How does Linux compare to Mac OS X?

Hello,

I'm interested in hearing from anyone who's compared the performance of
Linux (specifically YDL) and Mac OS X (the more current version, the
better). I want to install each of these systems and check 'em out, and
I'd like any useful information and interesting observations folks may
have from their experiences.

Since both systems were born of UNIX, does it make sense to run both on
a single machine? I'm wondering which of the two systems would be best
for use on a G4/450 single-processor system. That's the machine I have,
currently with 640MB of RAM, but I plan on maxing it out sometime soon,
then changing the graphics card to a GeForce 4 Ti (hope Linux supports
this!), and later a processor upgrade.

I'm looking for the best performance I can get from my machine in speed
and stability. Wherever there's a choice, I favor more stability, of
course. I want to make my system the best it can possibly be for
Internet use, graphics and sound editing (later including audio
recording), word processing/spreadsheeting/database work, and gaming. I
don't ask for much, do I? *L*

Any and all feedback will be greatly appreciated! For e-mail response,
please send to "thustar at yahoo dot com."

Thanks and happy computing,
Eric

In article
<ericp06- >,
"Eric P." <> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm interested in hearing from anyone who's compared the performance of
> Linux (specifically YDL) and Mac OS X (the more current version, the
> better). I want to install each of these systems and check 'em out, and
> I'd like any useful information and interesting observations folks may
> have from their experiences.
>
> Since both systems were born of UNIX, does it make sense to run both on
> a single machine? I'm wondering which of the two systems would be best
> for use on a G4/450 single-processor system. That's the machine I have,
> currently with 640MB of RAM, but I plan on maxing it out sometime soon,
> then changing the graphics card to a GeForce 4 Ti (hope Linux supports
> this!), and later a processor upgrade.
>
> I'm looking for the best performance I can get from my machine in speed
> and stability. Wherever there's a choice, I favor more stability, of
> course. I want to make my system the best it can possibly be for
> Internet use, graphics and sound editing (later including audio
> recording), word processing/spreadsheeting/database work, and gaming. I
> don't ask for much, do I? *L*
>
> Any and all feedback will be greatly appreciated! For e-mail response,
> please send to "thustar at yahoo dot com."
>

I run both YDL 4.1 and Mac OS X 10.4.6. I have never had a problem with
the stability of either system. I can't answer your questions about
about speed without some indication of what you're going to be doing.
You get the best performance from your machine when you can accomplish
the task at hand. What's the task? What tools do you have available?
How well do you know how to use them?

--
Tom Stiller

PGP fingerprint = 5108 DDB2 9761 EDE5 E7E3
7BDA 71ED 6496 99C0 C7CF

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.os.linux.powerpc.]

On 2006-04-12, Eric P. <> wrote:
>
> I'm interested in hearing from anyone who's compared the performance of
> Linux (specifically YDL) and Mac OS X (the more current version, the
> better). I want to install each of these systems and check 'em out, and
> I'd like any useful information and interesting observations folks may
> have from their experiences.

Please note, this is seat-of-pants only.

I have an iBook G4, and I run both OS X Tiger and Slackintosh 10.2 (no
YDL, sorry). Just from my eye, linux seems to run a lot more quickly
than OS X. firefox starts in <5s on the linux box, often >10s on the OS X
box. That could be at least in part an artifact of having home
directories on NFS (and over openvpn and wireless!), but my guest
account has similar speeds with Firefox startup, so perhaps no. X11 is
quite a bit slower on OS X, but it is running on top of Quartz, whereas
X11 on linux is by itself.

> Since both systems were born of UNIX, does it make sense to run both on
> a single machine?

It can, if you want linux but need certain OS X apps.

