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SOLVED: Comparing Linux on Mac Pro 1.1 vs. Mac Mini

C

converse320

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 3, 2020
15
6
I installed Mint 19.3 on 2 legacy macs while in lockdown from Corona virus in UK.
I was surprised at the differences in performance.

Its slow and laggy on the Pro 1.1 2x quad core 2.66GHz 16GB RAM. Graphics are juddery and freeze frequently. Characters appear many seconds after they are typed. Its unusable.
On the Mac Mini 2.1, 1.8 GHz with 4GB of RAM, it works fine - fast, responsive.

So why is the powerful workstation worse that the mac minio for Linux?
 
What GPU is in the Pro? If it's Nvidia, then your Linux install is likely using the open source Nouveau driver, which, frankly, is poor.
Nvidia doesn't play nicely with Linux / FOSS. Your mini likely has an integrated intel GPU; intel make excellent drivers for their stuff available on Linux.
 
Thanks for replying Mick. It's an ATI AMD radeon 5770 1GB. I'm not sure what the Linux drivers for it are like, but from Hardifo report, it looks like its running a proprietary AMD driver for the card. I think it was a reasonably capable card in its day. I wasn't expecting that much, but the Mac Mini is running really well, so my expectations for the Mac Pro have been raised.
 
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AMD are much more Linux friendly, and they do contribute drivers to Linux. I've no direct experience of AMD GPUs but it might be worth checking that your 5770 has the best driver installed.

lspci -k will show what driver the GPU is currently using.
If installed on your system, glxinfo -B will give additional info.

Not necessarily the cause of your slowdown but worth checking maybe.
 
I'm not really sure how to interpret the output of those commands.
But lspci -k gives
"VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Juniper XT [Radeon HD 5770]
Subsystem: Apple Inc. MacPro5,1 [Mac Pro 2.8GHz DDR3]
Kernel driver in use: radeon
Kernel modules: radeon"
Think this means its using a plausible driver.

I've had a look at system monitor and CPU usage is running at 100% most of the time for CPU 2, and pretty much zero for the other 7 cores, which looked a bit suspicious to me.
 
I just wanted to close this with an update. I remained surprised by the terrible performance of this Mac Pro 1.1 runnning Linux, and tried a few things using parts I had lying around. I pulled the rotational Hard Drive and replace with an SSD - made absolutely no difference, still terrible. I replaced the memory with 32GB set I had. This also made absolutely no difference. I ran all the updates, again. Made no difference. I installed Chrome instead of Firefox. No difference. So I gave up and just left it running on its own, with my daughter using it for access to her school work. And miraculously, it is now really fast.

So I don't know what exactly has changed. Maybe Linux does some sort of self optimisation in the background? Maybe it found some bad driver and fixed it itself. So, no real advice other than "wait, it might fix itself".
 
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Ha! Her main talent with computers seems to be ever more devious schemes to bypass blocks on Tiktok and Youtube.

On the subject of the Macpro 1.1 with Linux, it's extremely variable in performance. I don't really know whats going on, but sometimes its fine, other times its unusable again. When I get a spare day, I'm going to try pulling the Wifi/Bluetooth card, as its not being used, and I keep getting "wrong driver" message. Ive tried disabling the card, but it starts itself again randomly.
 
So you have a budding hacker, on your hands.

So I have a Macpro flash 1,1> 2,1 with the CPUs upgraded to two 2.66GHz Quad-core (8-core, total) processors back in 2014 and the Wifi/Bluetooth upgrade card, as well with a non-metal ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024 MB video card from my 2010 MacPro.

I will be attempting to put Linux Mint 20 since Maverick/Hack SFOTT is getting long in the tooth. I saw this video on Youtube, I will be attempting to place the LinuxOS on a SSD with a PC first then placing it in the MacPro, then dual booting for now. I understand that LinuxMint will find the right drivers and update the Linux, from the assurance from the guy on the youtube vid. Let you know in the next month how it goes. Wish me luck!
 
I'd say 100% it was a driver issue. Perhaps there was a kernel update which improved compatibility, or something as stupid as that.

I'm currently running Elementary OS on a 2015MBP (purely because I already had the hardware lying around, it wouldn't be my first choice of hardware for such a use case). It was absolutely horrid at first, but after spending a day hunting drivers and tweaking power management, it now feels much faster than it was on OS X and the stats would suggest the same - watching youtube doesn't instantly put the CPU at 98c like it did on OS X, for example. Although battery life still stinks - with the best will in the world it's a 4 year old machine with 900 cycles on the battery - can't expect that much out of it.
 
Thank you for the link, I appreciate your time!
So I think I tried this a while back in April, I do not have an internal DVD in this cMP anymore, Apple made it hard to mount an external DVD drive and the hack tool for mounting that was out there was updated for newer machines only not Maverick. So either way, I got one of the MG images to mount on an external DVD drive once, but not reliably. So here is the rub, I would need to pull out the RAID drives (I think) that are in the DVD bays, not really a problem just more than I wanted to do in a day or two lol. Reconnect a DVD drive that I am not sure is working or not. Yes, it might work! So this low on the list for September so far I have been putting it off awhile. I got 28 days still to work at this. This Old Macpro has a lot of haxies in it, so it is a little bit of a rats nest of fun. Thanks again I will keep you updated!
 
OK, I've only ever successfully managed this with an internal DVD drive. I know there are issues with other methods, no doubt surmountable given time and knowledge. I'd probably start by trying it with a single SATA hard drive and stock internal DVD. Good luck.
 
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I don't know if this helps, but it may.
I run Linux Mint 20 on a late 2015 27" iMac. It has an AMD Radeon video card. The drivers for that video card aren't in the kernels much after 4.15, so you need to install that kernel.

  1. Edit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list to add the bionic repositories, i.e.

    Code: 
    deb http://ubuntu.mirror.serversaustralia.com.au/ubuntu bionic main restricted universe multiverse 
deb http://ubuntu.mirror.serversaustralia.com.au/ubuntu bionic-updates main restricted universe multiverse
    and Update. I'm set to Australia, you need to select your own mirrors.
  2. in the Update Manager, go to View / Linux Kernels. You can then scroll down to 4.15 and select and install the most recent kernel. Reboot
  3. What ever boot manager you are using (rEFInd or grub) you will need to select the 4.15.nn kernel and boot using that.
  4. After booting, confirm with 'uname -r' that you are running with the correct kernel. Then use Update Manager to delete the more recent kernels.
  5. For other Ubuntu-based Linuxen, you will need to use UKUU (find and download the free .deb file) to do the same thing.

Enjoy.
 
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