surprising you don’t have flawless automated installation of absolutely everything.
Anything mainstream, you certainly do.
Also, when I have compiled, it has usually been on a 5 or 6 year old Athlon, not hugely equipped with memory. A half hour is an extraoardinarily long time for this. Mostly its a matter of the magical two minutes the writer finds so important.
Linux has its disadvantages, so does Windows, but it is not a contribution to the debate to go around making stuff up. I mean, an equivalent rant about OSX would probably be starting with the one button mouse…
That would not be helpful, would it?
It’s not only about raw performance, it’s also about technical support, configurability, compatibility and usability, all these things together. Apple offers a great package to educational market and researches and they can always add more nodes for example to arrange them into a Xgrid and leverage any performance issues. It’s just not about “My OS runs XYZ faster so it must rule the world!!!”
It’s not only about raw performance, it’s also about technical support, configurability, compatibility and usability, all these things together. Apple offers a great package to educational market and researches and they can always add more nodes…
If you can explain why many educational establishments get up to a 15% to 20% failure rate of Macs, and why it takes Apple and any Mac engineer an absolute eternity to do anything over even Dell’s support, I’m all ears. If anyone else could support Macs besides Apple then Apple’s support contracts would be cancelled overnight.
It’s not only about raw performance, it’s also about technical support,
I’ve been using Apple Mac servers in my currently location for about 18 months now.
So far the technical support that they have provided is considerably sub par.
We had been using the OSX system as a mail server, and after a reboot, it failed to get passed the “grey apple logo”. We contacted Apple’s corporate support, their only offerable solution was to re-install the OS from scratch and restore mail from a backup.
I’m sorry, but I don’t consider that support.
In the end we chose to take the drive and place it in to another OSX system, and try and read off of the drive, which worked.
I hear a lot of shouting regarding user support, and so far, I don’t see any thing from the likes of Apple, that provides technical people with any advantage. Possibly for poorly qaulified in house technical support departments it is sufficient…
configurability, compatibility and usability, all these things together.
As others have mentioned, apple’s idea of “usability” is not appreciated by a reasonable number of people, I included.
I was working with OSX for a few months, as a desktop, and I just couldn’t accept the methods they proposed I used for working. As some one previously has mentioned, it just doesn’t work when dealing with multiple xterm windows, which as a sysadmin is what I spend most of my time doing.
For some it may be more usable, but certainly not for me (and the amount of user support requests we got for OSX compared to Windows would suggest that the average user certainly didn’t find it more intuative).
Apple offers a great package to educational market and researches and they can always add more nodes for example to arrange them into a Xgrid and leverage any performance issues.
Personally I’d rather see my educational institutions getter value for money, then being able to throw more money at a poor solution, and be able to over come limitations in that way.
Just as Apple provide Xgrid, there are clustering solutions within the linux world, that I believe should be able to do the same.
It’s just not about “My OS runs XYZ faster so it must rule the world!!!”
And equally it’s not about “My OS is pirdier then yours, and as such rules the world!!!”…
I think you all are missing the point. This has nothing to do with desktops or servers or guis. What it has to do with is a long running debate about the way the Darwin kernel handles certain types of calls being very very expensive. There were benchmarks of FreeBSD vs. Darwin on PPC which showed this. There were benchmarks of Linux vs. Darwin on PPC which showed this. However once you start benchmarking Linux on its home platform against Darwin the differences are large.
The point is that either:
1) Darwin is going to be a low performance kernel for a long time
2) Apple is going to need to invent computer science techniques for handling these problems
3) The darwin kernel needs to be reengineered.
You should be thinking libraries not GUIs.
I believe jeffb it’s right on this. The topic shouldn’t be “look how slow is OSX compared to Linux in this kind of calculation” but “Look how performance-unpotimized is OSX kernel”. If we start comparing the Oses, it’s all going to be “my OS is faster” “my Os is slower but gives better experience”… we’re not going anywhere. In the end, while I still believe productivity isn’t completely related to speed and that a rational and well designed interface could compensate some performance issues, I also believe OSX kernel could use some speed improvements.
(Which is why I was completely puzzled by the latest Vista build which is not only slow (as ervery beta is anyway) but it’s also taking steps in creating the interface less streamlined and more cumbersome, resulting in less and less productivity (like all those modal security requesters. Every time I launch a control app the computer comes to a stop… might have some sense, but it simply doesn’t work for me))
Did everyone forget why Apple might be looking into replacing their kernel?
