Linux OpenGL: Ubuntu 13.04/13.10 vs. Fedora 19/20

[lsatenstein]

Fedora 20 is an alpha version and filled with extra debug code

In the areas where code is new, compared to Fedora 19 or Fedora 18, there is extra code to test for correctness of execution*. The path lengths in Fedora are 30% longer than when Fedora20 will be release ready.

Since the Alpha version looks so good, we can be reasonably certain that F20 will do equally well or better.

[Caledar]

Will there be any improvement in performance on my older 2nd gen cpu?

[Alejandro Nova]

Just shows that you are in total denial and a hater we always thought you are.

I don't see any performance difference between Fedora and Ubuntu with same kernel versions...

There's something real about Ubuntu loss, and that is: Fedora 19 was released on July 2th, with a Mesa 9.2 dev snapshot. If Fedora had followed the Ubuntu release policies, Fedora 19's performance would have been as crappy as Ubuntu's.

Ubuntu "let's freeze everything on release date, even if it's unsupported" policy is utter crap.

[ворот93]

There's something real about Ubuntu loss, and that is: Fedora 19 was released on July 2th, with a Mesa 9.2 dev snapshot. If Fedora had followed the Ubuntu release policies, Fedora 19's performance would have been as crappy as Ubuntu's.

Ubuntu "let's freeze everything on release date, even if it's unsupported" policy is utter crap.

Except Ubuntu has a predictable release schedule unlike Fedora's delays delays dealys....

[finalzone]

Except Ubuntu has a predictable release schedule unlike Fedora's delays delays dealys....

With a risk of releasing with a last minute major bug which happened before.

[talvik]

There's something real about Ubuntu loss, and that is: Fedora 19 was released on July 2th, with a Mesa 9.2 dev snapshot. If Fedora had followed the Ubuntu release policies, Fedora 19's performance would have been as crappy as Ubuntu's.

And that's why Fedora isn't used in anywhere but OSS devs workstations. Fedora makes Debian Unstable and OpenSuse Factory look like enterprise mission critical rock solid software.

BTW Ubuntu sometimes packages snapshots and it gives nothing but headaches, not to mention shipping their own in-house alpha quality crap.

[Luke]

Alphas and de facto alphas are for hackers, not end users

And that's why Fedora isn't used in anywhere but OSS devs workstations. Fedora makes Debian Unstable and OpenSuse Factory look like enterprise mission critical rock solid software.

BTW Ubuntu sometimes packages snapshots and it gives nothing but headaches, not to mention shipping their own in-house alpha quality crap.

I would not want everyone to stop shipping alphas! Mint has that habit, so if you want to play with Cinnamon while it is under development you use the Ubuntu PPA for it. That's one of the reasons I "roll my own" from Ubuntu's base, installing the Cinnamon, KDE, and IceWM desktops, plus GNOME for testing when it can be installed. Some GNOME alphas are incompatable with Cinnamon, they get to wait.

As for OpenGL performance, I have used the xorg-edgers PPA since the days when it was needed to run the "evergreen" ATI cards, and the PPA kernels since the days of of LInux 3.5 showing big gains in video performance on AMD. Hell, the VDPAU and power management code drops were enough to get me to run the "drm-next" kernels from that PPA when each of those came out, with good results. Running true alphas with PPA's, I probably rarely see Ubuntu's default performance, it has little effect on me.

You don't expect alphas to always work with the newst update being tested, which is why you ALWAYS need to have a known good snapshot (ANY good snapshot) on another partition. I just keep a "root" and "root2" logical volume in LVM over cryptsetup, if I get a nasty surprise booting root2 gets things running until I find the bug. Sometimes finding a bad update requires copying root2 to root, then updating one package at a time until the bug returns, then rolling that back and filing the bug report.

If alphas (perhaps Fedora can be seen as RHEL alpha version?) were not tested by people like me, guess who would get to find all the bugs? What does suck is when alphas are treated as end user products. Maybe what Ubuntu needs to do is switch the 6 month releases to a rolling release following Debian Unstable continuously, then switch the development effort the 6 month snapshot consume to backporting newer versions of top level applications to the current LTS. Same as payware users: A paid movie maker using a paid video editor wants the new version of the video editor without having to install a new version of Windoze. Doing that in Ubuntu means PPAs or compiling your own. The price Windows pays for the easy updates is that each program is installed to its own folder full of libraries, almost like portable versions of Linux software but not quite. The result is software that is not truly portable-but which still balloon a Windows install to 30GB plus in many cases. Yes, Ubuntu is considering adding a new package installer for that model, if they use it for all top-level apps a lot of people using tiny SSD's as system drives are in for trouble.

[finalzone]

And that's why Fedora isn't used in anywhere but OSS devs workstations. Fedora makes Debian Unstable and OpenSuse Factory look like enterprise mission critical rock solid software.

That argument is limited due to spins releases