Unity 6.6: Still Regressing On Performance?

[sacridex]

The final release of Ubuntu 12.10 will include Compiz 0.9.8.4 and Unity 6.8.0, both of which already have a nice bag of final performance fixes coming with them. Generally, the performance of Ubuntu 12.10 is a LOT better than Ubuntu 12.04 in all areas.

I'm SO looking forward to this!

[johnc]

These days unity and compiz are like a horse and carriage. The last version of compiz has a regression when it comes to performance. There is a fix but it has not made it to the final repos yet.

The 6 month release cycle is just fine as long as people understand that stable means LTS and the others are just snapshots in the dev cycle that people could (and I mean could) use as a passable OS with various degrees of success. I like 10.04 and used it for a few years but on a separate HDD I always had one distro or another to check up on things and report bugs.

I'm running 12.04 which is an LTS and it's pretty much unusable in many ways. Just load up XBMC and you'll get a nice slideshow.

I've been hearing "fixes are coming in the next version" for six months now and I haven't seen much improvement yet TBH.

It's kind of embarrassing because Linux was supposed to be the lean and efficient version of an OS. Well I guess that was true under GNOME2 but I don't know what the hell is going on these days; it's a huge mess and I wouldn't advise any newcomers to dip their toes into this pool.

[d2kx]

The final release of Ubuntu 12.10 will include Compiz 0.9.8.4 and Unity 6.8.0, both of which already have a nice bag of final performance fixes coming with them. Generally, the performance of Ubuntu 12.10 is a LOT better than Ubuntu 12.04 in all areas.

[schmidtbag]

The problem is the most visible for Intel cards, because these cards aren't too powerfull. AMD and/or NV owners shouldn't see too much differences (especially when use binary drivers). Of course I don't say that Unity doesn't require improvements in performance, but currently this is the mainly problem for Intel owners.

Well, intel users don't game often so I don't think this has a heavy impact on them either.

To me, desktop effects are nice to have if you either have a crappy GPU that you don't intend to game with, or, if you have some ridiculously powerful GPU that so far nothing on Linux can take advantage of, so the performance drop from something like unity has no impact.

Everyone who has a mid range system and relies on the gpu for things like modeling or gaming are the ones who are most affected.

[who_me]

You forgot about compiz

These days unity and compiz are like a horse and carriage. The last version of compiz has a regression when it comes to performance. There is a fix but it has not made it to the final repos yet.

The 6 month release cycle is just fine as long as people understand that stable means LTS and the others are just snapshots in the dev cycle that people could (and I mean could) use as a passable OS with various degrees of success. I like 10.04 and used it for a few years but on a separate HDD I always had one distro or another to check up on things and report bugs.

[garegin]

Why Valve, why did you have to choose a company who makes such terrible decisions.

this is ignoring the root of the problem. the six month release cycle is a joke. it doesn't give time for the distro maker to do regression testing. the result is a broken operating system. canonical is no the the only one. Linux Mint 13 feels like a stroke victim and opensuse (even though it took them 10 months to make) is also suffering from graphical glitches and the package management is awfully broken.
i wouldn't hold my breath until wayland is stable and every major app is ported over, instead of using xwayland.

[Nepenthes]

The performance fix for compiz (unredirect fullscreen windows) has not been included yet with Unity 6.6.
It will be included after beta 2.

[0xCAFE]

Phoronix: Unity 6.6: Still Regressing On Performance?

With the recent release of the Unity 6.6 desktop for Ubuntu 12.10 Beta 2, benchmarks were done to see how the OpenGL gaming performance compares to that of Unity 6.4 from the earlier beta state of the Quantal Quetzal, plus the respective Compiz versions. At least for Intel Ivy Bridge graphics under some workloads, it looks like the Unity/Compiz updates are slowing down the GL performance even further.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=17932

Perhaps you have to turn off the Amazon advertisements to speed it up.

[BoTuLoX]

Why Valve, why did you have to choose a company who makes such terrible decisions.

[sacridex]

The answer is YES...

Well, the answer is YES.
My "tiny benchmark": Heroes of Newerth with gnome-fallback or Gnome Shell runs perfectly, with Unity it is pretty semifluid.
Same on Ubuntu 12.04 and Ubuntu 12.10 with Unity 6.6... If i do some browsing on another workspace on it is almost unbearable with Unity 6.6(Ubuntu 12.04 its "ok", but still laggy). With Gnome Shell and fallback mode its just fine...