Ubuntu 64-bit More Competitive Against Mac OS X

[Apopas]

I just went through the numbers, I may be off by won or two, but Ubuntu-64 one 15 tests, Mac 13, Ubuntu 32-bit won 1. And this includes 4 or 5 graphics tests, where there is an obvious regression in the Intel drivers.

In terms of "sweeps" (tests won by a factor two or more), I recorded 5 for mac and 4 for Ubuntu. Again, most sweeps for Mac are Graphics.

So, it looks to me as if, apart from the graphics regression, Ubuntu 64 bit performs better overall.

Yup and the most interesting for me is the fact that while OSX is being promoted as a multimedia station it was well behind at video/audio encoding!

[Kano]

Compile benchmarks to compare between distros or mac os are pretty much useless. 64 bit compile time is always faster than 32 bit. But when you create binary packages for a certain system you have to use the default compiler otherwise that will lead to problems. It does not help me when i know gcc 4.4 is faster than 4.3. I do not select a distro/compiler because of the used compiler, thats just a side effect. If you do not need to provide packages for others you can on the other hand install the latest gcc or intel compilers to tune your binaries for max speed.

Graphics related tests done with onboard vga, well that must be a joke too, because no gamer uses onboard intel for serious gaming.

Some other tests show the impact of the underlying filesystem, thats of course interesting, but also nothing to decide for or against a system.

Most OS X users want a nice looking gui, but those tests are usually not critical for that decision and nobody would use Linux for higher speed ratings. There must be other reasons to consider.

[mendieta]

Yup and the most interesting for me is the fact that while OSX is being promoted as a multimedia station it was well behind at video/audio encoding!

Yes! The other interesting thing to note is that both in Mac and Ubuntu the tests show a couple very clear bottlenecks here and there (places where they get trounced by a factor 3 to 5). These should be looked at! (sometimes these thing are just unavoidable, like if one filesystem is tuned for throughput and the other one for latency, well, in some tests one will look bad, and in some others the other will)

[slyn]

Yup and the most interesting for me is the fact that while OSX is being promoted as a multimedia station it was well behind at video/audio encoding!

You seem to be conveniently forgetting the fact that OS X is a (mostly) 32 bit OS. The changes when switching from 32 bit to 64 bit will make the most difference when doing things like video and audio encoding.

[Apopas]

You seem to be conveniently forgetting the fact that OS X is a (mostly) 32 bit OS. The changes when switching from 32 bit to 64 bit will make the most difference when doing things like video and audio encoding.

It is 32 bit with 64 bit capabilities, but who cares even if it was 16 bit? This is MacOSX. Do I have an option when I buy it? Nope! Can I change it? No again. They chose their OS to be like that and they promote it as it is. Do you think they are wrong? Change OS then (I'm talking in general). Linux on the other hand is 64 bit for over 5 years ago but I still have the option for 32 bit if I want. So I can test both flavours and see what suits me best. That's why we were bitching around to see benchmarks with the 64 bit Ubuntu as well. Who knows... when and if Applet decides to make a pure 64 bit MacOSX, Linux maybe is 128 bit by then... The mac users will argue then that their OS isn't 128 yet?

[L33F3R]

Yup but you aren't going afterall to buy a mac-mini or an Intel VGA for a game station. Even the 16 FPS of MacOSX make the game unplayable. The only option is ATI or NVIDIA VGA and there Linux goes very well.

Dont forget that you could get twice the hardware for the cost of 1 mac

[slyn]

It is 32 bit with 64 bit capabilities, but who cares even if it was 16 bit? This is MacOSX. Do I have an option when I buy it? Nope! Can I change it? No again. They chose their OS to be like that and they promote it as it is. Do you think they are wrong? Change OS then (I'm talking in general). Linux on the other hand is 64 bit for over 5 years ago but I still have the option for 32 bit if I want. So I can test both flavours and see what suits me best. That's why we were bitching around to see benchmarks with the 64 bit Ubuntu as well. Who knows... when and if Applet decides to make a pure 64 bit MacOSX, Linux maybe is 128 bit by then... The mac users will argue then that their OS isn't 128 yet?

I don't know if your joking or not, but in about a month OS 10.6 will be coming out that will be fully 64 bit.

[ronoverdrive]

Personally I would like to see a benchmark between Ubuntu 9.04 and Mac OS X 10.5.7 either on the new Mac Mini or a Mac Pro with an nVidia card inside. The Intel gpu is not only a crap chipset, but has a host of problems with the current regression issues with the current Intel driver in Ubuntu. I don't believe this was a fair comparasin in the graphics performance department all considering. Lets see benchmarks with a gpu that doesn't suck.

[deanjo]

I don't know if your joking or not, but in about a month OS 10.6 will be coming out that will be fully 64 bit.

Emm, 10.6 is not coming out at WWDC and it will be in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors as not all intel mac processors were 64-bit capable. As far as the 10.5.7 update goes, nothing in it should have any real effect on the current benches here using 10.5.6.

[Apopas]

I don't know if your joking or not, but in about a month OS 10.6 will be coming out that will be fully 64 bit.

Maybe... I always don't pay attention in what Apple and MS say (especially MS always lies)... I only know that the new Linux kernel will be better than the previous one, the ext4 filesystem will become the default one, the even newer btrfs will be next generation filesystem, the intel drivers are improving... etc... etc
Because of this. as I said in previous post Linux was, is and probably will be the fastest OS.
Personally, I'd love to see a good comparison between Snow Leopard and Fedora 11 or Ubuntu 9.10 (well the best would be MacOSX vs Gentoo or Arch Linux which are the fastests Linuxes but that's very difficult).