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This Noob wants to know: Is eCS right for me (long-ish)?

Started by Grackle, 2009.07.24, 15:54:33

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chennecke

Quote from: cyber on 2009.08.10, 10:00:45
With all those picture editing application miss relating posts... I only need red eye reduction on OS/2. For anything else, there is bunch of really good native graphic applications, like ColorWorks, Embelish, Photo Tiger, and Pixel (last one I try only in demo mode). So I do not understand what really You all other complain about photo editing ?  I often use just PMview, because gama/contrast/brightness/ picture resize, is only process I usually need.
But as red-eye filter is adopted in to-do PMview list, I do not see what else could anyone miss with still images ?

You could try FaxView. It's part of the Tame/2 scanning solution.

RobertM

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2009.07.30, 00:11:57
Rob, can you run a transcode benchmark again in ffmpeg with SSE and MMX off for both machines?

OK... here's what I got percentage wise. Two transcode on a dual core XP machine take 1.57 times longer (each) than one. They should take nearly the same amount of time.

Four transcodes on a 4 CPU OS/2 machine take 1.06 times as long (each) as one. Or inotherwords, Windows XP seems to be getting 63% CPU utilization each transcode compared to one ffMPEG process running, which is only using 50% of the total CPU power - inotherwords, 1 CPU for that one monolithic process. OS/2 WSeB on the other hand is getting 94% utilization out of it's CPUs compared to using one CPU for one transcode.

OS/2 did not have the advantage here either, as I shut down the (always needed) Antivirus and Antispyware software (and everything else) on the XP box - something no one in their right mind would do with an Internet connected XP machine... while on the other hand, the OS/2 box was running an active web server (relatively highly active with a peak connection count of 71 simultaneous connections - most requiring MySQL access), MySQL (which besides the web server daemon access, was being accessed every 10 seconds from the monitoring station for server and pageload updates), FTPd (always active for post production work for the Star Trek Phase 2 team), Weasel mail server (intermittently active) and rebuilding it's SCSI RAID 1E array. Yet still, OS/2 utilizes multiple CPUs far better. I have a feeling that Vista would perform even worse (but that is just a feeling based on use and not on testing).

Windows XP just does not seem nearly as good at using multiple CPU cores. I get similar results when rendering under Blender and using too many threads. Even on a machine with a much faster bus and memory.


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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Saijin_Naib

#47
Very interesting.

Now, do you have an eCS install you could use on the XP machine's hardware? I am suspicious of the performance difference between Intel and AMD processors and how that would factor into this equation.
Comparing two different hardware platforms though interesting, invalidates any results you get from this comparison.

RobertM

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2009.08.16, 15:36:32
Very interesting.

Now, do you have an eCS install you could use on the XP machine's hardware? I am suspicious of the performance difference between Intel and AMD processors and how that would factor into this equation.
Comparing two different hardware platforms though interesting, invalidates any results you get from this comparison.

I would assume it would invalidate the test... except you forget, the OS/2 machine had a measly 100MHz bus. Not the whoppingly 8x faster bus of the XP machine. And of course, the memory is also equally skewed: 133MHz EDO RAM compared to DDR2-800MHz memory on a bus that is designed for that speed memory) - and of course, the XP machine supposedly has a wider bus (CPU and board).

So yes, it should invalidate the test - in XP's favor.

I will see if I can get the eCS boot CD working on the machine and see what results that gets in comparison. That though, may be horrendously skewed in XPs favor as I may be limited to using a FAT32 partition for the tests...


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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ModZilla

Well, this thread has involved many pertubations, but my straight up ans is NO!  Why bother with any OS except Warp Server with Websphere...unless of course its Plan9... >:(
someday os2 will be ruled by the young and famous-at least in the open-source world!

Grackle

Wow, has it been not-quite 2 years since I started this thread?  Time flies, but rest assured, I have continued to lurk on this site.

After reading all of the replies above and following the news, I decided to wait it out at least for eCS V. 2.0, and its early upgrades-- my Dell is still buggy as can be, but its Vista has been replaced with the marginally better Win 7, but I still would like to try eCS.  So I go back to the original question-- is this ready for Joe Schmoe consumer, a guy like me with negligible computer programming skills, who needs things like Flash, Skype (I live in Europe and this is my primary means of international communication), MS Office, easy access to printers and so forth.  I have a copywriting/technical writing and consulting business here, and these are the things I need on my computer that are absolutely non-negotiable.  I see from the articles and feedback that eCS has indeed come a long way from 2009... but is it ready for early adopter non-technical people, or is it still (by-and-large) an OS for a core group of computer experts?  Should I wait for upcoming builds of eCS?  Move on to something a bit more my speed?  Please advise-- and a VERY belated thanks to all who chimed in with their excellent answers the first time around!

G

DougB

Quoteis this ready for Joe Schmoe consumer, a guy like me with negligible computer programming skills, who needs things like Flash, Skype (I live in Europe and this is my primary means of international communication), MS Office, easy access to printers and so forth.

Since you seem to think you need windows only software, no, eCS will not do what you seem to think that you need. However:

Flash - there is a buggy beta 10 version, so far. It is still being worked on, but needs more funding. There is MediaDownloader that will download FLASH files, and then you can play most of them in SMPLAYER/MPLAYER.

Skype - Not much hope that this will ever work with eCS, unless you can convince Microsoft (they apparently bought Skype) to release the source, or port it themselves (yeah, right).

MS Office - Open Office 3.2 is available (comes with eCS 2.0 and later). It is not 100% compatible, but does a good job. It is still missing the JAVA connection, but that should be corrected when JAVA 1.6 is finished (still needs more funding).

Printer support is now done with eCUPS, which has some serious limitations, but works well with supported printers. You do need to carefully select your printers.

You also need to carefully select your system hardware, or you will likely need to take a crash course in being a technical person.

The bottom line is, that eCS is still trying to catch up, but if you insist on using Microsoft software, you don't have any hope of getting it to work with eCS. If you are willing to do some work to install eCS (which may require some technical expertise), and then find software that will do what you need to do, and learn how to use it, you can probably switch to eCS. If you are not willing to do that, you might as well suffer with Win7. You can always keep an old system around to run things like Skype.

My suggestion, if you really want to use eCS, would be to buy a preloaded system from one of the companies who sell preloaded systems. If you also get a printer from them, it will probably work. Add OpenOffice to handle the MS Office stuff that you need to handle, and ask for specific suggestions about what software to use for other things.

Hope this helps...