Live data from Hacker News

Ubuntu squeezes more performance than Windows 11 on new AMD Zen 4 Threadripper

phoronix.com

251–260 of 411 posts

Re: Ubuntu squeezes more performance than Windows 11 on new AMD Zen 4 Threadripper

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft should invest in Proton, make Windows apps work seamless on linux, and then just make a "Windows" replacement for Wayland that runs on Kernel... Then, and only then, will we have "The year of the linux desktop"

I really dunno why people advocate ripping out the kernel and using Linux instead, while keeping Windows userspace. The NT kernel is the best part of Windows. It has built-in asynchronous real-time I/O. A completely plug-and-play driver model. Far more advanced permissions model. It is far ahead of the competition. The userspace and UI of Windows is very straightforwardly modified; that's why it has changed so much e…

>>A completely plug-and-play driver model.

this is one of the things I despise about windows that most. The Driver model.

I hate it, it causes soooooooooo many issues from security to just breaking randomly in weird ways, problems you do not have with a monolithic kernel

>> Far more advanced permissions model.

This is a double edges sword, very very easy to get into all kinds of trouble here, sometimes "less advanced" is better.

>> It is far ahead of the competition.

That seems to be subjective

>>dunno why people advocate ripping out the kernel and using Linux instead

Well my parent comment was more tongue and cheek jab at the "year of linux desktop meme"...

>>Telling people that we should keep 'Windows apps'

More about Win32 API compatibility to keep 80-90% of software working.

>>I want to go back to the Windows 2000-era UI

I 100000000% do not... Windows 2000 UI was terrible.

Re: Ubuntu squeezes more performance than Windows 11 on new AMD Zen 4 Threadripper

#252

I hope the community really gets behind Snap or Flatpak or one of the other systems for bringing a modern permissions and privileges system to the Linux desktop. It would help me be a lot more comfortable recommending Linux to non-technical people. What distro would you recommend to somebody like me who wants to be asked before an application gets access to my location, microphone, camera, network, etc...?

Ideally, we get the best of both worlds. The isolation technology that Flatpak uses (bubblewrap) isn't exclusive to Flatpaked apps, so someone could probably make a distro with isolation by-default if they were motivated enough. > What distro would you recommend to somebody like me who wants to be asked before an application gets access Use an immutable distro like Silverblue or Kinoite. Those are more-or-less Flatpa…

> The isolation technology that Flatpak uses (bubblewrap) isn't exclusive to Flatpacked

I wish flatpacked apps actually used the isolation (most don't, so http://flatkill.org/2020/ is still true today) but that isolation is mostly under the control of the packager, not you.

On this point, Deno ( https://docs.deno.com/runtime/manual/basics/permissions ) and pledge.com ( https://justine.lol/pledge ) are better; you have to explicitly allow-list what you want, instead of hoping that the potentially very untrustworthy and third-party packager had your best interests in mind and denylisting what you don't want.

Re: Ubuntu squeezes more performance than Windows 11 on new AMD Zen 4 Threadripper

#254
post #70

If Microsoft backs off core Windows development, which it certainly seems like they are, this is what we'd expect to see... not a big bang where it suddenly stops working, but every year it'll just sort of fall a bit more behind Linux, until in 4 or 5 years the difference consensus will slowly just creep over to Windows being noticeably worse than Linux without any big bang switchover... and it'll sneak up on Microso…

Performance is not the limiting factor keeping people from switching to Linux.

If I could take my current desktop PC, swap to Linux, and all the hardware and all the software I like (including games) would Just Work(tm) without me spending weeks to months diagnosing (and inevitably giving up on some of what I want), I'd swap in a heartbeat.

But that is not the reality we live in.

It's gotten better, but frankly I doubt it ever will really get to the point of usability for someone like me.

Re: Ubuntu squeezes more performance than Windows 11 on new AMD Zen 4 Threadripper

#255
post #70

If Microsoft backs off core Windows development, which it certainly seems like they are, this is what we'd expect to see... not a big bang where it suddenly stops working, but every year it'll just sort of fall a bit more behind Linux, until in 4 or 5 years the difference consensus will slowly just creep over to Windows being noticeably worse than Linux without any big bang switchover... and it'll sneak up on Microso…

[deleted]

Re: Ubuntu squeezes more performance than Windows 11 on new AMD Zen 4 Threadripper

#256

Is it OK to just mention a common misconception which is still prelevant about Linux? Rolling releases provides STABLE verions of software/packages. It is NOT "bleeding edge" since it is NOT a development branch. It is the latest stable version provided by the upstream (developer/cretors of the software). Point release comes from a time where we didn't have continous development. We didn't have these faster updates.…

[deleted]

Re: Ubuntu squeezes more performance than Windows 11 on new AMD Zen 4 Threadripper

#257

Is it OK to just mention a common misconception which is still prelevant about Linux? Rolling releases provides STABLE verions of software/packages. It is NOT "bleeding edge" since it is NOT a development branch. It is the latest stable version provided by the upstream (developer/cretors of the software). Point release comes from a time where we didn't have continous development. We didn't have these faster updates.…

Had arch Linux 3 times. Each time was ended with some update problem. This is not definition of stable. This has not happened on debian yet.

