

Ubuntu 10.10 vs. Mac OS X 10.6.5: A Competitive Race - bconway
http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=15530

======
msy
7 pages of comprehensively or willfully missing the point might be a record.

------
abhimishra
I've been using OSX and Win 7 for the last several months but I was pleasantly
surprised by how nice the experience in Ubuntu 10.10 has been.

On my laptop that runs it, I did not have to once manually configure anything.
No command-line magic, no struggling to get random things working, zip. It all
just worked.

The experience has been very fluid, with notifications floating down along the
right side, update notifications from Synaptic, etc. I am not a Linux fanboy
by any stretch, but for once it isn't completely off the mark to say that
Linux is catching up in the consumer space.

I tested this notion out recently when a (non-tech) friend wanted to use my
laptop for something and did not even realize that he was using Linux.

------
petrilli
And yet, none of this has any direct correlation with productivity.

~~~
DrJokepu
Or user experience, for that matter.

~~~
dagw
I was pretty surprised that OpenGL performance was so bad. If that is in fact
the case then that could certainly affect both productivity and user
experience in certain scenarios.

~~~
brudgers
In general, there was very little written about the performance of Snow
Leopard on traditional benchmarks when it was released. Most of the
comparisons were to previous OSX versions based on boot times etc.

However, Leopard's poor OpenGL performance was noted at the time of its
release (but generally drowned out by the choruses of "it _feels_ faster" from
the echo chamber [see
[http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=s...](http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=snow+leopard+opengl+benchmarks)].

------
jhawk
I've been using Ubuntu sinse 8.04, and have seen it progress quite a bit over
the new LTS's and updates. You can use all of the os's for different things,
like....windows will probably be more music advanced than the others, mac will
probably be the same flashy os (linux is not made "flashy", but you can make
it do cool styff and make it "flashy"), and linux will keep on upgrading until
it is the main os around and microsoft along with mac will be whipped off the
face of the earth....is why Bill Gates is worried about linux, because he
realizes it. Just an afterthought Ubuntu has only been aroung for oh
say.....5yrs maybe 6yrs or so....and it's already competing and about to
surpass all the others, and it's free. Lol....not on a "bandwagon", but am
pointing out the facts that have been there, just do a little searching and
you'll find out yourself. Once Linux fixes the little bugs they have
completely or at least a little more, it will be on top as soon as people
start realizing it more, like they have been in the past year or so.

------
kayoone
Dont really know what this prooves. We all know Apple is not packing the ultra
highest end hardware into their products. Which is actually a good thing,
because what they use has proven to be good and works for the usecase, see new
Macbook Air.

I hoped for some comparision of the Usability and stuff like that for the
latest versions of those OSes, but i just got a bunch of meaningless
benchmarks.

------
S_A_P
My reasons for choosing an OS: -Software I want is written for it -User
Experience is reasonable -supports my outboard hardware

So I use either a Mac Pro or a macbook pro with snow leopard and windows 7 on
it. Every requirement above is satisfied by either OS. Linux, unfortunately,
does not meet the first or last requirement for me. As a hobbyist musician, I
get the desire for more performance per clock cycle, but today any OS and even
a netbook offers enough performance to get some work done. I guess Im a
Macindows fan boy.

I see merit in performance testing the various OSes out there, and its safe to
say that all of them need improvement in some area. But this does little to
make me want to give up my software/hardware and make do with an open source
alternative.

------
phamilton
Were these installed on the same drive, in separate partitions? Because that
makes a difference in benchmarking. The outer sections of the drive are much
faster than the inner sections. So two partitions on the same drive will have
different performance.

------
teilo
Great, but what I really want to know is how fast Photoshop runs on Ubuntu
10.10. How many frames per second can I get on WoW? Does Pro Tools run more
efficiently?

------
tjogin
Is it a "race", really, when one of the "contestants" isn't aware, or care,
that the other "contestant" is even there?

~~~
w1ntermute
While Apple fanboys have a rather condescending view of open source software,
for those of us outside that little bubble, articles like this might actually
be relevant.

~~~
tjogin
Nice strawman. I use and contribute to open source.

I don't think Apple is looking at Ubuntu though, certainly don't think they
consider them an opponent in any race.

------
unicornporn
Benchmarks are so 2003.

