ATI graphics better on Fedora than Ubuntu?
 

I have an aging white iMac (Intel Core 2 Duo - 2.16GHz, 3GB of RAM and an ATI X1600 with 256MB of VRAM). This computer is used primarily for web surfing and odds and ends in our family room, nothing too serious. So, I decided I want to wipe the drive and install Linux natively. I downloaded Ubuntu 10.10 and Fedora 14 (both 32-bit) and ran the LiveCD's to be sure all was well. Both distro's ran beautifully except for one little problem.

My wife is an avid player of Second Life. I installed Second Life while running the Ubuntu LiveCD and it ran very poorly. Textures were screwy and overall a bit choppy. But, when I installed Second Life in the Fedora Live it ran almost perfectly, almost as well as it does on OSX. From what I could tell, they were both using the same drivers, glxgears returned close to the same FPS, and both said direct rendering was enabled. So why would Fedora run better than Ubuntu?? I know I am running the distro from the LiveCD and I would hope performance would be better once it is installed properly but I cannot figure out why Fedora handles the graphics better than Ubuntu? And, is this level of performance (or lack thereof) to be expected once the OS is properly installed?

Any insight on this would be much appreciated, thank you.

Fedora always uses more cutting edge versions of Xorg and the open source video drivers.

Adam

So then Fedora is using a newer version of X and the ATI drivers?

Yes, Fedora typically uses one release higher of the X server, often/sometimes using a version that isn't even released. The open source driver developers commit directly to their own trees that are used directly for Fedora packages.

Adam

Delete My account

Great, thanks for that Adam. I was not aware of that and it is good to know. I guess that explains the discrepancy in performance. Thank you!

@xandercage17 I may very well give a 64-bit version a go, thank you.