Ubuntu NVIDIA Graphics Driver: Windows Competitive, But Only With KDE 306
An anonymous reader writes "The NVIDIA Linux driver across multiple GeForce graphics cards can compete with Microsoft Windows 7 on Ubuntu, but only when using the KDE desktop and not the default Unity/Compiz. It turns out based upon recent desktop environment benchmarking, Ubuntu's Unity desktop is now noticeably slower than GNOME/KDE/Xfce/LXDE with multiple GPUs/drivers. Sam Spilsbury of Canonical/Compiz acknowledges the problem but it may take longer than one Ubuntu cycle to correct."
Re:Who likes Unity ? I do as of 12.04 (Score:5, Informative)
I am on Slashdot and I do not hate Unity as of 12.04.
I could not stand the Unity that came with 11.10 - I run a lot of MATLAB, and there was no functional way to switch between multiple figures. People would moan and complain about Unity taking a few more clicks or whatever; for me it was actually impossible for me to switch between windows as needed on 11.10, try as I might. I was fearing a forced switch to Unity, since Ubuntu wouldn't be an option for me anymore.
Unity on 12.04 is a completely different story. While I still don't love its window-switching behavior, the super-W feature of displaying all windows is wonderful.
Unity might not be as polished as KDE 3.5 yet, but 12.04 was so much better than 11.10 that I'm willing to see where Canonical's headed.
Re:Ubuntu Unity (Score:5, Informative)
I agree about Unity. It sucks rocks, and I downgraded to an earlier version of Ubuntu for a while.
HOWEVER, you may want to give Linux Mint 13 with the Cinnamon desktop. They basically take Gnome and add their own desktop to it. As a bonus, it's built off of Ubuntu and you can use all the Ubuntu repositories with it.
So you get the bug fixes associated with the latest Gnome, the repositories of Ubuntu, the solidness of Linux, and the clean interface of Cinnamon.
Been using it about a month and quite happy so far.
Re:Remember that thread from the other day... (Score:1, Informative)
I remember when I studied physics (years and years ago), that the human eye can only perceive about 60 cycles per second, so anything "flickering" or "rendering" faster than 60 times per second appears to be continuous. 120 times per second is overkill, twice over. 420 times per second is overkill 4 times over. This is like a pissing contest between audiophiles where one's speakers can emit frequencies at 220,000 Hertz, while anothers can reach frequencies of 350,000 Hertz. It doesn't matter that you can' hear anything over 22050 Hertz, (Nyquist sampling in the worst case gets sliced in half, so 44100 cycles per second sampling is the upper practical limit). And here we are comparing un-seeable graphics. Oh, and I can pee 10 inches further than you!
Re:Remember that thread from the other day... (Score:4, Informative)
> I remember when I studied physics (years and years ago), that the human eye can only perceive about 60 cycles per second.
Wouldn't that be biology?
The point stands though. 60fps is as fast as you need to go for smooth animation. However, if a scene can only be rendered at 60 fps, adding more complexity, bad guysm, explosions, etc could push the render time over the VSYNC delay period. That's a bad thing, as you drop not to 59fps, but to 30fps, which is very noticeable.
Crazy FPS speeds aren't always an e-penis waving contest, it simply means you have plenty of GPU horsepower left in reserve for more complexity or more bad guys on screen without dropping below that VSYNC interval.
Re:Desktop linux, not linux (Score:2, Informative)
Summary: "The common complaint about Linux really isn't a valid complaint if you argue using pedanticism and moving goal posts!"
I've never actually seen a Linux Apologist before.
Re:Ubuntu Unity (Score:4, Informative)
Alternatively, if you find that Ubuntu repos are more bullshit than they're helpful, go for LMDE - vanilla Debian with Cinnamon on top out of the box.
Re:Remember that thread from the other day... (Score:4, Informative)
Disclaimer: I love Debian and I believe it is the best OS money can't buy (with RHEL being the best distro money can buy but that is another topic)... for servers it is fantastic, for desktops it is excellent for building exactly what you want with absolutely no bloat. The support you can find online is consistently the best available.
*However* I cannot agree that replacing a DE is equivalent to installing Debian with your DE of choice. I find a Debian install is 95% finished when the installer completes, but that 5% can feel completely insurmountable to a Linux newcomer. These issues have included:
-Bootloader problems. Nightmare to figure out if you have never manually dealt with a bootloader. A 2 minute fix if you have. Never seem to have this issue with Ubuntu.
-Network (wired and wireless) problems, primarily caused by the insistence of non-free not being installed as part of the installer... having to USB over network drivers is a huge turnoff and leads to people ignoring this. Then when the closest equivalent "free" driver is used, you end up with things like a wireless that doesn't scan, or a wired NIC that randomly drops to 600 kilobit speed or cuts out entirely... Ubuntu just makes it happen.
-Graphics issues. If I really wanted to run with what only free or outdated drivers can provide, I would install it in a VM under my Windows 7 partition. Having to use scripts some random guy made to properly suppress the dated repo packages and get the latest and greatest NVidia drivers is not ideal. Ubuntu generally keeps graphics drivers up to date in the packages.
-Codec issues... Ubuntu IIRC it was just some checkboxes for "Good, Bad & Ugly", in Debian I had to resort to adding a 3rd party repository debian-multimedia (now deb-multimedia) just to get multithreaded Mplayer...
-Printer installation. This is a "too much choice" problem, you can go with HP's stuff or plain ol' cups, both will work but there's no clear choice presented. I don't remember what Ubuntu's was but it was one of those "ah my printer's already here" moments.
-Purposely making things confusing. One word: iceweasel.
I do love Debian but installing should be left for power users... after that 5% extra polishing anyone can use it, but that really is the difference between Debian and Ubuntu.