Best Linux Distro for 3D Performance

There is one question all new Linux users ask themselves at one point or another:

Which Linux distro do I want to use?

The answer to the question is different for everyone and varies depending on what you are doing with your Linux box. One thing I think many users fail to consider (or perhaps don't care about) is the level of 3D performance their distro gets. You may think that your choice of distribution does not matter in this area, but you will soon see it very much does.

The Hardware: While my hardware is not fastest in the world it is decently quick. Processor - Intel p9700 2.8ghz Dual Core, RAM - 4gigs of DDR3 1066, Video Card: nVidia 260m with 1gig DDR3 dedicated memory (Running the latest stable nVidia driver 256.53).

The Software: I used my favorite OpenGL benchmarks made by Unigine Company. The distros I am going to compare are:

• Ubuntu 10.04 (Pinguy) - Gnome
  
• Ubuntu 10.10 Beta - Gnome
  
• Linux Mint Rolling Release (Debian Based) - Gnome
  
• Chakra 0.2.1 (Arch Linux Based) - KDE
  
• Fedora 13 - Gnome
  
• Mandriva 2010.1 - KDE
  
• OpenSUSE 11.3 - KDE
  
• PCLinuxOS 2010.07 - KDE
  
• Sabayon 5.3 (Gentoo Based) - KDE
  

All of the tests where run on clean, fully updated install of each distribution. They use the stock kernel each of the distributions provides. Desktop effects where turned off in all cases.

The Results:
Well, being a math guy, I firmly believe the numbers speak for themselves. So here are the results of the three benchmarks (higher is better - click on image to enlarge):








As you can see the scores of most of the Linux distros are fairly close (within 3% of the number one), with one exception: Ubuntu. It appears that of all the wonderful improvements Canonical has been making to Ubuntu, 3D performance is not one of them (10.10 scored higher than 10.04, but only by a small amount). It is hard to get the exact numbers by reading a histogram so here are the scores in numerical form:


Across all three tests Chakra scored the highest (With PCLinuxOS and Sabayon in close second and third). Ubuntu 10.04 was at the very bottom (over 10% behind Chakra). While I think Ubuntu is a great distro it appears that if you are a Linux Gamer, you are better off using a non-Ubuntu distro.

~Jeff Hoogland
Please note while these benchmark scores presented are accurate to the best of my abilities, they only represent my personal hardware and software configurations. Your results on your own system(s) may vary (and if they do, please share them!).

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Crossover, Bordeaux, Cedega VS Vanilla Wine

A question I have fielded more then a couple times in the Wine section of the Ubuntu Forums is

What is the difference between commercial Wine products and vanilla Wine?

There are three main commercial Wine products: Bordeaux, Cedega, and Crossover. There are a few distinct differences between the commercial Wine products and the FOSS Wine.

Support:
One of the largest benefits to using a paid for Wine product is that not only are you paying for software, you are also paying for support of said software. What this means is that if an application that is suppose to function, doesn't work properly - You will have a real live person to help you debug the issue. While support for Cedega is somewhat lacking, Bordeaux and Crossover have fantastic support staff.

GUI/Automated Installer:
All three of the commercial Wine applications provide a GUI/automated installer for installing applications. This makes it much easier for new users (and faster for experienced users) to configure applications properly under Wine. Time is money as they say.

Added Application Support:
Commercial Wine products have added pieces of code that allow some applications to function better than they do under vanilla Wine. Notably under Cedega is a superior DirectX API that allows for better FPS under a few titles (as well as running Crysis). The primary piece of code Crossover adds to Wine is their custom HTML engine. This adds better functionality to Internet Explorer, Steam, and other web-based Windows applications. Bordeaux builds Wine with a few extra patches to fix bugs, as well as support for the pulse audio sound server.

Regression Resistance:
Ever had an application working perfectly under the latest beta Wine release and then have it magically stop working for some reason or another when Wine updates? That is called a regression. Commercial Wine products are tested to ensure that all of your applications that already work, will continue to do so with future releases.

Cost:
Ah, and now the the primary reason that is always brought up whenever someone mentions any sort of commercial Wine product: The Cost. I must say, my absolute favorite response is something along the lines of:

"Why would you pay for software to use on your free operating system! That goes against the very nature of Linux!"

You know what else goes against "the very nature of Linux"? Trying to run Windows applications. Odds are you paid for that Windows application as well, so if you are going to support application development on a platform you no longer use - Why not support it on your platform of choice as well? None of the products are terribly expensive. Bordeaux starts at 20$, Crossover at 40$, and Cedega starts at 15$ (but is subscription based).

If perhaps I have persuaded you to invest one of these products and you are confused on which of the three is best for you, check out my Cedega VS Crossover comparison and my Bordeaux 2.0.4 review.

