Preview: Ubuntu's Performance Over The Past Two Years

[pandev92]

Well if you think that workers just do what the bosses tell them to do then you have a very low opinion on workers by assuming that they don't have a conscience and are just hired guns.

if you think the opposite, you've never worked

[mrugiero]

Nobody cares that X.org is bloated but that it couldn't do some things that are necessary for this century when it comes to desktops. It also accumulated a lot of cruft requiring people to write code that never gets used just to be compatible with the X standard.

And about that user-base doesn't identify a better product isn't actually always true. If trillions of users have windows installed and only you use Gentoo it might not be that you are a misunderstood genius. The support windows will have will simply destroy anything you might be able to do with gentoo simply because windows is so much bigger and popular and tons of applications get written for it. A lot of times popularity really is linked to quality, it's just that losers don't want to admit that. They may select a few issues where their system might be superior and claim definitive superiority.

Another example of talking without knowing. Everything you need in a desktop, X.org can do it. Everything you need in a phone, X.org can do it. What it can not do is be efficient while doing so. And not only that, it makes it harder than it should be. And that's because of the bloat. Name what X.org can't do, if you know better.

Also, your example about Windows is flawed. It's still not a better product, and even if it is, it wasn't at day zero. It became better in terms of support *because* of the big user base. And its quality might still be shitty, only the software that runs on it becomes better. So, no, the better system is still the better system in base of its merits. The ecosystem is better, not the OS.

So if it's identical then why are you calling it superior?

Luckily humanity agrees with me and not with you and frign: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentoo_Linux#Popularity

Nobody in this thread ever said Gentoo was popular. You switch topic like you have ADHD.

Windows or Ubuntu might be superior in the marketshare, but they are inferior to Gentoo technologically.

I disagree. User friendliness is a technological feature, and Ubuntu and Windows win on that camp. Since it's not superior in all technological areas (but some, specifically performance and documentation wise), I think it's wrong to state that it's plainly superior technologically.

I assume you don't actually study and verify for security issues, bugs or backdoors all the code that runs on your system now do you?

So you basically trust your system and trust the guys that give you the code that you use since there isn't enough time in this lifetime to check it all. In theory you could check it but it isn't plausible.

With Microsoft also you only get to trust them and hope they behave. Again trust.

So basically Microsoft tells you to trust them while free software says you can check but it isn't plausible to do so. So it only gives you the illusion of freedom. How exactly do you know that everything that you do right now on your PC isn't sent to Linux Torvalds who sends it to NSA? Did you actually check all the kernel code?

If you can't control the program, the program and thus the developer controls you. It's that easy. It applies to both Windows and any Linux distro.

Actually, lots of back doors can be found in an almost automatic way. Just run a static analyzer, check for out of bounds writes, that's the most common kind of backdoor IIRC. Of course, you need the source code. Which Linux gives you, but Windows doesn't.
They will not be all of them, but it's an extra guarantee you don't have with closed source programs.

[frign]

Read & learn

In fact I do trust both since I use both Windows and Ubuntu. That is what I am saying. You have to trust both since you can't actually test if they don't do bad things. You say that you trust open source guys because if something evil would happen it would get reported. Well Microsoft is a bunch of guys after all. A corporation is made of people. People who would notice if something evil is happening and could report it (even anonymously so nobody can fire them and others can check if what they say is true by a little disassembly here a little port listening there etc.). So it's basically the same thing. Where things are a little different is that you can't create a custom windows kernel. That is true. But then again most people don't do that with Linux kernel either.

Think about it this way: in any organization, if it gets big enough and does evil things there will be whistleblowers (there will always be people who want to 'stick it to the man'). You like to think that because open source is, well open, then bad things get reported easily while ignoring that the same things also happen in closed evil organizations. Now I am not saying that we should put blind trust in Microsoft or any other company, but to think that the open source world is really much more open might not exactly be true. With how things go today it's pretty hard to create a soviet style gulag without anyone knowing. Either proprietary or free.

I am not trying to make Linux seem bad, just saying that you have to trust people in both cases. Neither one guarantees anything actually.

Read pandev92's replies and learn. There is no need for me to write it again, as he expressed it perfectly.

[frign]

User friendliness

Nobody in this thread ever said Gentoo was popular. You switch topic like you have ADHD.

I'm glad not to be the only one in this thread pointing this out .

