OS X 10.8 vs. Ubuntu On Apple Hardware, Benchmarked 130
An anonymous reader writes "OS X 10.8 has been benchmarked against Ubuntu Linux with some interesting results. From the tests on a Apple Mac Mini and Apple MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion was clearly superior when it came to the graphics performance, but the rest of the time the operating systems performed quite closely with no clear winner. OS X also seems to have greater performance issues with solid-state drives than Linux."
Why is Linux's SSD performance so terrible? (Score:5, Interesting)
I made the mistake of "upgrading" two Ubuntu 12.04 desktops to solid state drives, only to find the performance increase was trivial.
What gives? The difference between magnetic drives and SSDs on OS X is incredible. Is this a driver issue, or what?
Summary of tests? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, comparing a well tuned video device driver versus the (usually) hastily written Linux one is a poor comparison.
I really doubt people choose a mac over Linux over this kind of test. There more solid reasons to choose one or the other.
Re:Why is Linux's SSD performance so terrible? (Score:5, Interesting)
PEBKAC. When I upgraded my Ubuntu laptop to SSD, boot time was under 10 seconds and my battery life while surfing the internet went from 3 hours to almost 5 hours. Not all SSDs are made the same, you have to research the performance of each, power draw, etc.
That being said, I bought the SSD with the second-lowest power usage and middle-of-the-road performance.
Re:Why is Linux's SSD performance so terrible? (Score:4, Interesting)
I would guess it is because OS X defragments the drive as it is being written. The overhead is largely not noticed when writing to a traditional hard drive while. Due to SSDs greater speed, it will make it appear that OS X has performance issues. The thing about performing inline defragmentation is it improves speed as the computer ages and as the HD begins to fill. Because all of the benchmarks were performed with fresh systems, the benefits of a defragmented drive would not be noticed.
The question I have is with the low seek times of SSDs, is there still a need to defragment drives? Probably, but to what degree as it surely is not as important as when one is using a traditional hard drive.
Re:surprise surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
I love how you're biased in calling linux a hassle to program and saying that one must know how to script to use it properly.
There are actually, contrary to rumor, a few user friendly distros out there that don't require a PhD in computer science to make use of.
And Microsoft at least HAS been caught hiding APIs that gives its own programs a performance advantage.
My comment isn't about which is better, anyway. It's about which ones cheat on their benchmarks by giving themselves a proprietary boost not available to the competition.
See also the scandal of either nvidia or ati making its own hardware's performance deliberately go down the crapper when it detected the competition's chips.