I don't know the issues you faced. But Arch in itself is a DIY distro. Not a managed rolling release like Void/OpenSUSE etc. This means you are expected to maintain it. Any updates which need manual handholding usually comes up at https://archlinux.org/news/.

But I am glad you use whatever works for you now. :)

If you are curious, here is what I do. I update every two or three weeks. I have timeshift setup which means if anything bricks (Which hasn't in last 5 years), I just rollback it up with zero terminal usage. If I have time, I do use terminal. Otherwise I will just rollback and wait for the fix. Also, I have seen a lot of issues in point release which gets fixed by just a software update in rolling releases.

This might sound like a lot. But usually this means going to https://archlinux.org/news/ and see if there is any new news which needs manual intervention. Usually there won't be. And read the packages that are getting updated. If I do have time, I usually skim through forums for any outstanding issues. But I have become sooo lazy and confident about Arch Linux that I haven't in months.

Re: Ubuntu squeezes more performance than Windows 11 on new AMD Zen 4 Threadripper

#258

I hope the community really gets behind Snap or Flatpak or one of the other systems for bringing a modern permissions and privileges system to the Linux desktop. It would help me be a lot more comfortable recommending Linux to non-technical people. What distro would you recommend to somebody like me who wants to be asked before an application gets access to my location, microphone, camera, network, etc...?

Snaps are a dumpster fire on Ubuntu. In particular Firefox. Flatpak... I tried a dosbox flatpak and it was 3 gigs. Regular package? 3 megs. I run Linux mint to avoid them as much as possible. All of the flatpaks pretend nobody has files somewhere other than the home directory, and softlinks don't work. Have a mdadm raid in /mnt? Can't see it. So basic frequent use cases can't be supported by a "modern security and pe…

> I tried a dosbox flatpak and it was 3 gigs. Regular package? 3 megs.

You are counting the runtime size. That is shared between all apps that use the same runtime. As I already had it installed for another app, the download size for the dosbox flatpak on my fedora machine was 1.6MB.

I also recommend installing flatseal to easily see and manage file access permissions of flatpak apps.

Re: Ubuntu squeezes more performance than Windows 11 on new AMD Zen 4 Threadripper

#259

In the context of Linux adoption on the desktop it is not big news, unfortunately. To my mind, overall end-user experience is already better in Linux compared to Windows where similar tasks are more complicated, even before the raw performance starts to matter . Better performance would be a prerequisite indeed - no one wants to move a slower OS - but then there must be other convincing reasons to drive the desktop u…

> And yet, users don't convert to Linux. So there must be other reasons, and performance benefits don't seem to work so far. For enterprise desktop purposes: One central reason is that there is no Excel for GNU/Linux. Accept it or not: the workflows of lots of departments are deeply intertwined with Excel (and it would take an insane amount of work to replace Excel by some other spreadsheet application). Another impo…

We run thousands of Linux desktop workstations from low-end workstations for developers to dual-socket machines with >1TB of memory at work. That's primarily because productivity for our use cases is so much higher with a Linux/Unix environment than Windows that it's not even remotely funny. However, almost all users still have either the standard corporate-issue Windows laptop, or a Windows VM on their workstation. Practically exclusively for Desktop Excel-based administrative tasks.

Generally speaking, the vast majority of our userbase likes their Linux workstations far better than their Windows machines, and that's after experiencing the significant downgrade to Gnome desktops due to Red Hat removing KDE.

Re: Ubuntu squeezes more performance than Windows 11 on new AMD Zen 4 Threadripper

#260
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do I learn modern desktop Linux? I am using it on servers since 1993 and used for desktop 2004-2017 (and was very unhappy with it) so my desktop knowledge is severely outdated.

I'm not sure what there is to learn, if you have a good working knowledge of Linux servers. This is exactly why I prefer the terminal to any of the GUI components that may exist. Much more stable interface. As far as programs that I use daily, other than a few obscure VPN clients, I've rarely, if ever, needed anything that I couldn't find on AUR. For that reason and for reasons of having up-to-date software available…

> I'm not sure what there is to learn, if you have a good working knowledge of Linux servers.

Everything about the graphics and windowing stack, for starters. Why isn't my external display being detected after waking from sleep? Why is it always set to the wrong resolution at boot? Why doesn't VLC have any controls? Why is this simple Unity game suddenly running at 2 fps?

Thermal management, CPU governors, that sort of thing. Not really an issue on servers, occasionally misbehaving on laptops.

Occasional stuff around device connectivity - bluetooth speakers, NetworkManager, etc.

Post reply on HN