Ubuntu 24.04 yields a 20% advantage over Windows 11 on Ryzen7 Framework laptop | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu 24.04 yields a 20% advantage over Windows 11 on Ryzen7 Framework laptop

phoronix.com

51 pointsmarcodiego32 comments

2012 Ivy Bridge MacBook Air with 8 GB RAM:

Recent macOS versions have become slower and slower each year. Among those unsupported releases that can still run via OCLP, it is easy to notice all the newly changed stuff because those start and react much slower. Every interaction with, e.g., the control center or the new system settings is just a pain. Also, the system + my login items would occupy ~4GB RAM at startup.

With Ubuntu, the system feels like new. It has a lower base load of only 1.5 GB RAM at startup, and with zram + dynamically sized swap files, the system has much more legroom to multitask. Everything feels fast again, and I don't need to use a 3rd party tool that disables Intel's Turbo Boost to keep the fans quiet. The overall load on the system is so much lower that even with full boost clocks, it needs much longer to spin the fans up.

>with zram + dynamically sized swap files

Any guides to how to set up that as painless as possible?

On my dual boot machine:

-Windows 11: 60-240 seconds before I am connected to WiFi and can open a browser to my home page

-Ubuntu 23: no delay, it just starts.

Windows 11 isn’t that slow. Are you booting from a HDD?

He did say he’s dual booting, so whichever the boot media is, it would affect both OSes equally.

You can boot from different disks.

I believe this is likely the case. Can't say for windows 11, but windows 10 (and specifically Windows Defender) would hammer my hdd so hard the entire os would become unusable for minutes at a time

I have a large folder with stuff. It took over 30 seconds to open that folder because of windows defender. Then it would work fine for a bit, but that didn't last. I had to start excluding large folders from windows defender to actually use the computer.

Your Windows box has a bad driver or something. That's an excessively long boot time even for slow hardware.

Similar, though less experience here. Connecting to wifi (compared to Linux) feels like it takes forever, though I doubt I ever experience more than a 30 second delay.

From which point on? After login? I guess a fair comparison would need the exact same reference point before the OS is involved, e.g. once post is done or you pressed the power button.

I have a duel boot with windows 10/linux mint, and for me windows boots faster.

Also there is no delay with wifi, once it starts that all works immediately on both OS's.

I dual boot as well and don't have any delays on either Win 11 or Ubuntu 23. I'm running a high-end Ryzen 7950x though with a PCIe 5 SSD and 64 GB of ram.

My long boot times are with POST-phase DDR5 memory training. Takes around a minute before I can get to the bootloader. I have tried many BIOS settings to try to cut that part down but haven't been successful (usually results in a crash).

Another datapoint, I also have a Framework Ryzen 13 and I don't recall seeing delays for my dual boot setup either to Win 11 or Ubuntu 23. But, I think I do sometimes have DDR5 training lag times as it's also a 64 GB system.

I basically have the same setup (7950x, 64GB of ram, but pcie 4 nvme ssd).

Without EXPO turned on the length of the POST-phase is basically zero when I turn on memory context restore.

But with EXPO turned on my PC basically won't boot (as in, I'm too impatient to wait more than an hour).

So I just keep EXPO turned of, as 4800Mhz vs 6000Mhz RAM in practice doesn't make much of a difference (for most tasks).

EDIT: nevermind, I just tried enabling EXPO again, and it seems like the memory context restore option now even works with EXPO enabled, so POST is still very short. I'll keep it on and see how it goes.

I def use EXPO at 5600 I think and have tried context restore without success; but I also have custom power limits set on the CPU to reduce the TDP but I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it.

I also lowered the TDP, but I just used the "eco mode" that my motherboard provides, which either lowers the TDP to 105W or 65W.

I also read somewhere that one needs to POST multiple times for the context restore to kick in, which could make sense in my case, as I left it on with EXPO disabled and now it does not memory train any more even with EXPO disabled (at least the POST screen is only visible for like a second and then my OS boots up).

