OK, Explain This to me...

[tgpuckett]

How in the **** does Ubuntu 9.04 run better on my 2.2GHz Santa Rosa MacBook Pro than Leopard does?

Leopard has been extremely buggy for me. Sleeping problems (written off as a "hardware" issue by the Geniuses), hard drive corruption (been through 2 drives, third is starting to look kinda flaky), poorer and poorer battery life, etc. I'm beginning to wonder if the problem lies in the computer hardware or the OS. From what I remember, Tiger was nothing like this.

Not to mention the fact that the hinges are so loose on this thing when I don't have the display all the way open, it closes itself, and the internal display cable is either loose or broken.

So, as soon as 9.04 became available I downloaded the 64-bit version and installed it using BootCamp. Some tinkering to get Apple-specific features working, and I have an extremely stable OS.

If I didn't have an iPod Touch (and pay almost 2-grand for this darn computer that's flaking out after a year and a half). I remember playing with Red Hat 7 and Fedora 1 back in the "old" days and thought: neat toy, but nothing serious. Linux (and Ubuntu) certainly has come a long way.

So if anyone would care to explain why my MacBook Pro is much faster, more efficient, and longer lasting on Ubuntu 9.04 than Apple's latest and greatest Leopard, I would much appreciate it.

That is all.

[aufan19]

As far as speed goes, Ubuntu (and linux in general) have lower system requirements than a lot of operating systems. The recommended amount of RAM for Ubuntu is only 384MB, and it runs very well on 512. Mandriva (another distro) only recommends 256MB. I don't know anything about the design of Leopard, but Apple may have given it higher system requirements than Linux distros generally have, which could explain why Ubuntu runs faster for you.

I also have a MacBook (4,1 model, non-pro) and I am also seeing problems creep up. My computer is only 8 months old. I have put my MacBook to sleep and have come back to find it turned off when I know no one else was anywhere near it, and have had startup problems where the computer will restart itself twice before booting. Applications are also crashing more often. The screen and the keyboard now touch when the laptop is closed, leaving a constant mark on the screen. None of those things happened at first. I hope I don't have any more problems.

[cyberdork33]

Linux is a great OS!

I like OSX too though, and I don't have any of these issues on my iMac5,1 or my MacbookPro4,1. Good Luck!

[Doncr]

If I didn't have an iPod Touch (and pay almost 2-grand for this darn computer that's flaking out after a year and a half).

But that is sooo last year. You need a new computer. Macs are designed to look good, not last.
-----
Disillusioned former Mac fan

[compnut41]

One of the nice things about apple is that they pump a bunch of power into it to run their operating system, when it gets to run something lighter it flies.

And I agree with Doncr, get a new computer you can get something more than strong enough for Ubuntu for cheap because you don't need another OS ;).

[michaelspoonsm]

many many ways ubuntu takes lower system requirements then leopard does, macintosh computers have much higher technical specifications to accommodate leopard then what preinstalled linux computers does
the differant graphic refresh rates are differant
sound refresh rates are similar but differant
the graphic processors in macs are pretty good to accommodate leopard's "special effects"
so before i finish this up lemme give give you a heads up
you have a really, really, good graphics and cpu processors so take advantage of that and get compiz and use alot of special effects because they will work great!!

[michaelspoonsm]

sooooooooo untrue Macintosh computers are not just about looks they are complex in there coding and user ability, but yes apple strives for fantastic gui's, but still they do last because if you ever noticed they update macs with, battery updates, graphic updates, and many more

[maflynn]

Leopard is a big OS, it consumes a lot of resources(too much if you ask me) and as such, its not the quickest cat in the neighborhood, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure why

I'm impressed with jaunty and I'm running the kubuntu flavor, I still like OSX. I've gotten Kubuntu to replace my need for windows and I can easily seeing this replacing the need for a lot of my OSX stuff, i.e., running in kubuntu the majority of time.

I still have some issues with kubuntu that I'm trying to work out, sleep, switching gpu, etc. Minor ones but ones that slow me down. I hate needing to shut my machine down but I also don't want to run it 24x7 either. Sleep is the answer. I may downgrade to 8.04 and see how that is the ability to sleep. I've tried both versions of the nvidia driver and it still doesn't work, but I digress.

All in all, I think ubuntu, particularly kubuntu offers a lot to people and to myself, it provides a slick interface with some nice eye candy. An OS that doesn't require a lot of resources but yet is powerful and stable.

[tgpuckett]

If I could afford a new computer right now, I would have one. I think the QC of Apple's products has declined only recently. As in since the move to Intel. I remember owning a 12" Powerbook, and that thing never had so much as a hiccup. My 1.42GHz G4 Mac mini is the same way. Die-hard reliability.