It’s quite old news that no matter which CPU, Intel or PPC, is used to benchmark OSX vs. Linux, OSX is going to fall short, because of the well documented slow inter-process communication in the Mach kernel. There’s just too much going on in the kernel and it needs to be replaced, if Apple ever are going to be using OSX as a server OS.
Too bad DragonFlyBSD isn’t farther along…
It’s quite old news that no matter which CPU, Intel or PPC, is used to benchmark OSX vs. Linux, OSX is going to fall short, because of the well documented slow inter-process communication in the Mach kernel. There’s just too much going on in the kernel and it needs to be replaced, if Apple ever are going to be using OSX as a server OS.
Well that obviously can’t be true. Thom Holwerda and Andy Tanenbaum tell us that modern machines are powerful enough and Mach kernel (microkernel type) architectures are the future!
Edited 2006-05-08 09:59
It doesn’t appear to be matter of IPC in this case. Look at the two benchmarks, one where there are a lot of inter-library calls and one where there wasn’t. OS X was much slower in the former case than the latter case. This indicates that the bottleneck is the Mach-O binary format, which has a higher overhead for these things than the ELF format used by Linux.
I’m running Ubuntu Dapper on a P3-800 and Mac OS X on a G4-1.33Ghz. Both machines have 512MB RAM. When I’m surfing on the Web and IRC:ing (Opera on both machines, and ssh to a server where I use irssi) and some background task kicks in (updatedb, compilation, or something else with lots of I/O) it seems to me like Mac OS X slows to a crawl where Linux keeps very responsive and snappy. How is this possible? I don’t know for sure. I haven’t done any research, but it seems to me like the Mac OS X kernel wouldn’t cope as well with lots of context-switches and I/O. Now that I think of it, my iBook has a 4200rpm drive, while the p3 has a 7200rpm drive, but I don’t think that makes up for the feel.
(As for the topic “XNU vs. Linux”, it is my understanding that this is what the respective kernels of the popular operating systems are called, correct me if I’m wrong)
I think that the example you give, does not say a lot about the performance of the OSes. You already noticed yourself about the 4200rpm and the 7200rpm harddrive. This really does matter. There is a big difference when an application needs to be loaded from disk, and there’s especially gonna be a big difference when 2 applications try to use the harddisk at the same time. Browsers need the disk to load/save their cache. So I think that the hard disk speed is the more important factor in the different behaviour.
On a light or middle load Server, I want OpenBSD, and not be hacked.
On a server, where performance is the first priority, I want Linux.
On my laptop I want OSX, because I’ll be working there for hours and hours. I want security, productivity and then performance.
On Vista, I want to puck.
The same but I choose Solaris 10 instead of Linux.
When performance is priority, I choose Solaris Express 😉
Are you kidding? Tell me exactly what is wrong in KDE 3.5 or Gnome 2.14? You want a Mac-style UI : do yourself a favour get a Mac-style theme for your WM and get some sort of MacOS style panel (but I don’t see any reason to do that: pretty looks is okay but it will start to wear down on you one day).
And get yourself a binary distro : You have probably never used a binary distro like Debian (or Ubuntu) or Redhat (Fedora). Software in Debian for example is reasonably fast even with i386 optimisations and -00 -pipe.
The widget set and the look and feel is one thing. The other thing that OSX does well is that tired old cliche “it just works”. i plug a printer into my wireless network and OSX sees it etc. That type of thing enhances the user experience.
By the way I work as a sysadmin for a very large corp and Linux is used for the Grid compute nodes but no-one and I mean no-one in the organisation will even consider it (and it has been looked at) as a desktop alternative (no Adode etc)
By the way I work as a sysadmin for a very large corp and Linux is used for the Grid compute nodes but no-one and I mean no-one in the organisation will even consider it (and it has been looked at) as a desktop alternative (no Adode etc)
Despite your experiences there are people who use Photoshop on Linux and not just joe users.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1210083,00.asp
It’s also a popular platform for other film studios.
http://www.cinepaint.org/
Edited 2006-05-08 01:13
This is one of the worst series of comments I’ve seen on OSNews in quite a while. It seems like just about every comment is about how OS Z sucks and you should use a real OS like Y. Half of the comments are just plain wrong – they are based on common myths.
OSX fans – try reading the actual article. He is very clear that what he is benchmarking is important for him and other people who use statistical analysis software. However, the average consumer who runs a browser and office app isn’t going to notice a difference, because these are all IO bound anyways. It is very easy to install software in Linux, and what distro and version you are using rarely makes a difference. Most come with very up-to-date and easy to use package managers, and it is just a click of the button to get software working.
