how is ubuntu so much faster than vista for me?

[mamamia88]

i was just wondering i used to run vista and it was so slow. i think it was my video driver which before i installed it it was plenty fast. people say it's all the "bling" but with compiz enabled ubuntu has even more "bling" and how is a nvidia driver made for vista slower than the the ones built into ubuntu?

[meeples]

yea for some reason vista is very needy on the system requirements front...

[swoll1980]

i was just wondering i used to run vista and it was so slow. i think it was my video driver which before i installed it it was plenty fast. people say it's all the "bling" but with compiz enabled ubuntu has even more "bling" and how is a nvidia driver made for vista slower than the the ones built into ubuntu?

I think it was a collaboration between Microsoft, and hardware manufactures to sell new computers. When they found out that people were not willing to buy a new computer, just to upgrade their OS, the wheels feel off.

[Icehuck]

I think it was a collaboration between Microsoft, and hardware manufactures to sell new computers. When they found out that people were not willing to buy a new computer, just to upgrade their OS, the wheels feel off.

If it really happened we could finally ditch the 32 bit machines and we can all move forward to 64 bit. We can some what move forward in technology although 64 bit was around a long time ago.

[NightwishFan]

Vista tries to do full window composition I think.

I believe Compiz-Fusion only renders areas of the screen that update (libxdamage?). Vista is always rendering even inactive windows, which is murder on an integrated chip, and bad for battery power.

Vista is overall better than Xp though, so I would just disable Aero, and get rid of unneeded programs and services, and it should be fairly fast. If you have only about 1GB of ram, disable superfetch. It will make the desktop log in slower, and some programs will start slower, but game performance will improve. (I had a game that would crash unless I disabled superfetch, that is how I found out it pokes its nose where it does not belong)

[WatchingThePain]

Vista is a resource hog.
Xp pro had much lower specs and in my opinion was better than Vista.
I suppose the well informed did a "Vista bypass" and went from XP pro to Linux.

Vista ER..bleep, bleep he's flatlining, We need to perform a bypass, hook him up to Linux.

[NightwishFan]

Vista is a resource hog.
Xp pro had much lower specs and in my opinion was better than Vista.
I suppose the well informed did a "Vista bypass" and went from XP pro to Linux.

Xp to Linux is good, however, I would take Vista anyday.. Xp is murder. Unless you game, and Vista is worse for that but better overall. At least I do not have to run as root the entire time.

[swoll1980]

Xp to Linux is good, however, I would take Vista anyday.. Xp is murder. Unless you game, and Vista is worse for that but better overall. At least I do not have to run as root the entire time.

Why would you have to run as root in XP?

[MaxIBoy]

It's got to do with DRM. When you install a powerful graphics card, you are now able to view "premium content," so all kinds of encryption is now done to prevent piracy. This design will have a long-lasting impact on the usabillity of all computer systems, not just the ones that run Windows, because so many features have to be done in hardware. This crap is making computers slower, more expensive, buggier, and less easily developed, and it's doing this for everyone. And guess what? It was circumvented soon after Vista's release, so it's useless anyway. Nice going, Microsoft! (Source: http://www.cypherpunks.to/~peter/vista.pdf)

On a low-end GPU, the manufacturer can convert one of the pipelines to decryption, but in a high-end GPU, this would be too much of a competitive disadvantage in unrealistic performance benchmarks, so it isn't done. Result, a $50 card outperforms a $300 card when viewing video. This was probabably part of the problem.

[Polygon]

Why would you have to run as root in XP?

he means the administrator account, and yes its required. A lot of programs do not work properly if you are using a non admin account. Vista attemps to solve this problem by redirecting files that try to be saved in a place that is not writable to a standard user to a folder in their user directory.

even then, its still iffy.

[swoll1980]

he means the administrator account, and yes its required. A lot of programs do not work properly if you are using a non admin account.
even then, its still iffy.

Really? I've never had a problem with it. What programs are we talking about?

[SomeGuyDude]

Just throw on the Win7 beta without Aero. Very snappy, even on my Oldy McOld Toshiba.