I don't know if EFI is flaky, or if they've just gotten lazy with Leopard and the new MacBooks, but I had an original MacBook and my current MacBook Pro. Both are (and have been) problem-prone. My girlfriend's MacBook (a newer rev than my old one) has had to have the hinges tightened up several times, had elements of the case replaced, and have the heatsink/fan assembly replaced. Coupled with a HDD failure and a CD-DVD drive that came from the factory misaligned and unable to read a CD.

I am all but done with Apple. Seriously. You pay $2000 for a computer and get something that lasts a year or two?

I am thinking of buying a Dell mini or some other Netbook and an iMac or some other desktop when I can afford one. I have heard that iMacs have much better reliability in the real world (not some fake Consumer Reports magazine test lab).

[TjankMjaster]

I am thinking of buying a Dell mini or some other Netbook and an iMac or some other desktop when I can afford one. I have heard that iMacs have much better reliability in the real world (not some fake Consumer Reports magazine test lab).

Same boat as you. Looking at a netbook for portable computing, with an inexpensive desktop at home for back ups, admin, etc. (so,. a dust collector really...)

I love macs, you can get a basic winders desktop cheaper than a miniMac and make Jaunty or something else the primary partition. Unless you NEED MacOS, seems to me, would be a better option for the $$ anyway.

[maflynn]

I am all but done with Apple. Seriously. You pay $2000 for a computer and get something that lasts a year or two?

I'm going to sound like a fanboy, but I have to disagree. I have had Macs since system 7 and I've not found any marked decline in quality. My unibody MBP has rock solid and I've not had a problem with it, even though it either stays on days on end, or is used every day.

[tgpuckett]

Maflynn:

I respect your opinion, but I don't see how normal anomalies could strike two people a total of three times.

Is it normal for a MacBook Pro's battery to have lost 35% of it's charge in a year and a half? I suppose so, because right before my warranty expired I had Apple look at the battery and they said it was normal. I don't think a battery that lasted for a little over 3 hours now lasts for about 2 if I'm lucky.

The only things that keep me from moving to Ubuntu over OS X are my iTouch and applications I use for photography. Lightroom, Photoshop, etc aren't replaceable on Linux. Sure, the GIMP is there, but there's nothing as good as Lightroom in terms of cataloging photos and handling RAW images, unless there's something I'm unaware of. Added to the fact that the colors on Ubuntu are very cool compared to my calibrated Mac install, and there's no way to calibrate on Linux that I'm aware of.

[maflynn]

Well, my battery in my current MBP is only a few months but my older laptop the battery was much older and easily held a charge. I also know of a number of people who have not had any problems with batteries.

I've been very happy with the quality of apple products which is why I buy them.

I have also been very impressed with Ubuntu, and like you I've used OSX for photography. I use aperture and right now there's nothing in the linux land that seems to compare to the functionality, and power of that app so I boot into OSX for that. I also like to use some iLife apps (iweb) and also rapidweaver - I have a couple of websites I update from time to time.

Overall though I spend most of my time in ubuntu

[tgpuckett]

I'm not sure I could do that---dual-boot, I mean. I have Ubuntu and OS X installed on my MBP, and although Ubuntu has everything I need except for my photography software and iTunes, I find myself in the OS X side more often than not. I guess it's just force of habit.

[cyberdork33]

Added to the fact that the colors on Ubuntu are very cool compared to my calibrated Mac install, and there's no way to calibrate on Linux that I'm aware of.
There are some very old threads here (or in the archived section of the forum) that showed how to get the calibration profiles from OSX and use them in Ubuntu.

[UbuntnSkor]

Maflynn:

I respect your opinion, but I don't see how normal anomalies could strike two people a total of three times.

Is it normal for a MacBook Pro's battery to have lost 35% of it's charge in a year and a half? I suppose so, because right before my warranty expired I had Apple look at the battery and they said it was normal. I don't think a battery that lasted for a little over 3 hours now lasts for about 2 if I'm lucky.

The only things that keep me from moving to Ubuntu over OS X are my iTouch and applications I use for photography. Lightroom, Photoshop, etc aren't replaceable on Linux. Sure, the GIMP is there, but there's nothing as good as Lightroom in terms of cataloging photos and handling RAW images, unless there's something I'm unaware of. Added to the fact that the colors on Ubuntu are very cool compared to my calibrated Mac install, and there's no way to calibrate on Linux that I'm aware of.


I don't know about a replacement for Lightroom (I've never used it), but for raw handling there is UFRaw (Unidentified Flying Raw) which works kinda like camera raw, but with maybe a few less features. It can be used as a Gimp plugin so that when you open a raw file in Gimp it automatically brings up the UFRaw window or as a stand alone gnome program. It can even be used on the command line for batch processing. It can use profiles output from LittleCMS (Little Colour Management System) to embed colour profiles into the output files.

