Vote On A Distribution For Linux Benchmarking

[timosa]

Arch

It's really refreshing to see, that Arch Linux got so many votes. I have used/tested most of the popular Linux distros and all of them have their own hiccups. My experience is, that it's easiest to fix technical issues, when you are using Debian or Arch. Ubuntu was fairly good in the beginning too, but their quality control got poor gradually.

I have run Arch on two desktops, one laptop and one server for three years now, and have to say, that it's a stable distribution. Its only "unstable" part are the updates, that may sometimes (even if rarely) result problems, that require some experience to get over.

[fossy]

Come on guys,

Michael isnt interested in the most popular distro.

He wants a distro or distro's that can help him benchmarking the latest stuff quickly and easily that by saying "I used this version, from this repo with these patches" etc.

So give him some options!

He wants a distro(s) that allows him to use representative non-debug mesa/xorg stuff, simple ways of installing kernels and the like. He has already mentioned how he does this in 'buntu. So lets help him out - what's the fastest, most reliable and reproducible way to do this in the other current top poll distro's - fedora, arch etc.

[pmorph]

Great idea, except anything else is also different. KDE, Gnome, XFCE or E17? While all of them will be using Wayland it will still make a difference.

Yeah, but KDE, Gnome etc. are going to run about the same on any distro A and B, if the underlying building blocks are about the same (and distro itself didn't mess up anything). Of what use are accurate results produced for one specific distro, when most of the people will be running something else anyway? Rather try and make it so that results can be generalized as much as possible. It won't be perfect anyway, whatever you decide to do.

[brosis]

And you are not getting the *secret* point, which is what distro will bring Michael the most pageviews, right?

I do, I do:
Another post "Ubuntu sucks versus windows" due to old stack, due to unoptimized settings
vs
"Linux is close to windows" using latest stack, with developers directly discussing with Michael (because Fedora is development distribution)

Hence I suggested Fedora. Most pageviews, right?

Go tell the FSF and Digia that.

The absolutely remote possibility that an open source company might close your code somewhere down the road beats the possibility that any bastard who wants it can steal it and make it proprietary right now without having any obligations to you?

Digia (Qt) is protected from one-side close down by KDE Qt legal agreement.
Ubuntu is not. Canonical CLA gives all rights to Canonical without any protection agreement. I DO see a problem with that.
FSF never exploit its rights and was always pro-GPL organisation, hence they never need any such agreement - its like asking God to sign the agreement that he is God.

[LinuxGamer]

Go tell the FSF and Digia that.

The absolutely remote possibility that an open source company might close your code somewhere down the road beats the possibility that any bastard who wants it can steal it and make it proprietary right now without having any obligations to you?

"With the contributor agreement chosen by Canonical, the Harmony CLA, the contributor gives Canonical a licence to use their contributions. The contributor continues to own the copyright in the contribution, with full rights to re-use, re-distribute, and continue modifying the contributed code, allowing them to also share that contribution with other projects." (http://www.canonical.com/contributors)

I see no problem with that.

Sir, if you think every single piece of code should be published before it's in a decent state, when it's still experimental, and that every individual and company in free software works like that, then you're delusional. The Skunkworks process is something which has always happened inside Canonical. They were not closing some things down with the announcement, they were opening up, which was a very nice step forward to engagement with the community. Look at Ubuntu Touch and the core apps and you'll see it.

--------------------

Well, Mir x Wayland x Xorg will keep on being an interesting subject to benchmark, so Ubuntu x Xubuntu (or Kubuntu) should cover it and make the benchmarks more relevant for most people including those without Phoronix forums accounts.

they're engagement with only parts of the Ubuntu community and shitting all over the Linux Community.... Just waiting for That BSD Ubuntu to be released

[F.Ultra]

Well, it's not so much hatred as troll-on-troll battles from both sides.

Well to be honest there seams to be one post from a troll from the Ubuntu camp (BO$$) while there are hundreds from the other camp so I wouldn't really categorize it as a troll-on-troll battle.

The amount of hatred in these forums against Ubuntu is amazing, and also the reason that people are upset (or atleast claims that it's their reason) is also amazing. Does these people pretend that there is no software difference at all between the other various distributions (deb, rpm, gentoo etc) or that in the history of Linux no distribution was first to use a replacement like Xorg instead of Xfree86, gtk+ vs Qt (back in the days), KDE vs Gnome, various replacements for init, ALSO vs OSS (and let's throw in Pulse there aswell). And now we will soon start seeing distributions using Wayland instead of Xorg.

But somehow Ubuntu is at fault for using Unity, Upstart and soon Mir? Or for trying to make a dent into the mobile market?

