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

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

#371

Post by caskstrength »

the__alchemist wrote: post #334

I hope for a future where we are not trapped between Windows, MacOS, and Linux. They are all very complicated, and have much state. They're great for general-purpose computing, but it would be cool if you could use the same hardware in these GP computers with lightweight firmware that doesn't get in the way, and can be tuned to a specific task better. Simple, responsive GUI, could run your specialty software etc with…

> Simple, responsive GUI, could run your specialty software etc with direct hardware interaction.

Are "simple and responsive" network protocols stack and file system, for example, also included in the FW? There is a reason why systems that used to work like that (game consoles) started to ship with general purpose OS to handle such things some time ago.

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

#372

Post by CoastalCoder »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #121
CoastalCoder wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have particular applications on mind?

There are a huge number of business-specific Windows-only apps out there, because for so long Windows (and DOS before it) was what everyone ran on. So when you hired some college CS student for three months to create that custom app for your business workflow, it ran on Windows. And it's still there running the business, and so you can't change because that would mean replacing the app. Source code? What's that?

How is Wine these days for such apps?

IIRC, there used to be a problem with .Net and/or Silverlight apps in Wine. But I could be 100% remembering wrong.

(I also have no idea if/how Wine supports apps that use ActiveDirectory.)

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

#373

Post by vidarh »

robertlagrant wrote: post #187
gred wrote: 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…

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.

A search for "wifi adapter linux" on Amazon brought up a large number explicitly advertised for Linux for me.

At least one of them with an extensive list of which distros are and are not supported.

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

#374

Post by berkes »

baz00 wrote: post #149
berkes wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which is why I "need" Linux. The software that I need, will run on Windows, but hardly and always with great effort and abysmal stability. And sometimes not at all. ruby/rbenv, nvm/node, rust/cargo, docker, nvim, ripgrep, git, rsync, ssh. All of which I sometimes, somehow managed to get running at some point when helping co-workers with their Windows machines. But the amount of fiddling, trial-and-errorring and such…

I use a chunk of those. They work absolutely fine on WSL2. My windows machine can quite happily pull shit out of Excel files, into R/Python stack on Linux and squirt them back out into SQL Server with no real cohesion issues. Also I mostly spend all day with VScode open on a Linux box from windows. I also maintain old windows stuff on windows and loads of infra from Linux. It all just works together fine. And it stay…

So you are using Linux. On Windows, sure. But Linux nonetheless.

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

#375

Post by LeJC »

chx wrote: post #355
LeJC wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is almost me. I used Linux on and off over the last 15 years. Mostly in servers, but I often installed a linux partition to try it out. I always went back to windows since windows was much simpler and I thought KDE and Gnome was similar anyway, I didn't see any benefit in switching. I permanently switched to Linux in august. I found out about window managers and now I see a real benefit on using Linux over Windo…

Can you hotplug a GPU or do you need to still (effectively) reboot? (I know it's only the windowmanager that needed a restart but if all programs run under then, well.)

What do you mean? Switching between integrated and dedicated GPU? Or opening your case and directly removing or adding a GPU?

If its the first, I think there is support for this. There's NVIDIA optimus for NVIDIA for instance.

The second one, I never thought it could be a use case, even less that Windows would even support that. I always turn off my computer to do anything on my motherboard.

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

#376

Post by saltcured »

ragnese wrote: post #314
throw555chip wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly, when it comes to "just working," desktop Linux is worse today than it was when I first installed it on my budget laptop in 2007. I bought a new Alienware PC in summer 2022, installed Ubuntu immediately, wiping Windows. Everything worked. Still does. This happens on every new Dell (or Alienware), HP or Lenovo desktop or laptop I've bought the past 2 decades. I can't buy a new machine that has issues with L…

> Honestly, do you work in Microsoft marketing. I shouldn't feed the trolls, but I'll take the bait this time. Read my comment again. In it I literally say that I run Linux exclusively on my personal machines. I don't have a Windows computer in my home and the only Mac I have that's still running macOS is a work-issued laptop. What are your Linux-never-Windows credentials? Because I bet they don't beat mine unless yo…

I'm in that older+longer cohort so I'll comment...

