I’ll make the switch gladly, as the windows version doesn’t perform so great what I can tell (only ever used it in Windows).
If Linux really does gives an approximate 50% speed boost then I’ll be all over Linux.
What’s your experiences of Blenders Windows/Linux performance?
Thanks
Astralogic
Wrong question, the compiler and compiler options that make most difference, not OS. GCC can be used for windows builds too, as “MinGW”. Also, for usual builds used conservative optimization flag set, and restrict to average common instruction set, you must to build Blender yourself with proper flags (-mtune=native among other) to get most from your hardware.
I don’t know the first thing about that 
Are there any tutorials?
Try the MinGW build from:
http://builder.blender.org/download/
How to build blender (for experienced users):
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.5/Doc/Building_Blender/Windows
Cheers, mib.
Or course. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Building_Blender, but as you ask, you maybe better to stay with official builds, they are not that slower as maybe you think, as gcc flag set selection is art in itself, even for average coder. If you will go that way you can once find yourself spending all time to searching “best flag combination” instead to make art.
Beside, Linux is very interesting platform, i am for example Fedora user since RedHat 6.0 or maybe earlier that was 10+ year ago, and always prefer it to my dual boot Windows, you can try any linux distributive (RedHat, Debian, Suse long time was main 3 well supported by community and commercial firms, as many derivations). This forum commutity a bit biased to Ubuntu (Debian derivative) and Apple Mac OSX (very special half proprietary distributive, not free, it is based on FreeBSD kernel but closed source and who know what parts was rewritten), you can try them as well as my beloved Fedora linux.
I use blender all the time on my Linux mint setup … but then that computer is my latest greatest computer… my old Windows XP laptop of coarse is much slower when rendering… and I can only detect slight slow downs when just working on models and such … but not much difference really… but enough to tell… But Linux my freind… LOL! is one of those things … where once you try it… your never going back… (lease it was with me…)
How fast is a Linux/Blender/Cycles GPU render vs Win7 64bit/Blender/Cycles GPU?
1.1x? 1.5x?
According to a google search linux renders up to 50% faster. I guess I’ll just have to time some renders.
And I prefer Ubuntu Studio over regular Ubuntu any day.
What is the difference between the two builds (glibc and mingw)? Why go for one over the other?
I just compared Ubuntu vs Windows 7 using the same Cycles scene.
Kubuntu 12.04 took 4:10
Windows 7 took 5:55
Atom is that a Mingw build?
i have tested MinGW64 and Win7 64 vs, Kubunti 12.10 and Mingw is faster on my system.
AMD 8120.
Personally I prefer Ubuntu Studio.
Like said before, the compiler makes all the difference, not the OS (sorry, Linux zealots;). While it´s true that you can have this magic on Windows as well through MingW, it is notoriously unstable (reports of renders crashing) and doesn´t play well with OpenMP. Psy-Fi is working on this.
Solution for now - use one build for work that require OpenMP, then render with a Mingw build, if you can afford the risk of the render crashing Blender.
I’ve used mingw since it’s first appearance. I usually have 2 or 3 builds on computer; one that has proved itself stable for rendering, and the laters build for features.
build 51962 is proving to be stable; 51564 is the older version I use for stability, and it was until 51962 significantly faster than later mingw builds.
51962 is roughly the same speed as 51564.
The best time I’ve had with mingW on MikePan’s test is 3:11 (tiles set to 32x32).
Most recent wiindows build is 5:49.51
Judging from my personal experience the is not much of a difference (if you choose some OS-optimized build of course). But as linux users tend not to install a pile of useless background running services\programs (for example in Russia we have mail.ru messaging system for windows that silently downloads it’s own antivirus solution) they got some performance boost in average.