~Jeff Hoogland

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Chakra Linux - Distro Review

Taking a bit of a break from the many Ubuntu derivatives I have been playing with of the late, I came across Chakra Linux 0.2.1 on distrowatch's feed late last week. The Chakra project started off as a derivative of Arch Linux. It was a modular KDE Live CD with some extra tool sets to make setting up and using Arch Linux less of a hassle.


Notice the careful usage of the word was in my last sentence. The current alpha build you can download of Chakra is in a transitional phase between being simply an Arch Linux tool set and becoming it's own full fledged distro. I'll discuss what exactly this means in a few moments, for now lets take a look at using the LiveCD and installing the operating system.

Chakra currently comes in LiveCD format that is a free 725~ meg download. After I ripped the image to a CD and restarted my computer the Chakra disc loaded right up. I must say for an Alpha release I was very impressed with how much polish the start up already contained. Before the system actually boots you are presented with two different primary boot options:

• Boot with all Free Drivers
• Boot with non-Free Drivers

My system contains an nVidia graphics chip, so selecting "non-Free Drivers" caused the Live CD to install the closed source nVidia drivers automatically - this is something I personally like - if you are a FOSS Extremist selecting "all Free Drivers" will use the nv driver for an nVidia graphics card (both of which auto detected and configured my monitor resolution to it's correct 1680x1050).

When the system finally boots up you are presented with a fairly standard KDE 4.x desktop:

If you look closely at the above screen shot you will notice two files containing some very useful information. The first is a packages files that contains a list of all the packages preinstalled on the live system, as well as their version numbers. The second is a Passwords.txt that lists the default password for the live user and the root account on the live disc.

The Chakra installer has got to be the best looking Linux installer I have ever used:


I think my favorite part about it is the sleek looking globe you choose your time zone from:


The installer worked flawlessly for me, however I had already partitioned off space for Chakra when I installed another distro. I mention this because another reviewer said he had issues with the disk setup part of the installer. After the install finished I rebooted my system so I could stop using the LiveCD and start installing things. When my system came back online I was happy to see that the nVidia drivers had also been installed during the installation and my KWin desktop effects where working like a charm.

The default software selection Chakra ships with is kinda sad, no music player, no torrent client, no screen shot program, no image viewer and no office make very slim pickings. If you head to the CLI (pacman currently) or CInstall (GUI interface for Pacman) to try and resolve this issue you will notice that many of your common Linux packages are nowhere to be found. This is because as I said before, Chakra is in a transitional phase. Have no fear though! Just a download away, hosted on the Chakra homepage, are piles of "click n run" installers. The "click n run" installers work fantastically and once they are integrated into Chakra's package management system I think they will rival even DPKG. After you download a "click n run" installer, which will be either .cb or .tar.xz extension, you simply double click on the file and it will ask for your password before installing the package and any dependencies it may require. I installed both Firefox and OpenOffice in this manner and they worked with zero issues.

I only have a few small complaints about this current release of Chakra and I am sure they will be resolved long before the distro reaches a 1.0 release. The first is that even though my system does not contain bluetooth capabilities, the KDE bluetooth widget was loaded. The second is that as with most KDE distros, the built in network manager worked very poorly (even though it is the new plasma widget). My third and final issue, is that even though the nVidia drivers installed the nvidia-settings package automatically, this package requires GTK to function. Meaning it failed to load until I installed the gtk2 package via pacman.

Even though Chakra is a very young distribution, it has quickly become my favorite non-Ubuntu based distro. I think we will see some great things from the Chakra team before a 1.0 release of the distribution. This is definitely one worth trying if you are looking for a new distro the play around with.

~Jeff Hoogland

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The Key to a Successful Linux Conversion

People are resistant to change. This is a fact and it is not going to change any time soon. Because of this they will not want their entire computer to change on them all at once. An important fact that a lot Linux Advocates miss is that the conversion to Linux starts on Windows or OSX.

A beautiful things about FOSS is that a good deal of the applications run on Windows, OSX, and Linux. The key to a successful Linux conversion is slowly replacing the productivity software a person uses on their operating system with FOSS alternatives. To most a computer is simply a tool. Meaning if a person is not able to accomplish their task(s) using the FOSS software then maybe Linux is not such a good idea. If this turns out to be the case, reverting back to the old software they used before is as simple as reinstalling an application (instead of reinstalling an operating system). If a person is able to use the FOS applications with out issues (and I've found most times they can) then your conversion is half over.

Once they become accustomed to using Firefox, OpenOffice, The GIMP, and other wonderful FOS applications changing the operating system these run on is simply a minor inconvenience (Most people don't even know what an operating system is, many think "Office" and "Windows" are the same thing). Finally when you do change the operating system on the computer to Linux, do your best to setup the GUI to look similar to the operating system that was on the system previously (Zorin 3 has skins that allow it to look WinXP, Windows 7, and OSX fairly well). If there are enough similarities most users will be able to make the change without complaint.