I think you are talking about workflow-breaking changes or stability issues during transitions to newer Linux bits. You explicitly excluded hardware/driver issues that a lot of people gripe about with Linux on laptops. I think your experience here can vary dramatically depending on your choice of Linux distribution, your upgrade tempo, and your expectations.

I've had some frustrations with the UEFI transition and secure boot, because it forced me do research when I just wanted my system to boot. I've similarly suffered some regressions with MATE recently, where it boots to a black screen and I had to dig around to find that switching to a text console and restarting lightdm would get it unstuck. I'm struggling to answer whether these are "driver" things or not.

But, I've been on Fedora for ~20 years now and am happily oblivious to Flatpak, Snap, or even Docker because they have nothing to do with my day to day experience. I also don't think I've dipped my toes into Wayland yet. I've been using XFCE or the MATE desktop rather than GNOME. But I do remember when ALSA was the new thing, then pulseaudio, and now pipewire. I mostly didn't care unless trying to setup some specific sound peripheral. I never had btrfs anywhere except an experimental system, because I always customized partitioning and never really considered the defaults to matter.

If I exclude hardware/driver issues, it seems like this same story applies to Windows. It all depends on what part of the ecosystem you consider to be part of your platform experience. Some people might have some favorite apps that essentially work the same as 25 years ago, while others have experienced multiple upheavals as third parties abandoned or hijacked an old favorite application or forced some kind of migration. It's only gotten worse with all the rent-seeking cloud integrations with everything.

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

#377

Post by chx »

LeJC wrote: post #375
chx wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you hotplug a GPU or do you need to still (effectively) reboot? (I know it's only the windowmanager that needed a restart but if all programs run under then, well.)

What do you mean? Switching between integrated and dedicated GPU? Or opening your case and directly removing or adding a GPU? If its the first, I think there is support for this. There's NVIDIA optimus for NVIDIA for instance. The second one, I never thought it could be a use case, even less that Windows would even support that. I always turn off my computer to do anything on my motherboard.

I mean eGPU over Thunderbolt.

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

#378

Post by antod »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #6
bryanlarsen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the major markets for these would be visual art studios. They aren't generally Linux shops.

Funny you mention this because a lot of big visual arts studios use Mac for the artwork in the Adobe ecosystem, and heavily invested in Linux for the 3D rendering pipelines as they moved away from SGI/BSD with Windows almost nowhere on the radar. I'd estimate the number of big-name shops running Windows is a minority with only smaller indie studios like Corridor Digital being all-in on Windows because it's a jack of…

Yup - A while back (not sure if changed much since), Weta Digital people would talk about being pretty much mostly Linux for modelling/rendering/etc and heavily Mac for audio. Very little Windows.

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

#379

Post by antod »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #72
avgcorrection wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Now try saving something from Firefox. By default, it shoves it into some parallel file system within the snap. Oh did you forget to actually explicitly save it into the downloads directory? Yeah, you have no idea where it is now. Oh and of course when the download file explorer widget opens up, you can't get the mouse focus. Probably because there's some security boundary between Firefox and the file system. Usabili…

Weird. I use the Firefox snap (due to my lazy inertia), and my saves/downloads are all in $HOME/Downloads

I don't think I did anything to change that either.

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

#380

Post by antod »

blkhawk wrote: post #77
chx wrote: 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 would be really interested what you were unhappy with? the only major thing that truely changed after 2017 was that wine became almost universally compatible. It was freakish how little issues i had in 2019 when i switched completely.

2017 was in the early phase of pretty disruptive era with Linux - eg systemd, audio, wayland, app sandboxes etc etc. I get the feeling things are settling now, and stabilising / consolidating into a better place overall with less churn. But for a while things weren't as stable as they typically were before that.
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