Ubuntu 8.10 vs. Mac OS X 10.5.5 Benchmarks 328
An anonymous reader writes "As a sequel to their Is Ubuntu Getting Slower? Phoronix now has out an article that compares the performance of Ubuntu 8.10 to Apple's Mac OS X 10.5.5. They tested both the x86 and x86_64 spins of Ubuntu and threw at both operating systems a number of graphics, disk, computational, and Java benchmarks, among others. With the Mac Mini used in some of the comparisons, 'Leopard' was faster, while in others it was a tight battle."
Re:We musn't fight each other... (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely we should be united against the common enemy.
It's not fight, it's play. And when one system wins in terms of speed or usability, both systems win in terms of a weaker common enemy.
Re:We musn't fight each other... (Score:5, Insightful)
This thread will end up getting moderated flame-bait, but what would that common enemy be? Personally I think Windows is rather ok now, Windows 7 will probably be even better, who knows, maybe even better than snow leopard.
The only thing I see as an enemy is ideas which are pushed down my throat no matter what if I want them or not. I want to use my data and my applications in the way I feel like, not be forced to a single method just because someone else thought it was the best one. But that is true for all operating systems and no special "enemy."
I like many things in OS X and in applications for it because it makes sense and makes using the computer more comfortable, I don't like some other things because they don't let me do the things I want to do.
The huge amount of applications for Windows makes it rather likely that you can find one which fits your purpose, some for the window managers and such in the free unix-like oses.
Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
... for those that can't be bothered to read this lengthy yet information sparse piece.
1. MacOS X is faster in graphics intensive benchmarks.
2. The other benchmarks are fairly even with Ubuntu coming out on top more often than OS X (one notable exception is SQLite).
This is hardly anything new. OS X has a well optimised graphics system with good drivers for the intel chips (which up until now was used in both Macbooks and Mac Minis).
Also SQLite is AFAIK integral to many features of OS X, and for this reason it makes sense for Apple to have optimised for it.
Overall the benchmarks suggests that Linux (not just Ubuntu) needs some work on the graphics system and the Intel drivers. What a shock.
it's not simply the OS, it's the distro (Score:5, Insightful)
Give credit where credit is due (Score:5, Insightful)
Ubunu isn't getting slower, Mac OSX is getting faster.
Do any of you recall Mac OSX 10.0?
The day I installed Apple's first "modern" OS, I thought X marked the spot of Apple's demise.
Apple has done an admirable job bringing MacOS into the 21st century, and their future looks promising.
Re:Ubuntu if you want to (Score:2, Insightful)
Did anyone expect that Apples OS was going to be beaten on Apple hardware by a generic Linux distribution?
Which is faster on my Gateway box?
Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why they stopped selling non 64-bit capable computers a couple years ago, and why the new MacBooks have much improved integrated graphics. That's why they are moving their developers to include 64-bit compiles as part of newly shipped universal binaries. Next year is when all this latent potential gets switched on.
Linux has the opportunity to do the same; perhaps more opportunity as it has less of a legacy binary issue, although Linux has to deal with a multitude of graphics chips, Apple only has to optimize for a handful.
Re:We musn't fight each other... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not really about Windows, it's about Microsoft. I don't care if Windows is coded by the best programmers in the world, the problem comes from management and their shoddy business tactics.
Re:Ubuntu -- Obama Linux Distro (Score:5, Insightful)
It came from nothing to something in a very short period of time.
I wouldn't call Debian "nothing".
Re:Ubuntu if you want to (Score:2, Insightful)
What are the meaningful differences between a Mac and a normal PC that would change performance??? Will a Core2 run faster in a differently shaped box?
Re:Survey of 1 (Score:1, Insightful)
oxygen icons are beatiful. Heck, kde4 is frickin' awesomw, actually; and i bet you cant make gnome look even good with little effort.
and the difference between mac osx and windows vs linux, is that this automation you speak about is optional in linux of any flavour. that's a HUGE adventage if you find a problem, or if you ever want to use you machine to do something different to what the manufacturer intended.
Re:7-zip benchmark? WTF?? (Score:1, Insightful)
BULLSHIT BULLSHIT BULLSHIT
You can say "bullshit" on Slashdot. Or any other curse word you want. There's no filter here. If you don't want to use that word, then use a different one; you only make yourself look stupid when you censor yourself like that.
Also, 7-zip is a perfectly good compression algorithm.
Re:Ubuntu if you want to (Score:5, Insightful)
Mac OS X doesn't have to accommodate variances in the hardware it is running on in the same way that Linux or Windows has to do. Therefore, it can exploit the hardware better. It's the same principle that applied to game developers targeting the XBox rather than a standard PC. Standard PCs might be more powerful, but the XBox is a non-moving target, so you don't need to write to the lowest common denominator, and can exploit the particular strengths of the hardware better. So, it's unreasonable to expect an OS that is written to work on multiple platforms to compete in this fashion.
Re:We musn't fight each other... (Score:1, Insightful)
Apple and MS are two sides of the same coin.
Re:it's not simply the OS, it's the distro (Score:3, Insightful)
Based on what, exactly?
Oh, yeah, nothing but your own bias that Linux is experiencing "feature bloat".