Linux fans – yes, there really are some people who enjoy using the OSX GUI, and it is more productive for them. These people tend to be the more creative, artistic types, and for whatever reason don’t do as well with a more traditional Windows/Linux GUI.
I also don’t find the Windows GUI to be bad at all. I don’t particularly like the look and feel of the default theme, but change it back to Classic and things work perfectly well.
He uses a LiveCD of ‘buntu. Of course it’ll run faster – everything is loaded in RAM. Why didn’t he install it on the Hard Drive?
1. It would take days to experiment and successfully boot. The instructions on how to boot Linux from Mactels are both VERY long and contradictory. Very few have bothered to go thru the big headache. He’s probably not smart enough? That’s fair it *is* an act of deity to get Linux running on Mactels. He just didn’t want to lose productivity.
2. He’s a fanboy.
Yeah, Linux on Mac is sooo much better than OS X esp in “his line of work”, but yet OS X is the default and only OS on his MacBook? Let me guess, it’s his “friends” laptop?
Don’t get me wrong here. It’s not Linux I hate. I use it. It’s good (better than OS X for certain things). It’s the Linux userbase I hate. They are 95% losers. Esp the ones that post here*.
* Not *you*, you’re special. You are one of the good ones . . .
He uses a LiveCD of ‘buntu. Of course it’ll run faster – everything is loaded in RAM.
Let’s think about this again shall we. If it was a hard-drive install, the programme would be running from RAM anyway, so that would make no difference. However, it would likely be *faster* on a hard-drive install, because there would be a lot more free RAM available, plus the system could page background processes to disk.
Yeah, Linux on Mac is sooo much better than OS X esp in “his line of work”, but yet OS X is the default and only OS on his MacBook? Let me guess, it’s his “friends” laptop?
Why not? Linux/Opteron is a much better OS for my line of work, but I still use OS X/PowerPC as my main desktop.
reading these pro-mac comments are funny. basically it’s “who cars about speed? it’s all about the user experience of the os x gui.” with that logic, you’all might as well save some money and stick with old an g3. you get the same gui os x experience for half the price.
** i do use a g3 w/os x btw, but i also use xp and fedora.
Edited 2006-05-07 17:16
Download and install R yourself. Run some tests. He’s dead wrong. Period. Don’t take my word for it (and certainly not his). Do it.
Of course we all knew that; anyone that posts a graph and then spends paragraph after paragraph basing OS X with ZERO information on how to recreate his exact tests . . .
Shame on OSNews for posting this. I’ve seen better documented benchmarks on ZDNet.
No, you are the one who are either lying or have not read the article.
He provides the very scripts that he used to run the tests and tells you which compiler he used and why the tests are reliable.
Challenge the results with real research, not innuendo and lies.
A lot of people here are missing the whole point of the Apple experience… that you add something, and it JUST WORKS! Yeah, Linux has improved quite a bit here, but there’s just too many times when you go to add something and get the message about FSTAB or no entry in /DEV or some other stupid bullsh*t that should have been solved 10 years ago. That’s where OSX shines, and Linux falls on its face. There’s really no reason why Linux can’t recognize amost ANY drive (floppies, ZIPs, JAZ, additional HDs) without the P.I.A. of having to edit the FileSystem Table. That crap hasn’t changed in 20 years, and if OSX can seamlessly recognize and use new peripherals, there’s no reason why Linux can’t get it’s act together too.
I have used OSX before. In part, I was looking forward to the “just works” feeling because I was getting a bit tired of all the manual work on Linux.
Now… the one problem about the whole “just works” thing is that when the “just works” approach fails, that then you have to do it manually and you need to go through a lot of trouble, a lot more trouble than when you had simply done it manually right from the start.
I wanted to have my “/Users” directory in OSX on a separate non-journalled HFS+ partition, with the intention of being able to access it on linux. I don’t think you can do that with the GUI, or at least I didn’t find a way to do that. What did I do? I edited “/etc/fstab”. I believe that Apple discourages this, but this was the only way I knew how to do what I wanted.
Btw, Linux can recognize at least external harddisks and memory sticks out of the box when you use a desktop environment like KDE or GNOME. I don’t know about ZIPs and JAZ drives, but I suppose that’d work too without needing to edit the filesystem table.
And the entries in /dev are automatically added when for example inserting a usb-stick, or for the hardware on boot. This is done by udev which is the default for the last x kernel versions. So your information is a bit outdated.
Also, when using OSX, it most of the time “just works”, but when your hardware device is not supported by OSX, then it does not work and it will not work. This was for example the case with my infrared-receiver connected on usb. It does not have a driver for OSX, but it is supported by the linux kernel. When I plug it in on linux, the correct modules are loaded and I can start using it.