I disagree. User friendliness is a technological feature, and Ubuntu and Windows win on that camp. Since it's not superior in all technological areas (but some, specifically performance and documentation wise), I think it's wrong to state that it's plainly superior technologically.

Okay, depends on what you include into the technological area.
Thinking about it, I completely agree with you: When a system manages to attract new & inexperienced users, it's due to the fact that it has been designed for easy use in the first place, which is a technological feature.

Gentoo is not very strong in this matter, because you can't just put the CD in and start off. Nevertheless I found Gentoo to be very user-friendly once you start understanding it.
The package manager has never failed on me (unlike Aptitude, which is quite fragile) and there is an overall low level of frustration when you know what you're doing.
From the perspective of a new user, those benefits of course are not yet palpable and irrelevant.

[frign]

Security

Tear free desktop from what I've heard. They never fixed it, or never got it right don't know. Seems that it's just not possible.

That's not quite right. They never fixed it, because they were concerned to break old platforms.
That's also why Wayland aims for "each frame being perfect": They leave compositing to the Wayland-client, as many drawing operations today are not even handed to the X-server but done directly in separate drawing-contexts.
This is what leads to an inconsistent experience.

I take it as a whole. I care about it as a whole. Windows isn't just the OS nowadays. It's everything around it also. And even taken separately, just the OS, it's still solid. Doesn't matter that in '85 it wasn't that great. It didn't get so good because of the users, but because of Microsoft listening to what users want.

Like when they released the BS they call Windows 8?

Well in windows you can simply let the computer run without having anything installed so it's not polluted and just use a sniffer on the local switch and see if there is any trafic that gets to Microsoft without it being related to windows update. I'm pretty sure you can find out if packets get sent home without having access to the code itself.

Newer Windows-versions require 1-2GB of RAM (with "nothing" installed). A fresh Gentoo installation with all features starts at 100MB and can go even lower.
When you install Windows, it's far from being clean. There's already a lot of stuff installed. It gets even worse when you buy a computer with an OEM-version, which usually itself is packed with vendor-specific crap.

And then you can assume that NSA is on the line.

I don't assume. We all _know_ they are already spying on gullible users like you.
You're talking about inconvenience using a free operating system but suggest private surveillance of outgoing & incoming Internet traffic, which is a much bigger inconvenience.
Also, you can't be sure that it's only Microsoft directly spying on you. Your authorities know about them, too, and they will use them increasingly for "your security" and to "fight terrorism". And now tell me how you could identify those authorities by their IP-addresses. I don't know any.

The only way to be safe is to use a free operating system.

[frign]

Learn to understand it!

Well the result is that because of X the Linux desktop isn't on par with the windows desktop. In 2013. And that is baaaad.

To be honest, I agree with you: We would be somewhere else if X had been developed differently. Now the new age of Wayland will change things fundamentally; I'm sure there is lots of unused potential especially in the Desktop-area.

I'm not gonna defend windows 8 since I use windows 7 and never have used windows 8. If windows 8 isn't liked by the users it won't be used. Just like it is now. Which is why Microsoft will adapt if they don't want to die. They will revert to the classical interface or add options to never have to see the metro UI if that is what people want. No one will say they don't make stupid decisions from time to time thinking they're making bold innovative decisions, but they shape up. Then again I can see some stupid decisions made in the Linux world also. Not much difference either here nor there.

You might notice that Microsoft is keen on continuing the new interface-policies. If you don't want to end up on a deprecated system (Windows 7 will be deprecated some day), you will be forced to use the new interface.
There is no chance Microsoft will go back to the "normal" way.
Of course the Linux world is not safe from false decisions, but at least we have choice: If you don't like the Unity-interface, you can switch to Xfce, KDE, DWM or any other available DM.

Yes because using Linux makes it impossible for NSA to spy on you. Really?

There will always be dumb people posting personal information on Facebook and exposing their browsing-history.
As I told you: A free operating system, like GNU/Linux, is a tool: Use it right, and you can benefit from it. Using it only does not guarantee safety from NSA-espionage.
You must employ additional solutions like a VPN and disk-encryption to be almost completely safe, but I don't think you even know what I'm talking about.

That is bullshit. A newly installed Windows 7 takes about 700 MB and Windows 8 goes a lot lower than that from what I've heard (it's interesting to note that in terms of memory use Vista > 7 > 8 which doesn't usually happen in the software world). Even if it would take 1 GB of RAM these days it isn't so much anyway for the vast majority of people and that memory isn't filled with random stuff, it's filled with running services that most probably you use. If you don't use them you can shut them down and see your memory use go down. Windows isn't the pig that most people make it to be. Sure you can go with your Gentoo to 50 MB of RAM used, but will you have feature parity with Windows? I don't think so.