Re:More of a summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Also worth mentioning are the collection of posts from the last thread that convincingly argued various problems with the Phoronix Benchmarks. Example 1 [slashdot.org] Example 2 [slashdot.org] Example 3 [slashdot.org]
Speed tests are good, let's make sure we're doing them right
Every one of those examples are fail at reasoning weaknesses in the Phoronix Test Suite and this is why:
Example 1 [slashdot.org]
If you look closely you'll notice that (a) the benchmarks were run on a Thinkpad T60 laptop, and (b) there were significant differences on some benchmarks like RAM bandwidth that should have little or no OS components.
If you look closely you'll notice that (a) the laptop the benchmarks are run on effects in no way, the validity of the benchmark as long as they are run consistently on the same laptop and (b) some benchmarks like RAM bandwidth have theoretical limits that are not effected at all by the Operating System but in actual practice, is entirely limited by the operating system you are using.
Example 2 [slashdot.org]
Some of the benchmarks were hardware testing, and those showed variation. They should not, unless the compiler changed the algorithms used to compile the code between distros.
All of the benchmarks were testing the hardware and should have showed variation. The compilers used on all the benchmarking applications are all the same. But the compilers used to build the Operating Systems are all completely different versions. Therefore the compiler on each distro will compile the same "algorithm" slightly different way. That is assuming there were no changes between implementation of packages between distros (of which there were actually hundreds of thousands of changes in the code itself, build options, and runtime configurations)
Example 3 [slashdot.org]
The test suite itself: The Phoronix test suite runs on PHP. That in itself is a problem-- the slowdowns measured could most likely be *because* of differences in the distributed PHP runtimes.
The Phoronix-Test-Suite Only uses its PHP back-end to aggregate benchmarking information. If a compilation with GCC took 5 seconds, its going to take 5 seconds no matter what version of the PHP runtime is used to to start the sub-shell that GCC runs in. It's take the same amount of time if you invoked GCC from bash, from perl, python, java, tcl, C, or C++. It doesn't matter because GCC is its own process just like every other benchmark.
What exactly are they testing? The whole distro?
Yes.
The kernel?
Yes again, since that is a part of the distro
If they're testing the released kernel, then they should run static binaries that *test* the above, comparing kernel differences.
No, what wouldn't prove anything as most of the binaries with ea
Re:SQLite inserts? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this because it doesn't do an fsync, or is it vecause it returns from the fsync once the journal is written?
If it's the latter, why is that cheating?
It's not about speed anymore. (Score:2, Insightful)
When cars first came out, they were very slow. Today my four door econ car can do 0 to 60 in about 9 seconds and can go about 3 times as fast as my states law allows on most roads.
Computers are there too. My Mac is a core 2 duo with an 8600M GT DDR3. I can dual boot it into OS X or XP. It sits at 0% resource usage 99% of the time.
It's not about how fast you are, it's about what you get done.
With my Mac OS X side I can get a lot more done than my Windows boot side. XP requires me to think more about C:\ http:/// [http] and internal workings of the computer. The OS X side lets me forget about that and just do my work. On XP I know my pictures are in c:\documents and settings\username\..... I have no idea on the Mac. They are in iPhoto for all I care.
If I want to put an image from a web page into a document or into an MP3, I just click on the image (for example, on Google images) and drag it onto the document or MP3 I want it added to. Do that in XP and I get the URL, not the image. So in XP I have to right click to save the image to My Documents, then figure out which of Microsofts Insert options to use to insert a saved JPG. Insert picture? Clip art? Smart Art? If I want to move it around do I need to insert it into a table so it will go where I want it?
I struggle to make XP do what I want. OS X, it just works.
Re:More of a summary (Score:4, Insightful)
a) Well that depends on what you mean by validity of the benchmark. If you only run tests on a single laptop, then any statistically significant results you find apply only to that single laptop - not even that laptop model, but that specific laptop. Who knows, maybe this specific laptop has some faulty memory or hard disk? Maybe the PSU is under-powering the system leading to slow down? The point is that without wider testing, you just don't know. To draw general results, you need randomised testing across different hardware platforms.
b) You should see very little variation between operating systems when hardware is the limiting factor. "RAM bandwidth" is certainly not "entirely limited by the operating system you are using".
I believe you were missing the OP's point: when hardware is the limiting factor in a test, then there should be very little variance in the test result. If you are seeing a lot of variance, then you need to quantify why, because it is unexpected.
You then need to go and find out why you're seeing the results you see. Scientists also constantly question their own test methodology - you need to verify that the results you observe are indeed caused by significant differences between the systems under test, or by the test setup itself. And you also need randomised tests, otherwise your results can't be generalised. Oh, and you don't need to isolate it to one variable - see Factorial experiments [wikipedia.org].
Disk intensive operations (Score:2, Insightful)
Ubuntu loses on any disk intensive operation, especially when it is required to perform synchronisation (with sqlite, for example).
That's not surprising at all, given how the default ext3 Ubuntu partition is set up.
Re:We musn't fight each other... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ubuntu if you want to (Score:2, Insightful)
No, I didn't. I claimed that OSX does not have any need to deal with the vast number of use cases that Linux or Windows does, and that they can tweak the way their software runs to be more efficient on the small selection of hardware they do support.
The fact that you can run it if you hack it is irrelevant. I could probably run the XBox OS on a mainframe with the right virtual machine, but that doesn't change the fact that the XBox OS was tailored to perform optimally on the XBox hardware, and it doesn't change the fact that OSX was tailored to perform optimally on Apple hardware.
Re:We musn't fight each other... (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with you, but don't forget that Apple does not have monopoly status in the OS space. I would hope that once they did, people would watch them just as closely as they do MS.