I do believe you have a point and I see your point, but I’m afraid you’re using the wrong examples. I also believe that the gap between OSX and linux regarding this “just works” mentality is getting smaller.
I don’t know about ZIPs and JAZ drives, but I suppose that’d work too without needing to edit the filesystem table.
Out of painful experience: don’t count on it.
I looked at Ubuntu a little while ago. I wanted to see if I could replace my iBook with a Linux laptop. It is such a hack to get Linux working with any recent laptop (where wi-fi and everything just works). I don’t have to worry about that with an iBook/MacBook because everything does just work.
I look at Linux every now and again but there is always something that is lacking that is pretty annoying. I will keep watching though.
For those purposes, shame you weren’t using a Windows laptop. On mine, SUSE Linux works fine for everything except Bluetooth (which I haven’t tried) and the internal wireless card. The second problem was easily fixed by using a D-Link G650 Cardbus card. At the bottom of the article, meanwhile, you will see a link to a Linux user’s review of the Mac. His claims are that although peripheral support *does* just work, that’s only for certain devices; if it doesn’t, there’s *no way* to get it to work.
Apart from having to plug in the Wireless card, yes, in SUSE Linux 10 on my laptop, everything *does* just work.
Why would I want to buy a card when I have internal wireless? That is a waste of money? You may make enough that it doesn’t matter but not me.
As far as peripherals…it is much easier to find out if something works with OSX than Linux.
Also name one PC manufacturer that *pushes* Linux on the desktop. I can name them…er none.
Why would I want to buy a card when I have internal wireless? That is a waste of money? You may make enough that it doesn’t matter but not me.
Actually, it was cheaper than buying a laptop with a supported internal card, because all those were much more expensive.
As far as peripherals…it is much easier to find out if something works with OSX than Linux.
I wouldn’t know about that, as I’ve never used OS X and have no interest in doing so. Apple would be a much more expensive option for me. Not only is Apple hardware more expensive anyway, but for a laptop that costs (say) $US600, Apple UK would charge around £UK600, when an equivalent price would be around £300-400 depending on exchange rate.
Also name one PC manufacturer that *pushes* Linux on the desktop. I can name them…er none.
Which isn’t a whole lot less than the single vendor which pushes OS X on the desktop.
Uh.. I thought the iBook was the perfect Linux laptop?
My first iBook (dual USB Snowwhite iBook 12″ G3 800Mhz) was completely supported on linux. And I mean completely: wireless, suspend-to-ram, power management, 3d hardware acceleration, well just about everything. The modem was problematic, but there is a binary only driver from Linuxant, which “should” work. I don’t know about now, but I never got it to work.
My second iBook (iBook G4 12″ 1.33Ghz) is now also almost completely supported on linux. Wireless works pretty much ok (developers are still working on making the driver more complete and better), 3d hardware acceleration works but is not complete yet (developers still working on R300 radeon driver), the modem is not supported, but everything else works. Thus also suspend-to-ram, suspend-to-disk, cpu frequency switching.. well, basically everything.
Or were you referring to software problems?
I should mention that currently Sun Java does not provide a JDK for linux/powerpc, but IBM does have a version of its JDK for linux/powerpc.
The other thing you need to take into account is that there is no support for Flash on linux/powerpc. This is probably an important issue for a lot of people. However, as a last resort, you could use “Mac-On-Linux” to run OSX at near-native speed when you really need access to a website with Flash. Mac-On-Linux is best compared to something like VMware and allows you to run OSX from inside Linux/powerpc.
Why I like the iBook? I like the hardware, I wanted a small, lightweight laptop with built-in dvd-drive and wireless. I also wanted a nice battery life. And I just love the fact that the iBook stays relatively cool: it is very silent since the fan rarely switches on. Let me tell you that once you get used to that, you want your next laptop to be quiet too.
You do have to remember that OS X was built for your iBook. That’s why everything works. If you’d bought a laptop with Linux preinstalled, it would’ve “just worked” too.
Its a good example of the Mac machine when confronted with an inconvenient fact which does not reflect well on the platform. A mixture of rage, denial and lies.
So what if it’s faster? its just meaningless…
People buy Macs for the whole package. The hardware, the OS, the built-in apps. and the great commercial apps…..
OOo needs 10 years to catch current features of iWorks…
[Linux’] ugly interface will decrease productivity…
Linux doesn’t even have equal quality graphics drivers….
And we find once more the usual obligatory incantation about needing to recompile the kernel, edit fstab and so on.