[CrvenaZvezda]

Well to be honest there seams to be one post from a troll from the Ubuntu camp (BO$$) while there are hundreds from the other camp so I wouldn't really categorize it as a troll-on-troll battle.

The amount of hatred in these forums against Ubuntu is amazing, and also the reason that people are upset (or atleast claims that it's their reason) is also amazing. Does these people pretend that there is no software difference at all between the other various distributions (deb, rpm, gentoo etc) or that in the history of Linux no distribution was first to use a replacement like Xorg instead of Xfree86, gtk+ vs Qt (back in the days), KDE vs Gnome, various replacements for init, ALSO vs OSS (and let's throw in Pulse there aswell). And now we will soon start seeing distributions using Wayland instead of Xorg.

But somehow Ubuntu is at fault for using Unity, Upstart and soon Mir? Or for trying to make a dent into the mobile market?

All distros tries to be the best distro. All distros tries to make improvements that everybody will benefit from. Canonical show everybody the middel finger, tell other projects they are shit while benefitting from everybody else doing the hard work for them. I'm surprised people are surprised that Canonical and Ubuntu is given a cold shoulder.

[Maudit]

Canonical/Ubuntu != GNU/Linux

I think Canonical/Ubuntu should not even be listed in the survey because, now, Canonical/Ubuntu is a deviation from the common standard of GNU/LINUX distros. And it always will be more and more, in the future.
Ubuntu is not representative of the GNU/Linux ecosystem. Any other distro GNU/Linux is fine, but not Canonical/Ubuntu.

I voted for OpenSUSE because for technical reasons it seems that with the best infrastructure, but quietly I would vote for Fedora or any other that is not Canonical/Ubuntu.

[Belial]

All distros tries to be the best distro. All distros tries to make improvements that everybody will benefit from. Canonical show everybody the middel finger, tell other projects they are shit while benefitting from everybody else doing the hard work for them. I'm surprised people are surprised that Canonical and Ubuntu is given a cold shoulder.

How come no one felt this way about gtk and gnome when they were first released?

[GreatEmerald]

Well to be honest there seams to be one post from a troll from the Ubuntu camp (BO$$) while there are hundreds from the other camp so I wouldn't really categorize it as a troll-on-troll battle.

The amount of hatred in these forums against Ubuntu is amazing, and also the reason that people are upset (or atleast claims that it's their reason) is also amazing. Does these people pretend that there is no software difference at all between the other various distributions (deb, rpm, gentoo etc) or that in the history of Linux no distribution was first to use a replacement like Xorg instead of Xfree86, gtk+ vs Qt (back in the days), KDE vs Gnome, various replacements for init, ALSO vs OSS (and let's throw in Pulse there aswell). And now we will soon start seeing distributions using Wayland instead of Xorg.

But somehow Ubuntu is at fault for using Unity, Upstart and soon Mir? Or for trying to make a dent into the mobile market?

You're not very good at identifying trolls, then. On the pro-Ubuntu side we have verde and Pawlerson. On the anti-Ubuntu side we have LinuxGamer and jrch2k8. Just that the anti-Ubuntu side posts much, much more often.

So ignoring them, of course there are still people who are upset about it. The whole situation with Ubuntu is different than what you mention. Ubuntu has several core pieces of software that is different from the rest of the distributions, as well as the other flops that Canonical has had. X.org and XFree86 are the same X server. GTK and Qt were not used by a single distribution, and at the very start GTK was created as a free alternative to Qt. Same with KDE and GNOME. Inits do not affect the system that much, but Upstart does make Ubuntu look more exclusive. ALSA is a next-generation replacement for OSS, PulseAudio is a framework on top of ALSA (and also a compatibility layer), that's not comparable to the Wayland/Mir split. And Wayland is a next-generation replacement for X.

1. Popularity
2. Unique features that give it an advantage
3. Is it influential


openSUSE
It's popular, being #6 on the Distrowatch list..but it doesn't really have anything for 2, and it is an utter failure on 3.

You know, it's an interesting thing that there are few openSUSE derivatives. But when you think about it, it makes sense. Ubuntu was created as a derivative of Debian, because they didn't like the way Debian development process worked. Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Mint etc. were created because Ubuntu doesn't provide as good experience on the respective desktop environments. But with openSUSE, everyone can create their own mini-distributions in the form of SUSEStudio images. I personally maintain an Xfce spin of it, for instance. Also, due to OBS and its integration into SUSEStudio, it's trivial to create modifications without requiring an actual fork. That's how the new lean KDE project is being developed: instead of creating an outright derivative, they are just using the OBS. That doesn't fracture the codebase, allows for easy cooperation and integration with the upstream distribution, and is much easier to maintain.