But when I set up my system I spent much time fiddling around with the BIOS, so I'm not 100% sure if it is memory context restore that solved this in my case.

The main thing I like is that video performance is good on Linux. I can run multiple games and multiple movies at once, on multiple displays, and everything runs butter smooth.

I've spend a dozen hours over the years trying to get even a basic game and video to play smoothly on Windows. Tried different video players, tried all manners of output plugins and settings, tried boosting priorities and assigning cores, tried so much. It never works well. Even low bitrate small video stutters and lags badly, and 1080p video is unwatchably far behind all too often. Horrific disaster.

I have multiple monitors and Linux lets me actually enjoy them. Thanks Linux.

Also I booted up my desktop recent to Windows & power consumption was ~160 watts. I have done some tuning admittedly, but on Linux I can be ~102W sitting on desktop (although something went wrong a couple months ago & I can't get my gpu's mclk to go down haha, still, 120w). Thanks Linux for saving me a ton of power.

Are you running your DE/WM on X11 or Wayland?

Wayland, using wlroots-based Sway.

I've had this kind of windows performance too. It stopped with a newer GPU at the time.

Before I got a new GPU the only solution I found was too turn off hardware acceleration on the video player.

Stuff like this is why the Windows market share is decreasing. I think it's shortsighted of Microsoft to focus on increasing revenue per user at the cost of slowly bleeding customers instead of focusing on building an operating system so good no one would want to migrate from. They could have a centuries long monopoly on office productivity computing.

When I first started with desktop Linux (2006) you had to make serious compromises to make it work, and the performance on 'modern' hardware was about equal to Windows. Now I feel like I have to make compromises in usability/performance to run Windows compared to Linux.

I wonder how much of this is due to the different compilers and ABIs used to compile the benchmark programs and how much of this is the OS and the environment.

Would be interesting to see how much more speed Linux can still gain with mitigations=off

Ubuntu's GUI is bloated and unusable for anyone with a functioning brain that's used a computer in the last 20 years. It's where the avant-garde UX designers went to die.

Unfortunately swapping out desktops is not nearly as easy as it is with stock Debian.

Debian is no better. Setting a static IP if you install a graphical environment is broken and takes much research to resolve, because somehow it's considered normal to install multiple hidden, poorly documented network managers by default that conflict with each other and override with DHCP in this hodgepodge of an OS.

What's your preferred stock distro? (or custom)

FreeBSD

If I was to be fair, it does everything else that any other Linux distro does, apart from Steam without pain.

How is Ubuntu's GUI bloated (and unusable)?

> Unfortunately swapping out desktops is not nearly as easy as it is with stock Debian.

...why not? It's been a while, but I'm 90% sure I started from a stock GNOME install and one `apt-get install i3wm` later I could pick i3 from the login screen and it worked.

... and still had a few GB of GNOME cruft on your HDD.

There is no good way to completely remove the default desktop, or not install it in the first place.

Ah, that could be; I admit I never bothered to try and remove the original DE. I kinda thought you could remove the metapackage, but I wouldn't be shocked if it left some cruft. I'm pretty sure the "not install it in the first place" path is possible, though, if less obvious; I seem to recall that the minimalist setups I've seen actually started with the server ISO and then added Xorg to it. Regardless, I'm happy to agree that Ubuntu doesn't lend itself to this use as well as some alternatives.

> started with the server ISO and then added Xorg to it

That is a clever idea.

Unfortunately removing GNOME from standard Ubuntu is like trying to put the genie back in the bottle. They have built up too much around it with hard dependencies.

The best way to swap desktops is to install the correct Ubuntu flavour from the start, i.e. Kubuntu, Xubuntu or Lubuntu to avoid those problems.

I am quite happy with Regolith Desktop [0] installed on top of standard Ubuntu. Gives you a nice tilling window manager based desktop without fiddling with config files for hours.

[0] https://regolith-desktop.com/

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