Guys, please wake up. It was slower. Speed matters. Other systems are not either inferior or advocated by mentally deficient rednecks with no aesthetic sense. You chosen machine is a reasonable, though not the only or the most obviously correct, choice.
Your chosen company though, and your chosen companions, that’s another matter altogether.
Running Ubuntu off a live cd is actually slower than HD (unless cdrom drives are at 500x now so no it’s not because it’s loaded to ram, programs are fetched off the cd then run
From the article, it is clear that the guy thinks Linux is superior to Windows XP and especially to OSX. He doesn’t exactly hide what his personal feelings towards OSX are. And that makes his benchmarks and his conclusion just less credible to me.
I also read his other article with comparison of his benchmarks on OSX and a 32-bit linux on the G5. That article just give me the same feeling. Actually he kept several paragraphs from the old article in this new one.
I’ve seen benchmarks before about OSX being slower in certain areas than Linux and most of the authors point to the Mach kernel as responsible for the bad performance in those areas (for example network performance). I believe this to be true.
However, it seems like the guy knows the weak points in OSX and “exploits” those weak points in his benchmark to show how bad it can be. I think that you can make it look as bad as you want, as long as you use the right benchmarks. The question is how much of a problem is this in practice. He seems to know what exactly is causing OSX to be much slower, but I wonder how much this kind of code appears in real-world use of his software package.
He is also not precise on which compiler he used. Did he use the exact same gcc4 version on both platforms? I believe the gcc4.1 includes a (better) auto vectorizer and I imagine this could be important for this kind of code.
All in all, I think his benchmarks don’t look very professional and the fact he is very vocal about his feelings towards OSX, Steve Jobs and Apple as a company make him less credible. Honestly, I was surprised to see on his personal page that he’s an associate professor. I’d expected a higher quality and more objective article from someone like him.
I’m using Oracle’s 10g database,
learning SQL:
“Oracle 9i SQL Exam Cram 2” & “Sql Cookbook”
developing a java application w JBuilder
and learning Bash: “Learning the Bash Shell, 3rd edition”.
Seems, fast enough for me…
Yes, well a 500Mhz computer running OSX would be fast enough for those tasks. Unless of course you are compiling a huge java app (100s of files), or actually using the database in a production environment with thousands of simultaneous connections instead of you being the only one running simple queries on it.
For most people, “Performance”, esp. the slight difference in performance sited here, isn’t the issue.
“For most people, “Performance”, esp. the slight difference in performance sited here, isn’t the issue.”
Oh, yeah, twice as slow or more is a small difference in performance.
It is ok to like something even if it isn’t an objective or rational decision, just don’t try to tell people that you have objective reasons to support your choice.
You’re right about the kernel, but I don’t think that’s what this benchmark was measuring. I think the slowdown in this case is due to the Darwin ABIs and Mach-O shared library overheads.
I’m a Mac fan, have been since 84 (Apple ][ fan before that)… So let me just say it and get it over with…
Linux is faster at a lot of stuff that OS X isn’t.
Does it matter… Yes, of course it does. Please note that Apple is selling XServe boxes too with OS X Server on them, and even if it didn’t, it still matters. When I buy hardware of a certain spec, I don’t want my OS slowing it down.
For years Apple zealots have been defending the G3, G4’s and then the G5 over Intel. As soon as the Intel comes to the Mac most jump all over it and don’t care about the Gn range anymore (not all).
If Steve Jobs suddenly annouced that OS X = Linux in speed in the next release, all you guys who don’t care about speed would all applaud it and use it as ammo against Linux. If Steve announced that Linux was replacing Darwin, lots of you guys would suddenly love Linux.
Linux isn’t an enemy, it’s a friend, a great OS and a great tool. We should be very very glad it’s here, it has changed the OS map as much as anything else and for the better IMHO. Actually, I should say that it’s the Open Source community, not Linux in particular, but anyway…
Personally, I like OS X’s interface and a lot of the tech underneath, but Linux does seem to best Darwin in a lot of areas, and to my mind, it probably should. I hope Darwin can equal Linux in all areas, but it doesn’t right now.
The interface is a matter of taste, you would either love the OS X interface, or Gnome, or KDE, or something else out there… But speed doesn’t really rely on taste, the more speed you have, the better (unless you are emulating old hardware and trying to play games 🙂
So, please fellow Apple fans, admit Apple isn’t the best in this area and hope it will be one day.
By the way, I think this is an area Apple would be working on, they know they need to have OS X Server running as fast as it can, they know it matters…
…here I am, stuck in the middle with you.
