Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" Benchmarks

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" Benchmarks

Earlier this month we shared that we would be doing a big operating system benchmark comparison consisting of Linux (perhaps a few different distributions), OpenSolaris, some BSDs, and Mac OS X. With the news today from Apple that Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" will be shipping this Friday, the 28th of August, we are now one step closer to carrying out this large OS comparison...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzQ3NQ

[joffe]

Does that mean all the others will be running on Apple hardware in September for comparison purposes?

[Michael]

Does that mean all the others will be running on Apple hardware in September for comparison purposes?

Yes, if OS X is to be thrown into the mix.

[stan]

I thought its only purpose was to ease the pain of being ripped off on underpowered proprietary hardware ;)

[RealNC]

I thought its only purpose was to ease the pain of being ripped off on underpowered proprietary hardware ;)

"Proprietary hardware"? All hardware is proprietary. I've still to see the an "open source" PC.

[deanjo]

"Proprietary hardware"? All hardware is proprietary. I've still to see the an "open source" PC.

Well there is some opensource hardware if you are insane enough to spend the money on it.

http://www.traversaltech.com/products.phtml

[RealNC]

I doubt that stan is running that one.

[deanjo]

I doubt that stan is running that one.

Always the pessimist. :p

[stan]

"Proprietary hardware"? All hardware is proprietary. I've still to see the an "open source" PC.

Compared to a PC, Apples are more proprietary and harder to run Linux on. The whole HFS+ based disk partitioning, firmware that can only be updated from their proprietary OS 9 (yes, you have to reinstall OS 9 on some powerPC iMACs if you want to update the firmware, even if you already have OS X running), video camera firmware, DRM-ed EFI BIOS, you name it.

Ubuntu's official position is to discourage people from buying Macs because of the nightmare it is to support them.

[deanjo]

Compared to a PC, Apples are more proprietary and harder to run Linux on. The whole HFS+ based disk partitioning, firmware that can only be updated from their proprietary OS 9 (yes, you have to reinstall OS 9 on some powerPC iMACs if you want to update the firmware, even if you already have OS X running), video camera firmware, DRM-ed EFI BIOS, you name it.

Ubuntu's official position is to discourage people from buying Macs because of the nightmare it is to support them.

OS 9 to upgrade firmware you are talking about REALLY old Macs. G3-G4 days which are systems that originally came with OS 9. Any system that came with OS X you can update the openfirmware from OS X (or in the case of intel macs, it can be done completely without a OS installed just a firmware CD.) Intel macs that have a isight are UVC class devices and as such use the linux-uvc module unlike the crap load of webcams out there that are still not uvc class. The DRM-ed EFI BIOS is complete bullshit of course. DRM is in the OS not the firmware.

I would really like to see this "Ubunutu official position" as it seems if that is what you are basing your idea's on it's either extremely outdated or fabricated bullshit.

Lets not forget until relatively recently you had to drop to a much older OS to update a bloody BIOS in a PC. DOS.

[nanonyme]

Ubuntu's official position is to discourage people from buying Macs because of the nightmare it is to support them.False claim. Ubuntu discourages people from buying Macs because they don't want to support PowerPC.

[vtorri]

if different linux distributions will be tested, it would be interesting to test something else than the major ones, like Arch Linux, for example.

[kgonzales]

False claim. Ubuntu discourages people from buying Macs because they don't want to support PowerPC.

Well, good for them, because Snow Leopard doesn't support PowerPC either. :)

Very interested in this benchmark as I am upgrading my Mac to Snow Leopard this weekend.

[nanonyme]

Well, good for them, because Snow Leopard doesn't support PowerPC either. :)I was naturally referring to classic Mac's there. Modern Mac's should be pretty much the same as x86 except that they apparently have some validation hardware that allows them to run OSX as is. (or so I've been told)
Any modern Linux or Windows should run fine on them.

[dashcloud]

Michael, apparently Snow Leopard includes some hardware acceleration for H264 videos, so if you could get some graphs showing processor usage between 10.5 and 10.6 that would be great.

[Michael]

Michael, apparently Snow Leopard includes some hardware acceleration for H264 videos, so if you could get some graphs showing processor usage between 10.5 and 10.6 that would be great.

Is it exposed through the CoreVideo interface and not anything specific to QuickTime X? If so, it's already covered in the tests, as there is video-cpu-usage monitoring already in there with the CoreVideo output adapter through MPlayer.