Linux 3D Games Run Faster On PC-BSD 298
koinu writes "Phoronix has published benchmarks comparing 3D game performance on Ubuntu Linux 11.04 with the FreeBSD Linux ABI emulation on the 8.2 release of PC-BSD, which is a desktop variant of FreeBSD. Most results show that the emulated Linux layer on FreeBSD performs better than Linux natively. It's pretty interesting, because most people would expect that an additional abstraction layer would generally slow down the execution of binaries."
Which illustrates what we already knew (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux has lost its way.
It was once lean and fast but now is an industrialized bloated mess. It will take a lot more to get me to stop using Linux but that doesn't mean I can't see when something is wrong.
Lately, we have been seeing a lot of Linux's advantages fade away. Among these are its smallness and compatibility with older hardware.
I think it's just about time to revisit what made Linux great and see if there is a way to get that back while still doing great new things.
Re:Interesting benchmarks, but not an article (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Which illustrates what we already knew (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Which illustrates what we already knew (Score:1, Insightful)
Sorry, but we are talking about Ubuntu here. It is taking one of the slowest Linux distributions and slashing it against FreeBSD distribution what is for speed.
It is like timing 100 meter run by attaching iron ball to other runner leg.
turn EVERYTHING off... (Score:5, Insightful)
some 10 years ago, when even the slightest hiccup could make a game running in linux slow to a crawl (not linux's fault. more like greedy games on average hardware), i ran several tests to find the best settings for performance. here's what i found:
- even a lightwheight window manager like windowmaker, fluxbox or xfce impacts negatively (specially if you're short on RAM) .Xsession file with nothing more than "xterm" on it. as soon as X starts with a windowless xterm, run the game from the CLI.
- any cute widget, dockapp or systray app can take a hit. a simple opengl cpu meter, displaynig a spinning cube, running inside a 64x64 dockapp had a 10% hit on glxgears' frame rate
- daemons started from init.d scripts steal memory, and if they trigger a backgroud process, bye-bye performance. so make sure anything than trigger lots of disk I/O operations are off. specially if they run from cron
- get used to the command line. shut down GDM/KDM/XDM or any other graphical login. log on the console, quickly create an
now, optimize BOTh PC-BSD and linux this way, THEN run a benchmark. otherwise, is the same as trying to compare a default ubuntu with openBSD on which one is more secure. or the other way on which is more usefull as a desktop. it's not right to ebnchmark different OSes by leaving the defaults just like that.
Re:Which illustrates what we already knew (Score:3, Insightful)
FreeBSD is made by engineers for engineers in most cases. Ubuntu is built so some uneducated guy in Bangladesh can load it on his crap whitebox laptop with random hardware and it JustWorks(tm) and has him up and surfing the internets within 20 minutes. Ditto for windows. That takes a lot of kernel bloat to accomplish.
Ubuntu's mission is admirable and they do a bang up job. However you don't want to use Ubuntu for any task where the best performance possible is required. Squeezing every last ounce of performance out of your hardware and software takes a little more work than "pop the disk in and wait". Install Gentoo, strip the bloat out the kernel and you'll see what I'm talking about.