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

phoronix.com

261–270 of 411 posts

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

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#262
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a much worse time with hardware on windows than Linux these last couple of years. My work laptop runs Windows and will get stuck in a BSPD bootloop if I turn it on with external monitors connected. My USB keyboard and mouse disconnect every few minutes. Windows may as well not even have Bluetooth for as well as it works. Some devices always show as connected, despite not being present. I have to un-pair my h…

Recent nvidia (3-4 series) cards work pretty well now.

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

#263
post #81
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…

Interesting thought, but you might be missing the hardware perspective. I switched from Windows to Linux this year, and the biggest issue has been drivers and hardware compatibility: audio available via headphones but not (laptop) built-in speakers, occasional display issues depending on the monitor setup, occasional WiFi issues. If hardware innovation stopped, Linux could catch up easily... but it won't, so there is…

> If hardware innovation stopped, Linux could catch up easily... but it won't, so there is a constant driver treadmill that manufacturers mostly handle for MS on the Windows side, but Linux has to handle somewhat alone.

Hardware innovation hasn't stopped, but there's a lot less diversity than the past. For mainstream desktop, there's only three video card vendors (it's different on mobile, and servers have ASPEED's 2d cards to work with), sound cards are pretty much dead: HDAudio takes care of most of it but jack detection issues persist, Broadcom is poised to buy up all storage card vendors, Networking vendors are limited.

Intel is pretty good at supporting its products for Windows, Linux, and sometimes FreeBSD. If you buy only stuff they make, you can cover all your peripheral needs and move on with your life.

Most other vendors of important devices have code dumped drivers for Linux and sometimes FreeBSD for at least for some of their devices. This gets more frequent as there's more consolidation. The Linux drivers might not be great, and the code is usually full of unexplained magic values, but it's a start.

There's also the potential of running Windows drivers elsewhere; it sometimes works for network drivers (something something NDIS)

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

#264
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting thought, but you might be missing the hardware perspective. I switched from Windows to Linux this year, and the biggest issue has been drivers and hardware compatibility: audio available via headphones but not (laptop) built-in speakers, occasional display issues depending on the monitor setup, occasional WiFi issues. If hardware innovation stopped, Linux could catch up easily... but it won't, so there is…

> Perhaps the manufacturers will start to help out more and more on the Linux side too, as more users demand compatibility. I do believe that manufacturers would be willing to help out if GNU/Linux was sufficiently standardized that they can simply drop some code/binary that works on basically every GNU/Linux distribution (just as they can basically do on Windows). The problem is that GNU/Linux is not some single ope…

the parent comment explains why dumping a blob is bad, particularly for drivers. it allows vendors to depend on all sorts of undocumented and unreliable behavior and prevents upstream improvements.

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

#265

I ran an experiment a while ago. My windows work machine takes a good 3 minutes to compile one of my C++ projects, but a Linux VM on that same machine builds the same project in 45 seconds. That's really all I need to know about Windows

On a work machine, that's more likely to be due to excessive background services installed by the company, particularly antivirus (which is known to kill disk performance, which means it's particularly awful for compiles). Don't get me wrong, I despise windows on its own merits, but I don't think that particular case is a fair comparison; there's a good chance that a completely clean windows VM in the same circumstan…

Nope. This is a totally vanilla Windows install.

The general consensus I've found while researching this problem is that Windows Defender inserts itself into the compiler process to monitor it for malware.

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

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be honest, Linux as a desktop environment is already more usable than many people realize. This will be true once the stability of graphics drivers on Linux improves. On every major kernel update, I am always bracing for everything going blank because of driver issues.

I've used nvidia for close to 2 decades on various PC hardware machines, desktops to laptops, Dell, HP, Lenovo and nvidia (binary drivers in the Ubuntu/Kubuntu distribution) work 100%. Zero issues. Old and new machines. Very odd eh?

I bet you didn't use many HiDPI displays during the last decade ;)

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

#267

Not surprised though, with AMD being able to patch the Linux kernel and scheduler to its liking in order to squeeze out the maximum performance for it's architecture, versus depending on Microsoft to have the good will to figure it out on their own dime. I'd be curious if the businesses buying these $20k+, 96-core, HEDT workstations actually do run Windows on them in order for this to be that big of a problem for Mic…

ive worked at companies where we buy these types of workstations for fea/cfd/ML

if the company has a overbearing IT, we run windows for "security". at places where we move fast and break things, we run ubuntu and IT says for us to manage it ourselves.

for anyone wondering why we done use the cloud or a server, we do too. but model setup, licensing, and small jobs are easier and quicker to do locally.

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

#268

I've been playing around with Ubuntu training myself for the day that I have to give up windows 10. My only complaints are that Linux can be tedious, everything is just 43 commands away; it requires greater understanding of not just what the system is doing, but how it is doing it; and the documentation is written like a Wikipedia article on advanced nuclear theory. Windows and OSX have, for the most part, just worke…

My biggest gripe with Linux is that it's an incredibly brittle system that you can easily blow up, either through no fault of my own (a grub update once made my system unbootable), issues which were triggered by trying to work around ubuntu's shortcomings (I installed an nvidia driver from a ppa, which broke my system), or through curious experimentation gone wrong.

Combined with the constant weird bugs ranging from annoying to potentially system-breaking, and the lack of resources you have for troubleshooting (because few people use it, and the system changes so fast that existing posts become outdated), it's really hard to fix, too.

I honestly try to never update my Linux box, unless I'm prepared to invest time into potentially having to fix it. And Windows' annoying updates are absolutely nothing compared to the daily barrage of packages, each triggering a restart.

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

#269
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I have a Linux computer upstairs, and the Wifi dongle (I know, but it's fine!) broke. Buying a new one, or even knowing what to buy, that doesn't require me to USB key some random drivers (probably cloned off GitHub) is a tricky task.

Do you use Linux? There are no driver packages on GitHub you make. It's all in the kernel.

Yes, this is Linux. Have a look[0].

[0] https://github.com/lwfinger?tab=repositories

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

#270
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from Nvidia, this feels like a non-issue for me nowadays.

Unfortunately, Nvidia has ~87% of the market share of discrete GPUs.

Discrete GPUs have ~20% share of the entire GPU market. For the vast majority, this is a non-issue.

Additionally, the Nvidia problems under Linux are very well known, so getting a Nvidia GPU for Linux is a self-inflicted problem.

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