Is Ubuntu following in microsofts footprints?

I've noticed that every time I update my version of Ubuntu my computer seems to get slower, and slower. This isn't the first time this has happened to me as I had a similar experience before when i used the other guys' OS.

From windows 2000 to XP and from XP to vista I noticed the same drop in performance. The problem with Ubuntu though is if you decide to stay with a earlier release you miss out on a lot of great features, where as with microsoft the only thing you seem to get when you upgrade is more insane restrictions and spying techniques.

Not wanting to feel like this was all in my head I did some investigation and found this artical by Phoronix that confirmed my suspicions.

I hope Ubuntu can find a way to reverse this trend, and keep adding great features w/o sacrificing performance. What do you think?

"keep adding great features w/o sacrificing performance" is a paradox. A feature means more work, more work means your computer is more busy - if it's unable to do the work, it has the illusion of slowing down.

Can you do more things on the same amount of energy? sleep?

Vadi said: "keep adding great features w/o sacrificing performance" is a paradox. A feature means more work, more work means your computer is more busy - if it's unable to do the work, it has the illusion of slowing down.

Can you do more things on the same amount of energy? sleep?

microsoft did it with win2k it had more features and better performance than '98 so it's not imposable

Vadi said: "keep adding great features w/o sacrificing performance" is a paradox. A feature means more work, more work means your computer is more busy - if it's unable to do the work, it has the illusion of slowing down.

Can you do more things on the same amount of energy? sleep? What if the feature was less resource impact.

;)

I have trimmed out half of my system's memory consumption thanks to the newly added Cruft Remover. (And the realization that I had an apache2 *and* a sql database server sitting in the background doing nothing).

So I disagree that new features equate to higher resource consumption. Cruft Remover is a feature, and it made my system happier.

swoll1980 said: microsoft did it with win2k it had more features and better performance than '98 so it's not imposable

Win2k was technically not a sucessor to Windows 98, it was a sucessor to Windows NT 4.0 and was significantly heavier than NT 4.0. NT and 9x systems were essentially two completely different systems until XP which united the two branches of Windows. Windows ME was the sucessor to Windows 98 and was significantly heavier than Windows 98.

So it's just inevitable that adding more features will increase the footprint. It's still increasing it's hardware requirements at a slower rate than Windows.

"Great features" are inherently subjective. Innovation is not necessarily good or useful. I use mostly CLI utilities because they do what I want how I want it done.

You might be getting a little file corruption going on there. I was having a slowdown until I did some file cleanup. I do a lot of video and picture stuff. I got my system back to fast with unloading a lot of that crap to some backup medium. Even reloading it didn't seem to slow the system down. Maybe there is a need for a defragment.... :confused:

rMatey said: You might be getting a little file corruption going on there. I was having a slowdown until I did some file cleanup. I do a lot of video and picture stuff. I got my system back to fast with unloading a lot of that crap to some backup medium. Even reloading it didn't seem to slow the system down. Maybe there is a need for a defragment....

:confused:

or maybe the fact that every time I upgrade to the next version my computer is 6 months older than it was at the time of the last release. Does a computer get slower with age? Also i would mention that When I Upgrade I back up, wipe the hard drive and install a fresh Ubuntu every time.

I dunno, for me Ubuntu's speeds are similar for each one I have used, Ibex for me is slightly slower (though way more unstable) then Hardy on my spare comp;uter (my main computer will stay hardy)

I just thought I'd add that it's just as much GNOME getting slower as Ubuntu.

I install the base OS most of the time and then go from there. One thing I wish ubuntu had was being able not to install stuff from a normal desktop install. If you don't need bluetooth stuff, for example, you don't have to install it.

swoll1980 said: or maybe the fact that every time I upgrade to the next version my computer is 6 months older than it was at the time of the last release. Does a computer get slower with age? Also i would mention that When I Upgrade I back up, wipe the hard drive and install a fresh Ubuntu every time.

My computer got progressively slower over the years, even with numerous formats and clean installs.

I found out that computers theoretically shouldn't slow down but in real life often do. In my case it was because of dust buildup in my case, especially around the processor and fan area. The processor was overheating and had to scale back.

Faulty power supply and failing hard drives can also impact performance.

Also, if you have dual boot like I did, any OS on the first partition will run faster than OS on subsequent partitions. That doesn't explain why Ubuntu crawls on my computer vs. XP. I still haven't figured that one out. XP is just faster on my equipment than Ubuntu is.

swoll1980 said: microsoft did it with win2k it had more features and better performance than '98 so it's not imposable

It is possible to optimize code, yes. But what you're asking for is to tell the programmers "please write faster code and make less bugs". They obviously won't be too happy :P

Honestly, i don't seem to notice, i update daily with a slow ram'ed sony vaio computer and it seems ok.

what are the specs of your machine?

You might consider xfce it's not so different from gnome and its a little bit lighter on resources.

matthekc said: what are the specs of your machine?

You might consider xfce it's not so different from gnome and its a little bit lighter on resources.

I have a 2.6 celeron and 768 mb of ram should be more than enough. I've tried xfce, but I dont like it there's alot of features missing. The absence of network support in thunar is a peeve of mine.

768 mb ram isn't "more than enough". See how much of it is being used - plus, the more ram the better, means things are cached = less disk usage = faster desktop, because ram > disk.

Vadi said: 768 mb ram isn't "more than enough". See how much of it is being used - plus, the more ram the better, means things are cached = less disk usage = faster desktop, because ram > disk.

I can't imagine a case in which 768 MB isn't more than enough on my desktop. "Enough" is a subjective quantity that means different things to different people.

Vadi said: 768 mb ram isn't "more than enough". See how much of it is being used - plus, the more ram the better, means things are cached = less disk usage = faster desktop, because ram > disk.

Should be enough we're getting into vista territory if it takes a gig of ram to run an OS. I switched to ubuntu 2 years ago because wanted to upgrade my OS with out upgrading my hardware XP was so old and boring. Ubuntu was perfect it was faster more responsive, had the look and feel I wanted now it's as slow, if not slower than xp was

The OP is correct. Since I have been using Ubuntu with Dapper each successive release has gotten heavier and used more resources. That being said so have the apps, and the features.

Up until Windows 7 this has been the way it worked, But we will see with Windows 7 if on release it is faster and if that starts a new trend.