After years of defending themselves against Windows and its 90+ per-cent desktop usage, it seems both the Linux and OS X camps are equally keen to start tearing chunks out of each other too. And in the process, both sides are making themselves look rather stupid.
So how about this revolutionary thought?
That we agree that, at least until Apple switches to another (FreeBSD-based?) kernel, Linux performs better than OS X in terms of raw speed. And that, at least until Xgl/AIGLX gains some maturity, the OS X interface is a good deal more polished than either Gnome or KDE.
That way we don’t have to resort to childish name-calling and tired cliches, about how all Linux users have to recompile their kernels, or about how silly it is that you have to drag a CD to the trash icon to eject it.
Okay?
A drag race revealed that, with the same capacity engine, a Porsche will do 0-60 faster than a BMW.
Angry BMW owners immediately claimed that the test was either rigged, or that 0-60 times were unimportant. Furthermore, they pointed out (at length) that the interior trim, and the stereo, and the air conditioning all work much better on the BMW than on the Porsche. They also claimed that Porsches are difficult to drive, unreliable, and high maintenance — even that Porsche owners frequently have to rebuild the engines themselves.
Porsche owners, incensed at the attack on their marque, began a rabid defence, countering that the stereo and air conditioning were more than good enough for an enjoyable drive, and that any suggestion that modern Porsche models had the same reliability problems as their predecessors was a lie.
Meanwhile, the millions of Ford owners around the world shrugged in unison.
You deserve a score of 10!!! Genius! ROFL
A drag race revealed that, with the same capacity engine, a Porsche will do 0-60 faster than a BMW.
No, the BMW people are saying they don’t care.
– The BMW can carry 4 people, when needed, and they care about that and other features MORE then RAW performance.
– The BMW people have CONCEEDED that linux is FASTER.
When, on a server, they plan to use it, or Solaris!
– On a Desktop, they have other priorities like: Security, Productivity, and then speed.
– The BMW people have also indicated that they like the command line, BASH, just like the Linux people do.
Maybe you “Linux” people are must AMD Kissup’s, still pissed that Apple is using the DUO?
You people seem to be trying to pick a fight with people that Like You.
I see there are mixed reviews here about the accuracy and relevancy of his analysis. I actually think this is one of the best reviews I have seen, and here is why:
1. He uses a readily available tool, the R statistical computing program, which if you can access the article, you can obviously also go and download.
2. He provides the benchmark scripts that he uses.
3. You can easily test the speed of your own computer and see how it stacks up against the apple machines.
My own results running his Genetic Matching script on an IBM T43p Thinkpad with a Pentium M 2.1GHz, running Ubuntu Dapper Drake Beta 2 GNU/Linux:
GENMATCH: 3 9.02 0.13 9.2 0 0
I hope I am interpreting this correctly, but it looks like my laptop’s score is somewhere between the Linux P4 and Linux Core Duo which is a little surprising since the P4 3GHz should be faster. Please let me know if I am wrong. I would be very curious to see what benchmarks other have obtained.
Thanks,
Greg
“The floating point performance of the 970 chip leaves much to be desired”
Bwahahahah!!!
What a miserable little x86 fanboy…
ALSA doesn’t need manual configuration anymore. It automatically detects that your soundcard doesn’t support hardware mixing, and will use software mixing instead.
The only problem is, if you use OSS emulation for “legacy” programs like Flash or RealPlayer, then no mixing for you. The “aoss” hack is the best you can have.
Performance issues with the Darwin kernel are well documented. I remember running the Ubuntu Live CD and it felt like my iBook was 10 times faster. Apps loaded nearly instantly and the GUI was very responsive. Mac OS X isn’t that slow, but Linux does seem to run much faster.
That said, I still prefer to use Mac OS X. Although I may have to wait 0.001 seconds longer for a widget to respond in Mac OS X than on Linux, I spend 0 time trying to get my iBook to use the wireless network or play a certain media format. Linux is nice and I try to use it any time I’m using a PC but I much prefer Mac’s GUI and ‘just work’ mentality.
I think people that dismiss Macs for only for artsy people are being disingenuous. I’m using my Mac right now to run a bunch of tests on my final year project in college. I suppose I would be in the geeky pigeonhole. The fact is though that all the major OSes can do the same things more or less. Choosing which one to use is just a matter of personal preference. There’s no need to stereotype people or try and start religious wars over something so trivial as an OS.