[LookTJ]

he means the administrator account, and yes its required. A lot of programs do not work properly if you are using a non admin account. Vista attemps to solve this problem by redirecting files that try to be saved in a place that is not writable to a standard user to a folder in their user directory.

even then, its still iffy.
well what about surunner?

[NightwishFan]

It's got to do with DRM. When you install a powerful graphics card, you are now able to view "premium content," so all kinds of encryption is now done to prevent piracy. This design will have a long-lasting impact on the usabillity of all computer systems, not just the ones that run Windows, because so many features have to be done in hardware. This crap is making computers slower, more expensive, buggier, and less easily developed, and it's doing this for everyone. And guess what? It was circumvented soon after Vista's release, so it's useless anyway. Nice going, Microsoft! (Source: http://www.cypherpunks.to/~peter/vista.pdf)

On a low-end GPU, the manufacturer can convert one of the pipelines to decryption, but in a high-end GPU, this would be too much of a competitive disadvantage in unrealistic performance benchmarks, so it isn't done. Result, a $50 card outperforms a $300 card when viewing video. This was probabably part of the problem.

Although I believe that will come to pass shortly, I do not think that is entirely true yet.


Really? I've never had a problem with it. What programs are we talking about?

Any program that "requires" administrative account, and SHOULD not need to. Such as most games. That is not the fault of Microsoft entirely, however it is a big mess, and they were forced to create "registry virtualization" and other such technology in order for Vista to remain secure, and not bug you with a popup all the time.

[swoll1980]

Any program that "requires" administrative account, and SHOULD not need to. Such as most games. That is not the fault of Microsoft entirely, however it is a big mess, and they were forced to create "registry virtualization" and other such technology in order for Vista to remain secure, and not bug you with a popup all the time.

I would say, if a game developer required you to use the root account to play a game, then this is, in no way, the fault of the OS.

[Mehall]

I would say, if a game developer required you to use the root account to play a game, then this is, in no way, the fault of the OS.

Yes, but when MS themselves had apps that required you to be an Administrator (Visual Studio pre-2005 comes to mind, among others) then how can you expect external app creators to be any better?

[Thelasko]

Really? I've never had a problem with it. What programs are we talking about?

I have to second that. The only thing that I've noticed had this bug was Windows Update. Ironically, I think this was fixed in SP3.

[NightwishFan]

The game should not require administrative privileges. That is a very poor developing method.

[WatchingThePain]

Really? I've never had a problem with it. What programs are we talking about?

Agreed.
That's a new one.

All this brings back nightmares.

Thank you Lord for giving us Linux.

[Bölvaður]

The game should not require administrative privileges. That is a very poor developing method.

could it be because the game needs some parts of the system that overwise would be locked?
the only thing I know is that my brother uses admin account and user account but is unable to play some games on the user account.

[swoll1980]

Yes, but when MS themselves had apps that required you to be an Administrator (Visual Studio pre-2005 comes to mind, among others) then how can you expect external app creators to be any better?

Couldn't(if you could run it as a normal user)use visual studio to write a program that could cripple the system?

[NightwishFan]

No Linux games I play require root to run. I would not use them if they did. Needing Admin to INSTALL makes sense, but not to play. Being admin all the time is like running through the african savanna while rinsing yourself with sheeps blood... (Kinda :D)

[geoken]

Couldn't(if you could run it as a normal user)use visual studio to write a program that could cripple the system?

You could write a program to cripple the system in Notepad if you wanted to. What does that have to do with anything?

[geoken]

It's got to do with DRM. When you install a powerful graphics card, you are now able to view "premium content," so all kinds of encryption is now done to prevent piracy. This design will have a long-lasting impact on the usabillity of all computer systems, not just the ones that run Windows, because so many features have to be done in hardware. This crap is making computers slower, more expensive, buggier, and less easily developed, and it's doing this for everyone. And guess what? It was circumvented soon after Vista's release, so it's useless anyway. Nice going, Microsoft! (Source: http://www.cypherpunks.to/~peter/vista.pdf)



This is complete FUD and primarily based on a Whitepaper written by a guy who admitted to not having done any testing while his claims were completely discredited.