> I'm looking for the best performance I can get from my machine in speed
> and stability. Wherever there's a choice, I favor more stability, of
> course. I want to make my system the best it can possibly be for
> Internet use, graphics and sound editing (later including audio
> recording), word processing/spreadsheeting/database work, and gaming. I
> don't ask for much, do I? *L*

Gaming? Get an x86. ;-) I haven't had too many issues with OS X
stability, so I'd suggest you choose based on ease-of-use and available
applications. And if you have some linux experience, YDL will be pretty
heavy on that processor; the extra RAM will help, but YDL will gobble
whatever you give it, and it seems like the incremental speed gains
might not be worth putting YDL on there (you could get a similar
environment from fink, for example). If you still wanted a linux, I'd
go for a more lightweight one--Slackintosh, CRUX, and Gentoo might be
worth pursuing.

--keith

--
kkeller-
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://wombat.san-francisco.ca.us/cgi-bin/fom
see X- headers for PGP signature information

Eric P. <> wrote:

> I'm looking for the best performance I can get from my machine in speed
> and stability. Wherever there's a choice, I favor more stability, of
> course. I want to make my system the best it can possibly be for
> Internet use, graphics and sound editing (later including audio
> recording), word processing/spreadsheeting/database work, and gaming. I
> don't ask for much, do I? *L*

The question mostly doesn't make sense to me. "Performance" normally
refers to speed. I see that you are asking about both speed and
stability, but still....

1. Stability. Both operating systems are good in terms of stability.
What issues you might have in that area are going to have a lot more to
do with the specific applications than with the operating system.
Stability of the OS just isn't a basis for selecting between those two
options.

2. Speed. Most of the things you listed just aren't speed critical. Word
processing? Internet stuff has speed issues, of course, but they seldom
have much to do with your system. And then...

Games. You are kidding, right? It is a really rare game where there even
exist versions on the multiple operating systems so that you can make a
speed comparison. Some exist. But not many at all. You probably wouldn't
have to use a second hand to count them, much less take off your socks.
Neither Linux nor Mac OS are particularly strong in the game market at
all. Both have some games, but the selection is limited. And the big
question is almost always not whether a particular game will perform
well, but whether it exists at all for those systems.

In short, I don't see that it makes sense for you to be asking about
performance (either speed or stability). Sounds to me like a *FAR* more
significant issue is the question of what applications are available and
whether they suit your needs.

If you really want a gaming machine, then Windows is pretty much where
it is at. (That or a console). Even with all the flaws of Windows, the
big decider turns out to be that, given some random game you might want,
it will usually be available on Windows and not on Linux or OS-X. That's
not true 100% of the time, but it is sure so a lot of the time.

I might suggest an Intel Mac with dual booting. Use OS-X for most
everything except the games - Windows for the games.

--
Richard Maine | Good judgment comes from experience;
email: my first.last at org.domain| experience comes from bad judgment.
org: nasa, domain: gov | -- Mark Twain

On 2006-04-12, Tom Stiller <> wrote:
> In article
><ericp06- >,
> "Eric P." <> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I'm interested in hearing from anyone who's compared the performance of
>> Linux (specifically YDL) and Mac OS X (the more current version, the
>> better). I want to install each of these systems and check 'em out, and
>> I'd like any useful information and interesting observations folks may
>> have from their experiences.
>>
>> Since both systems were born of UNIX, does it make sense to run both on
>> a single machine? I'm wondering which of the two systems would be best
>> for use on a G4/450 single-processor system. That's the machine I have,
>> currently with 640MB of RAM, but I plan on maxing it out sometime soon,
>> then changing the graphics card to a GeForce 4 Ti (hope Linux supports
>> this!), and later a processor upgrade.
>>
>> I'm looking for the best performance I can get from my machine in speed
>> and stability. Wherever there's a choice, I favor more stability, of
>> course. I want to make my system the best it can possibly be for
>> Internet use, graphics and sound editing (later including audio
>> recording), word processing/spreadsheeting/database work, and gaming. I
>> don't ask for much, do I? *L*
>>
>> Any and all feedback will be greatly appreciated! For e-mail response,
>> please send to "thustar at yahoo dot com."
>>
>
> I run both YDL 4.1 and Mac OS X 10.4.6. I have never had a problem with
> the stability of either system. I can't answer your questions about
> about speed without some indication of what you're going to be doing.
> You get the best performance from your machine when you can accomplish
> the task at hand. What's the task? What tools do you have available?
> How well do you know how to use them?