Chill out people
WTF are you talking about? 10 years ago? Seriously, when was the last time you installed and used any linux distro? There are plenty of problems with linux, but fortunately, the problems you cite largely do not exist. With the advent of hotplug (which has since been replaced by udev’s built in harware hotplugging) and daemons like hal and dbus, you essentially plug things in, and they work, IME more often than in the mac world. Yes, sometimes you need to make sure the device in question will work OOTB with linux, but that’s absolutely no different that with macintosh. If you’re still fscing around with fstab to mount a thumb drive, you’re either using a distro aimed at a different audience than you, or doing things wrong.
IME (again) linux supports a lot more hardware than macintosh does – the “it just works” idea comes from the fact that for many things to work at all on the mac, they have to be macintosh specific. I imagine this will change with the advent of the macintel, but I sure wouldn’t count on it. I mean, seriously – Apple move to the x86 platform after decades of saying it’s crap and ppc is king. Now rather than be standards compliant and allow people to use their OS on the hardware they choose, Apple have decided to shut out many potential customers by locking the OS to particular, apple sold, hardware. So, yes, “it just works” – of course it does.
I use a mac, too, just not for everything. I certainly haven’t had as much koolaid as a lot of people around here, and I’ve been using the platform since before it was publicly available.
“WTF are you talking about? 10 years ago? Seriously, when was the last time you installed and used any linux distro?”
Does Fedora Core 5, and SUSE 10.1rc3 count? I use SuSE 9.3 and OSX 10.4.6 daily for work, so yes, I DO know.
I was hoping that udev would be the savior of peripheral problems, and while it has solved some, it still screws up too much.
“for many things to work at all on the mac, they have to be macintosh specific”
Since OSX this is pure BS. Aside from the basic MAC, my peripherals are off the shelf – the PC Shelf that is.
I’ll continue to use both platforms, but in using the Mac, I feel a little bit of the same “fun” that Linux never gave me in the years I’ve been using it. It’s the same “fun” I discovered when first using BeOS.
I was hoping that udev would be the savior of peripheral problems, and while it has solved some, it still screws up too much.
Be a little more specific please. What issues do you still encounter? What hasn’t been solved? UDEV/DBUS has solved all the issues I can think of and it did it in a fairly short time frame.
Well, all I can say is that I have not had the same experience on several different x86 and ppc boxen. As for my statement being BS, you’re telling me that you can grab any old (video card | sound card | raid card) for your ppc mac box and it will “Just Work?”
While sound and video remain major sore point in the linux desktop experience, they are much, much better than they were even a year ago. What particular devices are you having so much trouble with? I can’t speak to suse, since I haven’t used it for years, but using kde, and running fedora, kubuntu, debian, and arch linux I have had no drive mounting issues for litterally years.
All this being said, linux is free while OS X is not. Putting forth a little time to get my linux machine where I want/need it to be not only seems like a reasonable tradeoff to me, but keeps my skillset sharp as well. There are absolutely some things Macintosh does better than linux, but for me, it’s seriously to the point that I enjoy using linux far more than I do OS X, and am easily as productive on my linux boxen, if not more-so. Then again, I’m a sysadmin, not a graphic artist – I’d never suggest that my wife use linux.
Linux is winning and in its own rights it should. Microsoft and Apple are dead.
Go away troll.
kid, time to sleep now
I’ve always believed that the PPC chip and architecture, although left behind in many areas by the x86 world, was nowhere near as bad as the Anandtech test, made some time ago of OS X on PPC and Linux on x86, made out. Nothing terribly wrong with the hardware – it was the OS. I think this now gives us some pretty reasonable proof, now that OS X, Windows and Linux can run on exactly the same hardware (and with OS X and Linux – use the same compiler on the same hardware), that OS X in many, many areas is just not up to snuff.
An old boss of mine, who was an absolute die-hard Mac user, simply had to accept in the end that this was the case – especially for server applications on OS X Server and Linux. The numbers, performance and unreliability of OS X were infront of him, and the Linux server was doing unspeakable things to OS X just for fun, without even trying.
It’s very amusing to see how much denial Mac enthusiasts go into over this, going off on massive tangents about driver support in Linux, Mac OS X’s pretty interface, the integrated service and support from Apple (and with some experience of Macs in universities and education, this is crap) – none of this stuff matters because that’s not what this is about.
The performance of OS X sucks some serious ass, and I predicted when Apple moved to Intel that now that OS X can run on the same hardware as Windows and Linux there would be many embarrassing benchmarks. So it’s proving. Get used to there being plenty more.
“So even though Apple talked a lot of smack about having a first-class 64-bit RISC workstation chip under the hood of their towers, in the end they were more concerned about OS X’s bulging memory requirements than they were about The Snappy(TM).”
On a multi-processing system, with limited cache, optimizing for size may very well outperform optimizing for speed. Especially if optimizing for speed doubles or triples code cache requirements.