The DRM subsystem doesn't even initiate itself until specific apps are started, and even then it doesn't run when the specific content isn't using HDCP. Essentially, the only time any of this stuff runs is during blu-ray playback and is completely dormant the rest of the time.

[swoll1980]

You could write a program to cripple the system in Notepad if you wanted to. What does that have to do with anything?

Would you be able to run it w/o root privileges?

[hessiess]

At least Vista has file permissions and tries to rectify programs which store there config files in there install dir(due to windows being a single-user OS origonally). which is more than can be said of XP.

[mamamia88]

so far i haven't really gotten a answer why vista is such a hog. with all my compiz effect enabled and running 2 browser windows, a terminal, a game of poker, and a word processor all at the same times never seem to take up more than 60% of my processing power or ram. on the other hand with my pc idle on vista i would always consistently have 95% of my ram in use and the cpus at about 60% are you telling me that aero is more of a hog than compiz? all it is is transparency right

[swoll1980]

so far i haven't really gotten a answer why vista is such a hog. with all my compiz effect enabled and running 2 browser windows, a terminal, a game of poker, and a word processor all at the same times never seem to take up more than 60% of my processing power or ram. on the other hand with my pc idle on vista i would always consistently have 95% of my ram in use and the cpus at about 60% are you telling me that aero is more of a hog than compiz? all it is is transparency right

Aero is a fully composited, 3d accelerated desktop. There's way more than just transparency going on there.

[LightB]

Vista tries to do full window composition I think.

I believe Compiz-Fusion only renders areas of the screen that update (libxdamage?). Vista is always rendering even inactive windows, which is murder on an integrated chip, and bad for battery power.

Vista is overall better than Xp though, so I would just disable Aero, and get rid of unneeded programs and services, and it should be fairly fast. If you have only about 1GB of ram, disable superfetch. It will make the desktop log in slower, and some programs will start slower, but game performance will improve. (I had a game that would crash unless I disabled superfetch, that is how I found out it pokes its nose where it does not belong)

Slow UI isn't where it ends for Vista, the IO handling is fundamentally slow. The best example of that is copying an atypically large number of small files. And don't anyone bother refuting that with baseless anecdotes because I've tried it myself and have read others' evidence to support the fact.

[LightB]

Aero is a fully composited, 3d accelerated desktop. There's way more than just transparency going on there.

It does the walk of shame against compiz though.

[mamamia88]

what does that mean that aero is running nonstop and compiz only takes effect when you activate an effect?

[WatchingThePain]

what does that mean that aero is running nonstop and compiz only takes effect when you activate an effect?

My Compiz runs all the time.
And I would not swap it for Aero even if you paid me.
If any one likes Aero then it's different strokes for different folks.

[geoken]

It does the walk of shame against compiz though.

Depends on what measure you're using to gauge success. Obviously in a show case of effects compiz comes out on top, but when you begin looking at everyday usage aero starts to look better.

Right off the bat, the fact that it renders minimized windows makes it orders of magnitude more useful than compiz. All the flashy window management features in compiz are lost on me because I minimize windows I don't use so scale and panel thumbnails are borderline useless. On top of that, there's no room to extend this in other apps. For example, all the major Windows docks support live window previews because aero is always rendering those windows and making them available via a simple api.

Also, you don't hear about the video playback issues that were common with compiz.

IMO, a better comparison would be aero and the KDE 4 compositing effects.

[Spiritous]

Possibly the fact Vista uses 90 different fonts, Ubuntu has only 3, so far as i know?

[geoken]

Also, I think people need to realize that aero, in a very 'linuxy' manner does one thing and one thing only. It composits the desktop and provides api's so applications can leverage this. To truly gauge it's abilities you need to look at apps which have been built on top of aero (ie. Switcher which I consider superior to Scale).

[MaxIBoy]

This is complete FUD and primarily based on a Whitepaper written by a guy who admitted to not having done any testing while his claims were completely discredited.

The DRM subsystem doesn't even initiate itself until specific apps are started, and even then it doesn't run when the specific content isn't using HDCP. Essentially, the only time any of this stuff runs is during blu-ray playback and is completely dormant the rest of the time.I stand corrected. Thanks.

