Apple M4 Mac Mini With macOS vs. Intel / AMD With Ubuntu Linux Performance

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  • smitty3268
    Senior Member
    • Oct 2008
    • 6966

    #41
    Originally posted by Espionage724 View Post
    ...
    sophisticles asked for reasons why someone would install linux over osx, and they were provided. It's nice that you don't care about those things, but some people do.

    Anyway, it's good for everyone to be able to run whatever OS they like. I'm not sure why some people have the constant need to cheer for or against an OS.

    Comment

    • gnattu
      Phoronix Member
      • Jul 2023
      • 107

      #42
      Originally posted by coder View Post
      There's a fundamental difference you're glossing over. In the modern Windows ecosystem, most programs ship with all of their dependencies bundled, with a few exceptions that they get out of system32 or whatever it's called nowadays.

      In Linux, the default is that everything is shared between all of the packages, so force-upgrading one thing can break dependency chains for other things. That's why packaging is so crucial for Linux.

      One benefit of the Linux approach is that when a security vulnerability is discovered in one library, you just update the shared instance on your system and it fixes every package that uses it. In Windows, you have to hope & pray that each user of a vulnerable library releases an update, and it's mostly on you to seek out and install those updates.

      Linux puts a foot back into this world, with things like Snap.
      There is so silver bullet though, this shared library approach also makes it hard to deploy software with complex dependencies because each and every distro and different versions of those distros disagrees on everything and it is almost impossible for software distributors to compile that much version, and the distro maintained packages are usually a few versions behind. That's why we need something like docker for server and flatpack for desktop, which intends to solve the "hard to distribute" problem.

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      • Dukenukemx
        Senior Member
        • Nov 2010
        • 1396

        #43
        I don't know why anyone would praise the M4 when it loses to everything but power efficiency and one benchmark. Even then, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 did equally as well as the M4 in power efficiency and in some cases even better. What we really need to see is the M4 Pro against CachyOS. Ubuntu is nice and all but CachyOS would make this far more interesting. Especially when you consider that MacOS is already highly optimized for the M4, so you might as well get a highly optimized OS for x86 like CachyOS for benchmarks.

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        • gnattu
          Phoronix Member
          • Jul 2023
          • 107

          #44
          Originally posted by Dukenukemx View Post
          I don't know why anyone would praise the M4 when it loses to everything but power efficiency and one benchmark. Even then, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 did equally as well as the M4 in power efficiency and in some cases even better. What we really need to see is the M4 Pro against CachyOS. Ubuntu is nice and all but CachyOS would make this far more interesting. Especially when you consider that MacOS is already highly optimized for the M4, so you might as well get a highly optimized OS for x86 like CachyOS for benchmarks.
          Because it is not losing to everything and no, HX370 does not do equally as well against M4. The benchmarks that the HX370 has close efficiency or higher efficiency, the M4 is running with Rosetta x86 emulation layer. Runs on par with latest gen competing processor in the same class with an emulation layer is a really, really good result. You can hate Apple, but you cannot deny their CPU is good.

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          • openminded
            Senior Member
            • Feb 2022
            • 227

            #45
            So, does this generation of crapple silicon support eGPUs via so much promoted Thunderbolt? Or is it still useless?
            I still remember the way I was surprised when I found out that Intel Macs can do eGPU no problem but seemingly cool af ARM shite from Apple has no support for that.
            Last edited by openminded; 14 November 2024, 03:54 AM.

            Comment

            • mos87
              Senior Member
              • Sep 2016
              • 466

              #46
              Pretty pointless comparisons outside of theoretical interest IMO. From the consumer POV especially. When you need a workstation you're looking to do a particular job on it and couldn't care less about the other stuff. OTOH if one's in the market for a general purpose desktop, there are other things that come into play - mostly preference (mac people), price, availability, software support etc.
              And hardly anybody is interested in power efficiency of a desktop. Which is anyway negligible (even if the raw % looks sumptuous), not like Apple doesn't draw power at all.

              Heck, you can't even compare the prices bc it's a CPU (x86) vs the whole system (Apple). Also extensibility is different, but I already mentioned that.
              Some other measurement technique has to be devised to make such comparisons really interesting.

              There's an old adage that ARM are power efficient when you don't ask it to do anything.
              Also there's an arcticle floating about that claims that architectural differences between platforms are irrelevant today, instead it's what it optimized to do. Software has to play major role too here I guess.

              Comment

              • mdedetrich
                Senior Member
                • Nov 2019
                • 2549

                #47
                This machine is a clear winner and it has insane performance for its form factor, so much so that once Linux support fully matures it can even be used for streaming boxes and mini gaming consoles with it being portable enough that you can carry it around with you.

                It also has an external ssd

                Comment

                • mdedetrich
                  Senior Member
                  • Nov 2019
                  • 2549

                  #48
                  Originally posted by coder View Post

                  One benefit of the Linux approach is that when a security vulnerability is discovered in one library, you just update the shared instance on your system and it fixes every package that uses it. In Windows, you have to hope & pray that each user of a vulnerable library releases an update, and it's mostly on you to seek out and install those updates.
                  This is half true, while you are correct that most Windows applications bundle all of there dependencies, Windows library loading mechanism for .dll files means you can override a dependency for a specific application just by placing the newer dll in the same folder as the executable and by default the c shared library loader will load that dll instead.

                  This is done quite a lot with old games, where as a solution to Windows replacing hardware with software rendering for old versions of Direct3D/DirectDraw you can you download newer implementations (which implement these old API's with Vulkan/newer DirectX) as dll files in the games executable folder to get back hardware rendering.

                  Comment

                  • spykes
                    Senior Member
                    • Dec 2008
                    • 241

                    #49
                    Originally posted by botipua22 View Post
                    Hot damn does Apple make some excellent chips and hardware. They do have monopoly over TSMC's best nodes, but beyond that they still seem to make faster and more efficient chips than their ARM and x86 competitors. Now only if their stuff could run proper Linux instead of macOS and iOS!
                    The better efficiency is literally what they get from having access to the best TSMC's fab node. Those charts show very well that on a comparable fab node X86 is far from dead.

                    Comment

                    • frederik
                      Junior Member
                      • Nov 2024
                      • 1

                      #50
                      It is impressive and disappointing how far away Intel/AMD are from Apple. Even if much of its efficiency comes form TMSC, the single core speed is because of its architecture. How can the latest x86 CPUs just step up in single digits while Apple is so much faster? As I dislike apples politics they are still no option for me.

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