Bullshit? I don't think so.
Again: Windows is made to support a wide variety of hardware and software. It will never be on par with Gentoo, which is a specialised solution.
Factually, they optimised Windows 8 memory-wise and improved over the years.
But it still doesn't run on older machines. Arguing with improved hardware doesn't work here, because I personally want to use the increased system resources (I paid for) for something more beneficial than colourful tiles and 3D-Desktop-effects.
This especially makes sense when you want to use your computer for _professional_ work.

[frign]

Stop trolling

Again, when windows xp was released everybody said it was shit and it would be the end of microsoft. Now microsoft keeps trying to kill it and it won't die. Funny thing. See, with windows 8.1 they're already reverting on those decisions and we can expect they will keep changing stuff to satisfy their customers. They're not the psychopaths you are trying to make them to be, only interested in having their way while ignoring the world....

Gee, VPN and disk-encryption? Couldn't you do those in windows too?

There are a lot of people doing high performance programming tasks on Windows. Think game programmers for example, id Software uses Windows 7 after switching from xp a while ago (they've used xp until 2011 or 2012 I think). Never heard of them complaining and jumping on Gentoo. The same with a ton of other developers. Windows, even if it uses 1 GB of Ram is no longer the bottleneck. Think about it this way, you may gain 1% of performance and lose 90% of user friendliness and your usual tools. Why would anyone make that compromise. Isn't it easier to just buy one more GB of RAM and be done with it? This is what I'm complaining about Gentoo. It really doesn't have a purpose except showing off your perfectly personalized and locally optimized computer.

For most people performance is not a problem, user friendliness is. So Gentoo clearly isn't for them. For those who seek maximum performance, it's easier to put 50$ more on your configuration than learn and use Gentoo. So Gentoo isn't for them either. So what's really its purpose?

So, what are you even asking for?

You obviously are a Windows fanboy and hopelessly ignorant and dyed-in-the-wool. You'll never understand it or be able to at least learn it. You're a troll.
The comparison with Windows doesn't work out, because Windows is proprietary software (!) and has a market monopole.

You don't listen to me or anybody else on this forum and spread a message which couldn't be more absurd.

Here, I found a picture of you.

[felipe]

Gentoo vs Ubuntu WTF?

The performance of Ubuntu over the years must be compared to another distro out of the box like fedora or opensuse and even with xubuntu.


In my opinion the performance was never good and right now with MIR will start to decrease more. Poor noobs there are no good distros for you.

[frign]

Right

The performance of Ubuntu over the years must be compared to another distro out of the box like fedora or opensuse and even with xubuntu.


In my opinion the performance was never good and right now with MIR will start to decrease more. Poor noobs there are no good distros for you.

That's right. Today, there are no real lightweight beginner-distributions.

[mrugiero]

Well in windows you can simply let the computer run without having anything installed so it's not polluted and just use a sniffer on the local switch and see if there is any trafic that gets to Microsoft without it being related to windows update. I'm pretty sure you can find out if packets get sent home without having access to the code itself. And then you can assume that NSA is on the line.

There is a flaw on that method: you assume it will call home constantly and that Windows Update is innocent. It can log things locally, and upload them when you update the system, through Windows Update.

Gentoo is not very strong in this matter, because you can't just put the CD in and start off. Nevertheless I found Gentoo to be very user-friendly once you start understanding it.
The package manager has never failed on me (unlike Aptitude, which is quite fragile) and there is an overall low level of frustration when you know what you're doing.
From the perspective of a new user, those benefits of course are not yet palpable and irrelevant.

Well, an already installed Gentoo is probably as user friendly as Ubuntu, just slower to upgrade (since it will build things on the background). It's just to set up that it's harder for an inexperienced user.

Like when they released the BS they call Windows 8?

To be fair, using Windows 8 I found it to be *technically* good. The fiasco is in two areas: it forces you to use the touch optimized interface even when you use a mouse and a keyboard, when the old interface did a lot better in that aspect, it screws their community (specially their third party apps programmers) with Modern apps (they take 30% of your revenue from you, when the OS is supposed to already be paid by users, and when the apps running on Windows are the main reason for a user to buy Windows), and the stupid Modern overall while running on a desktop, is like being forced to use a tiling window manager in the best case. All the interface related problems are there strictly because they force the desktop user to behave like it's in a cellphone; for a mobile platform, it's great (or sort of).