[speaking as a Linux developer]

First, I work for Red Hat. I work on the installer (anaconda) and we
develop on all platforms concurrently. There are no "ppc teams" and
"x86 teams".

I have several PPC boxes and have spent a lot of time hacking on Linux
PPC. Most of my work is on x86 these days, but hopefully I can share
some information that you might find useful.

First, MacOS X. The OS itself is quite interesting. Having used
NEXTSTEP in the past, it was interesting to see MacOS X birth itself
from this codebase. More than half of the code was updated by pulling
in pieces from FreeBSD and NetBSD. My knowledge is based off early
releases, so I'm sure things have changed drastically since then.

My problems with MacOS X are:

- Lack of ELF. I think this is one of the biggest problems still
existing. This presents problems for development of software for
ELF Unix systems and MacOS X systems.

- Something other than X for the display subsystem. This argument
can go both ways and since X display support is fairly well
integrated in to MacOS X now, it's less of a problem. My issue is
that all of the programs I use are X-based, so the MacOS X display
environment is just another wall for me to jump over. But, I can
see plenty of reasons not to use X. It certainly is archaic and
prevents development of the various *bling* features that OS X
users like (but look for AIGLX in X.org soon!).

And that's really it. I could use OS X for my workstation, but I don't
need to mostly because all of my usable Power Macs are broken now
(laptops and displays....expensive). I do like OS X and it's nice to
see a successful operating system on the desktop with Unix underneath.

So what about Linux... well, usability certainly has come a long way.
Current releases of GNOME and KDE make using Linux less of an
adventure these days (or for that matter, any Unix-like operating
system). What you will miss are commercial software components and
drivers that have Linux variants. NVIDIA and ATI releases their drivers
for Linux, but it's Linux for 32-bit Intel support. They don't have
Linux PPC drivers. Other examples include the Flash plugin (again,
Linux x86 only) and Adobe Reader (Linux x86 only). If you can live
without those things, Linux PPC may be worth looking at. I find most
desktop users get frustrated with Linux PPC for these small reasons.

In general, when a company says it will release Linux versions of its
proprietary software, they really mean Linux on 32-bit Intel.

Just food for thought...

--
David Cantrell
Red Hat / Westford, MA

"Eric P." <> writes:
>I'm interested in hearing from anyone who's compared the performance of
>Linux (specifically YDL) and Mac OS X (the more current version, the
>better).

http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2520

It depends on the application. The application they tested apparently
hit on speed bump in MacOS X.

>Since both systems were born of UNIX, does it make sense to run both on
>a single machine?

Depends on what you want. I only want a GNU system, so I only run
GNU/Linux on my iBook.

If you want a Unix, my impression is that you will have an easier time
with GNU/Linux. E.g., some years ago I had to install a new account
on a MacOS X box. So I did the traditional Unix thing and edited
/etc/passwd. However, this did not work. After exiting the editor,
the file had it's old contents. Eventually I gave up, went to the
console and created the account using a Mac-style point-and-click
interface.

>then changing the graphics card to a GeForce 4 Ti (hope Linux supports
>this!)

Free X drivers (no proprietary drivers for Linux/PPC) support only the
2D accelerated hardware of these cards. If you want to make use of 3D
acceleration hardware, buy a Radeon card based on the R200 or earlier
(essentially all Radeons up to the Radeon 9250); at least that's the
theory; in practice the Radeon Mobility 9200 on my iBook does not seem
to get 3D acceleration (but I have not tried very hard). For more
theory: I have read that 3D support for the R300 is getting usable.