Esp. if accesses to main memory are 10 TIMES SLOWER then access to L1 cache.
Ok, this statistical software is better on Linux, fine. Use Linux for it. I’m not planning on using it anyway.
Some operating systems are better running certain applications. For example, Maxon cinema 4D is faster in OSX than in XP (using the AMD64x2, anyway). At least according to Cinebench 9.5.
“Ok, this statistical software is better on Linux, fine. Use Linux for it. I’m not planning on using it anyway.”
What will you say when its Photoshop? It’s coming. More important, what will Apple say?
I agree that some portions of the Mac OS X kernel need optimizations but:
– If I could get a nice statistical software that runs fine under Mac OS X and plays well with other software I use AND the workflow under Mac OS X would safe MY time (and I suppose it would) I would run that software under Mac OS X and not under Linux to save some cpu cycles.
– I also run some file / directory servers under Mac OS X because integrating Mac / Win / Linux works for me really well (and nobody complaned about performance so far)
– I also think that the statistical software package may have been tweaked (over time) for Linux perfomance – Mac OS X is not Linux and that does not means that it is slower but that it has a different performance profile.
There is an article on Apples developer pages how to optimize MySQL performance by turning off a MySQL feature that dynamically changes thread priority – the very same feature that increases performance under Linux.
– This is not to say that Apple should not optimize the kernel that has 16 year old code in it (Apple has allready done this successfully with launchd) – but this article draws just the wrong conclusions.
Since when does a person with a political science background remotely command the respect and attention normally reserved for Computer Science/Engineering/Physicists/Mathematicians when operating system shortcomings are concerned?
Show me the unit regression tests. I want the professor to write some test cases and develop a QA analysis that verifies where the shortcomings reside. Show me your time analysis sir. Where are the Big-O notational results?
Which parts of R leverage C? Which parts of R leverage C++ and which parts of R leverage FORTRAN?
Knowing Apple doesn’t concern itself with FORTRAN I doubt these sections would be anything less that piss poor.
Fortran77? Being one with a Mech. Engineering background it should be quite clear that (1) Fortran77 is ancient, (2) the optimizations vary greatly on each platform.
R currently does not distinguish between FORTRAN 77 and FORTRAN 90/95 code, and assumes all FORTRAN comes in source files with extension .f. Commercial Unix systems tyically use a F95 compiler, but only since the release of gcc 4.0.0 in April 2005 have Linux and other non-commercial OSes had much support for F95. The compiler used for R on Windows is a F77 compiler.
This means that portable packages need to be written in correct FORTRAN 77, which will also be valid FORTRAN 95. See http://developer.r-project.org/Portability.html for reference resources. In particular, free source form F95 code is not portable.
On some systems an alternative F95 compiler is available: from the gcc family this might be gfortran or g95. Configuring R will try to find a compiler which (from its name) appears to be a FORTRAN 90/95 compiler, and set it in macro `FC’. Note that it does not check that such a compiler is fully (or even partially) compliant with FORTRAN 90/95. Packages making use of FORTRAN 90/95 features should use file extension `.f90′ or `.f95′ for the source files: the variable PKG_FCFLAGS specifies any special flags to be used. There is no guarantee that compiled FORTRAN 90/95 code can be mixed with any other type of code, nor that a build of R will have support for such packages.
Knowing that Apple has left any support for FORTRAN to the rest of the developer community I find it sad that the results don’t include a caveat about this and much more.
http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-exts.html#Optimization
Nothing in his scripts deal with utilizing C to optimize the results.
This is a battle of optimized interpreter code on specific platforms.
Big Freakin’ Deal.
Now where have all the useless articles gone about how MySQL, on OS X, sucks?
It appears that MySQL AB finds solace in OS X.
http://developer.apple.com/business/macmarket/mysql.html
These articles are absolutely useless.
For something more useful why doesn’t this professor contact this team:
http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/bioinformatics/newton.html
Apple Workgroup Cluster for Bioinformatics
“Tools included with the Apple Workgroup Cluster are valuable for our for our research. We’ll also expand on the iNquiry tools for our pioneering research. Much of this work involves R, the widely used open-source statistical analysis system, and Bioconductor, the R-based bioinformatics collection of tools. Dr. Bates in our group is a leader in the core development of R.”
I’d imagine that Dr. Bates would be much better suited in clarifying the shortcomings of OS X and R than this professor of political science.
In the end, Linux and OS X are great operating systems.
use linux for video editing…
use OSX for VB programing and gaming…
and windows for your renderfarm and web servers….
did i get that right?