What do you think the key is to someone being able to successfully make the jump to Linux?

~Jeff Hoogland

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Windows vs Ubuntu Release Cycle

I started writing this article but then felt it's point could be better represented in comic form (click to enlarge):


While it does not address how all Linux distributions release, I think you may get my point. Most people fall into one of the following for their operating system upgrades:

• Upgrade to New Release Every 6 monthsish (Fedora isn't always on time)
• Upgrade to a new LTS every two years
• Upgrade to a new Windows version... Well, whenever the next one comes out!
• Upgrade Windows? Pff, XP is support till 2020!
• Upgrade your operating system? I use a rolling release distro!
  

What is your preferred release cycle for a operating system?

~Jeff Hoogland

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LiveText - A Cross Platform Online Education System

In the last couple months I have posted my disgust about two different online education systems that are being used at various colleges around the United States. My dislike for these systems stems from the fact that even though they are web based, they do not adhere to Web Standards. This means that they are not fully accessible on FOS operating systems as they should be.

Too often in the world in which we live only the negative things in life get attention drawn to them. That is why today I would like to talk about an online education system that is accessible to all students, not just those running Microsoft Windows. The service is called LiveText. Now while LiveText is not FOSS it does function (as all sites should) with an FOS browser. In fact if you look under their FAQ Firefox is their recommend browser for viewing the website.

LiveText provides all the key functions you need from an online education system:

• Turning in Assignments
• Grading Assignments
• Discussion Boards
• File Downloads/Hosting (for syllabus and the such)

LiveText also has a fairly decent online document creator, that largely resembles Google Docs, so students can create files right in their browser. In addition to all that I listed above LiveText allows you to easily create an "e-portfolio" of all the documents you have assembled on the website.

So if you are an educator looking for a platform to teach your online class through (or an administrator at a school that make the decision for many) I implore you to choose LiveText or another system that supports all operating systems (Not just those paying a Windows Tax).

~Jeff Hoogland

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Eight Linux Tech Tips for Beginners

If you are someone who is diving into Linux for the first time it can be a somewhat daunting task learning all the ins and outs of the operating system. We are all beginners at one point or another. The following is a list of tidbits and tips I have learned over my years working with Linux that will help you learn/maintain your Linux based operating system.

1.) If you can't find what you are looking for - ask. Odds are the Linux distribution you are trying has a community forum where you can ask a question, if you are looking for something distro-neutral LinuxQuestions.org is one of my personal favorites, or if you are looking for something a bit more "real time" #Linux over on irc.freenode.net is typically very helpful. Regardless of where you ask, please remember to ask smart questions.

2.) If something breaks, do not simply reinstall your operating system. It is worth the time to debug the issue and actually fix it. If something became messed up once, odds are it might mess up again and fixing something is typically much quicker than having to reinstall each and every time (once you know what you are doing).

3.) The following mantra describes what I think is the best way to learn the guts of your operating system "If it isn't broken, fix it until it is, find out what went wrong, and fix it" By this I mean tinker with what you can, change settings, add programs, remove programs, compile things from source, whatever it is you want to learn.

4.) If you are unsure what you want, then try as many different distributions as possible (they are free after all). Different distros use different default application sets, package managers, display managers, and many other things. Odds are you will find pieces of each distro you like and pieces you don't like. Once you have this figured out you can make an educated decision on which one is right for you.

5.) Now even though all those Linux distros are free downloads, burning hundreds of CDs/DVDs can become a costly endeavor. If your system is able to boot from a USB drive, I highly recommend picking up a 4+gig flash drive so you can use Unetbootin instead of discs.

6.) Linux is not Windows. If you are trying it with the expectation that it is a "Free version of Windows" you are going to be in for a world of frustration and disappointment. You should want to use Linux because it is a better operating system than Windows, not because it is cheaper.

7.) If you discover you love Linux and all this free software, that is great! Just do us all a favor and don't be a "Linux Zealot" As much as some of us would like it to be Linux is not the be all end all for all computer operating systems. It is not going to work for everyone. Forcing someone who does not want Linux to use it is only going to cause both of you a world of headaches. There is a right way and a wrong way to promote your operating system of choice.

8.) Finally, if you haven't already, it is time your become acquainted with the Linux Answer Machine. The reason for this is that rarely are you the first one to attempt whatever it is you are trying to do, finding someone's success (or failure) story can often save you hours of headache and hacking.

Hopefully you learned a thing or two! If you have your own tips you like to share with Linux noobies that I did not list here let me know by dropping a comment below.

~Jeff Hoogland

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