As for Acroread, maybe xpdf or gv (and their offspring) are
appropriate replacements for your uses. There is also
<http://maconlinux.org/>.

Followups set to colp.

- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl Some things have to be seen to be believed
Most things have to be believed to be seen
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html

On 2006-04-12 21:27:37 +0300, Tom Stiller <> said:

> I run both YDL 4.1 and Mac OS X 10.4.6. I have never had a problem
> with the stability of either system. I can't answer your questions
> about about speed without some indication of what you're going to be
> doing. You get the best performance from your machine when you can
> accomplish the task at hand. What's the task? What tools do you have
> available? How well do you know how to use them?

I wonder if the x86 rule apply to macs? You know.. Linux/FreeBSD (in
this arch,Darwin) for serving, OS X for client. Did you see Ars
Technica benchmark of Apache/YDL and Apache/OS XServe?

There is also a cow rule as you should not feed your own cow to drink a
glass of milk everyday That is from the days while windows trolls
were more "quality" types No, it was said against x86 Linux for home.

Ilgaz

In article <>,
Ilgaz Ocal < > wrote:

> On 2006-04-12 21:27:37 +0300, Tom Stiller <> said:
>
> > I run both YDL 4.1 and Mac OS X 10.4.6. I have never had a problem
> > with the stability of either system. I can't answer your questions
> > about about speed without some indication of what you're going to be
> > doing. You get the best performance from your machine when you can
> > accomplish the task at hand. What's the task? What tools do you have
> > available? How well do you know how to use them?
>
> I wonder if the x86 rule apply to macs? You know.. Linux/FreeBSD (in
> this arch,Darwin) for serving, OS X for client. Did you see Ars
> Technica benchmark of Apache/YDL and Apache/OS XServe?
>
> There is also a cow rule as you should not feed your own cow to drink a
> glass of milk everyday That is from the days while windows trolls
> were more "quality" types No, it was said against x86 Linux for home.
>
I have absolutely no idea how to respond.

--
Tom Stiller

PGP fingerprint = 5108 DDB2 9761 EDE5 E7E3
7BDA 71ED 6496 99C0 C7CF

On 2006-04-13, Tom Stiller <> wrote:
> In article <>,
> Ilgaz Ocal < > wrote:
>>
>> There is also a cow rule as you should not feed your own cow to drink a
>> glass of milk everyday That is from the days while windows trolls
>> were more "quality" types No, it was said against x86 Linux for home.
>>
> I have absolutely no idea how to respond.

Moo?

--keith

--
kkeller-
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://wombat.san-francisco.ca.us/cgi-bin/fom
see X- headers for PGP signature information

Eric P. wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm interested in hearing from anyone who's compared the performance of
> Linux (specifically YDL) and Mac OS X (the more current version, the
> better). I want to install each of these systems and check 'em out, and
> I'd like any useful information and interesting observations folks may
> have from their experiences.
>
> Since both systems were born of UNIX, does it make sense to run both on
> a single machine? I'm wondering which of the two systems would be best
> for use on a G4/450 single-processor system. That's the machine I have,
> currently with 640MB of RAM, but I plan on maxing it out sometime soon,
> then changing the graphics card to a GeForce 4 Ti (hope Linux supports
> this!), and later a processor upgrade.
>
> I'm looking for the best performance I can get from my machine in speed
> and stability. Wherever there's a choice, I favor more stability, of
> course. I want to make my system the best it can possibly be for
> Internet use, graphics and sound editing (later including audio
> recording), word processing/spreadsheeting/database work, and gaming. I
> don't ask for much, do I? *L*

If you're talking about pure number-crunching type of performance
(server configurations), Linux is going to win.

If you're talking about usability considerations that will allow you to
get work done (desktop setting), OS X is going to win.

IMHO.

Tim