I believe (if I remember correctly) that LittleCMS can also be used to manually calibrate your monitor and create a profile (*.icc file) which can be used to adjust your screen at startup.

There are also some commonly used colour profile files (rgb and cmyk) that can be downloaded and put in a certain folder and they will work with Scribus (a Layout program like InDesign), LittleCMS, Gimp, etc.

I've used Ubuntu and (other Linux flavours) on PCs before and just recently started dual booting Jaunty on my MacBook (4,1). Your post reminded me to install UFRaw. It's available in the Synaptic Package Manager or can be downloaded from the programmer's website.

[skullmunky]

UFRaw is great. I just used it for the first time today, preparing images to go into Gimp for a kind of HDR type setup combining multiple exposure settings for this kind of tricky lighting situation. Fast and clean app. Nice.

On the performance-difference topic: I also just installed Maya on a 2x2 core Mac Pro, and then on an Ubuntu partition as well, to compare. Maybe just a fluke, but the Linux version of Maya had both a more responsive interface (for example, better framerate in heavy scenes and faster switching between panels), as well as better scores on render benchmarks of the same mental ray scene. I'm going to try tomorrow with the 64 bit version of Maya and see how that compares. Long story short, I don't feel so crazy for wanting to run Ubuntu on my Mac :)

Now if I could only match OSX's incredible boot speed. There's got to be some kind of trick, it's just not natural.

[hanzomon4]

Wow.. you sir have a jacked up computer. I go to a school where everyone has a mac (required purchase) and with over one hundred iMacs and at least 50 power macs and mac pros. I've seen people using old g4 powerbooks with leopard and it's smooth as butter. I think you should demand a refund (if you don't need a mac) or a new machine.

[wsonar]

macs aren't flawless I've seen macs lock up for no reason I've seen ipods lock up for no reason

back in the day when they had proprietary hardware they could have been arguably better now there just intel pc's

you can put winxp on a mac you can put leopard on a pc and lnux on both

[skullmunky]

more maya benchmarking fun. I compared Maya 2009 running on a Mac Pro (1,1), 4 core, 2GB, with Ubunut 9.04 64 bit vs OSX 10.4.

Test 1: Mental Ray test scene from ZooRender. Personally I don't believe most of the numbers on their site, but I don't have a better benchmark to offer, so I used this. Ubuntu came out ahead by about 20 seconds, close to a 1/3 speed increase.

Test 2: stormy ocean animation. I rendered an animation using the stormy ocean example. Both came out exactly the same, around 3 hours. Interesting, I thought 64 bit Maya would have an edge there.

Test 3: heavy polygon scenes. I started duplicating a lot of high-poly spheres, to see what would happen. Viewport framerate goes down pretty equivalently, though worse in OSX. Around 1 million polys, OSX felt like around 1 fps, while Ubuntu was still getting 2 or 3 fps.

In high poly renders, Ubuntu gained more of a significant edge than with the mental ray render. I did renders in increments of around 1,000,000 polys up to about 10,000,000. Over about 3 million, OSX just hard froze after starting the render.

How much does 64 bit have to do with it? I have no idea. With only 2GB of memory anyway, the advantage of 64 bit addressing shouldn't matter. Perhaps performance is better in Leopard, too. I don't think I can conclude that Maya runs better in Linux than OSX just from this, but what it does say is that it is possible for the OS to make a difference on the same hardware.

[cyberdork33]

back in the day when they had proprietary hardware they could have been arguably better now there just intel pc's
They were always PC's... they just used a different CPU architecture. One that other non-Macs also used.

[fbugnon]

I've been running OSX and Ubuntu on my MacBook Pro-1,1 for a while and (for many reasons) I wish I could use Ubuntu more often, but I still haven't figure it out a way to make the touchpad work as precisely as it does in OSX and I still haven't took the time to reconfigure it (set up users and a shared /home HFS partition with the same UUID) in order to open and modify all my documents from wherever I boot.

Hardware-wise, I'm very happy with my almost 4 years-old Mac. I've added a bit of ram and changed the HD to get more space, but never used the 3-year Apple-care plan that came with it (school-package), even though I carry it every day from home to work.

As personal-case mention only: -my sister has a Lenovo-laptop (2 years-old) that had the keyboard replaced under warranty and CD drive that broke after it was over; -my father has a Gateway-laptop (1,5 year-old) with a broken Ethernet card/connector that forces a reboot on every shutdown request, I can tell you how happy he is. ;-) . Aggravating factor to be considered: they rarely use their computer as laptops but rather as fixed-location Desktops...