Well the result is that because of X the Linux desktop isn't on par with the windows desktop. In 2013. And that is baaaad.

Yes. But you are not very gracefully dodging the fact you denied it was because of the bloat, when arguments for the idea it is because of the bloat were given.

I'm not gonna defend windows 8 since I use windows 7 and never have used windows 8. If windows 8 isn't liked by the users it won't be used. Just like it is now. Which is why Microsoft will adapt if they don't want to die. They will revert to the classical interface or add options to never have to see the metro UI if that is what people want. No one will say they don't make stupid decisions from time to time thinking they're making bold innovative decisions, but they shape up. Then again I can see some stupid decisions made in the Linux world also. Not much difference either here nor there.

They didn't retreat with any of those, and it's been more than a year of users complaining. The only change they did to the interface with 8.1 is restoring the start button, but it still goes to the start screen instead of bringing the start menu back. Currently, MS management doesn't really hear the users. It did, I agree, and it's one of several reasons that lead them to the top.

That is bullshit. A newly installed Windows 7 takes about 700 MB and Windows 8 goes a lot lower than that from what I've heard (it's interesting to note that in terms of memory use Vista > 7 > 8 which doesn't usually happen in the software world). Even if it would take 1 GB of RAM these days it isn't so much anyway for the vast majority of people and that memory isn't filled with random stuff, it's filled with running services that most probably you use. If you don't use them you can shut them down and see your memory use go down. Windows isn't the pig that most people make it to be. Sure you can go with your Gentoo to 50 MB of RAM used, but will you have feature parity with Windows? I don't think so.

[/QUOTE]
Windows 8 takes around 1GiB IIRC. I might reboot later to give you a more exact number.
Feature parity means nothing if they are features you don't use. Think about it: does Mir have feature parity with X.org? Most likely it doesn't, because both Mir and Wayland tries to cut the clutter instead of including a bunch of unused, obsolete thingies. If it covers the particular user's needs, why would he want to have more things?

Again, when windows xp was released everybody said it was shit and it would be the end of microsoft. Now microsoft keeps trying to kill it and it won't die. Funny thing. See, with windows 8.1 they're already reverting on those decisions and we can expect they will keep changing stuff to satisfy their customers. They're not the psychopaths you are trying to make them to be, only interested in having their way while ignoring the world....

You are the first person I hear making such a statement. Heard it for ME, heard it for Vista. AFAIK, XP was always praised.
They didn't revert anything. They put a visible button instead of putting your mouse on the corner. Everything else *remains the same*. I tell you as a *user* of Windows 8.

There are a lot of people doing high performance programming tasks on Windows. Think game programmers for example, id Software uses Windows 7 after switching from xp a while ago (they've used xp until 2011 or 2012 I think). Never heard of them complaining and jumping on Gentoo. The same with a ton of other developers. Windows, even if it uses 1 GB of Ram is no longer the bottleneck. Think about it this way, you may gain 1% of performance and lose 90% of user friendliness and your usual tools. Why would anyone make that compromise. Isn't it easier to just buy one more GB of RAM and be done with it? This is what I'm complaining about Gentoo. It really doesn't have a purpose except showing off your perfectly personalized and locally optimized computer.

For most people performance is not a problem, user friendliness is. So Gentoo clearly isn't for them. For those who seek maximum performance, it's easier to put 50$ more on your configuration than learn and use Gentoo. So Gentoo isn't for them either. So what's really its purpose?

First, I'm getting bored of telling you: we already know Gentoo isn't for everyone, it was stated by the first user talking about it, in its second post.
Second, game programming doesn't require huge resources, you just need to be able to run the IDE and the game.
Third, nobody says you should switch, you already stated your priorities, and everyone is respecting them. You should learn to respect other people's. I have some old machines, and I might want to turn them into basic workstations, and no current Windows can help me for that. I don't have money to buy hardware, and even if I had, I might just like to do experiments. Nobody forces you to use them.

That's right. Today, there are no real lightweight beginner-distributions.

I think it will be better with Mir than with X. It will probably lag behind Wayland, and will be worse than with X until they quit using XMir, but after that I can't see how it will be worse than it's with X when running Mir.