[geoken]

I stand corrected. Thanks.

Don't blame yourself. The whitepaper sounded pretty convincing and the guy seemed to know what he was talking about. It really made it's rounds before people who actually coded the subsystems started blogging that the actual OS worked nothing like what the guy was describing. At that point the guy who wrote the paper was forced to admit that he speculated on how the system actually works in the absence of actually testing it.

[LightB]

Depends on what measure you're using to gauge success. Obviously in a show case of effects compiz comes out on top, but when you begin looking at everyday usage aero starts to look better.

Right off the bat, the fact that it renders minimized windows makes it orders of magnitude more useful than compiz.

To what end? Effects are effects, aero serves no different purpose than compiz and refuting that is rationalizing.


Also, you don't hear about the video playback issues that were common with compiz.

Depends completely on the video driver.

[Newuser1111]

Xp to Linux is good, however, I would take Vista anyday.. Xp is murder. Unless you game, and Vista is worse for that but better overall. At least I do not have to run as root the entire time.Vista is the same as XP for gaming.

[swoll1980]

Vista is the same as XP for gaming.

I can run games in xp fine. I can't even run the Vista buy it's self hardly, so no, they are not the same. I have a P4 2.6 1 GiB RAM

[geoken]

To what end? Effects are effects, aero serves no different purpose than compiz and refuting that is rationalizing.


Aero can do a lot of things outside of the effects Vista ships with. My point is that a comparison of the two, with similar effects enabled (ie. Scale vs Switcher), makes aero come out on top (at least on my computer).


Depends completely on the video driver.


I realize that. My point is that if we're going to deride aero for excessive resource usage we should, in fairness, also point out the stability improvements that were gotten through it's 'composit everything' approach.

[Calmatory]

Vista is a resource hog.
Xp pro had much lower specs and in my opinion was better than Vista.
I suppose the well informed did a "Vista bypass" and went from XP pro to Linux.

XP had just as HIGH requirements as Vista does nowadays, when XP was released in 2001.

XP is faster than Ubuntu. For my laptop using Vista is faster than Ubuntu, this is mainly due to bad linux port of Skype (Yeah cry me a river about "It's not Ubuntu's fault!", please) and some inefficient music playing software.

Working port of Ventrilo and Foobar2000 please and let's see again.

[NightwishFan]

Faster how? Xp uses the hard disk even if you have heaps of RAM so by design there is no way the XP kernel overall is "faster". If you mean logging in? Sure, but not by much, and Xp finalizes the login while the desktop already appears. Program execution? Windows programs are far lighter, and third party ones should be about the same. Why don't you index a drive, copy a 1gb file, and render a movie with FFMPEG and see if your desktop effects still render in real time on an integrated card? Don't worry when you get that little hourglass and have to wait while Xp pages all that data, with 2gb of ram free that it is not using. Ah, yeah and is all your software 64-bit?

Vista now, I can believe it is faster, at least with more than 1gb of ram, since it preloads data. Linux preload is more passive, but at least it doesn't get in your face.

[mamamia88]

i'm pretty sure it's just my video driver because when i reinstalled it it was alot faster until the point i installed the driver. too bad they haven't released a new driver yet after 2 years

[MaxIBoy]

Are you using Microsoft's driver or the driver from nVidia.com? Because nVidia releases new drivers more often than bi-yearly.

[mamamia88]

Are you using Microsoft's driver or the driver from nVidia.com? Because nVidia releases new drivers more often than bi-yearly.

i was using the one of hp's website for my model

[MaxIBoy]

Find your model on nVidia's website. Drivers get released quite often-- the most recent came out on April 2!

[mamamia88]

cool but i already uninstalled vista for windows 7 beta so i won't need it now

[MaxIBoy]

There's a version for Windows 7 too. I guarantee it'll be better than Microsoft's drivers.

Whatever, unless you're a gamer, you don't need the absolute best drivers.

[mamamia88]

i'm not too worried i use ubuntu almost exclusively but it's less hassle leaving it on then deleting it and restoring it if i need it