Ubuntu 10.04 LTS: Lucid Lynx Benchmarked And Reviewed

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What i don't understand is, people always bench linux with poor and old systems.
Why not for a change, install ubuntu on an Core i7 or i5, with some good gfx cards like GTX 270 or HD 5770?
 
I have been a Ubuntu user for many years now and I have been pleased with the products offered since day 1. Lucid Lynx is yet another great product. I am especially pleased that all of my hardware, including my Radeon HD 4650, worked right out of the box (so to speak)(using proprietary drivers for greater functionality). Brainless to install, great performace, free. What is there not to love? HOOAH!!!
 
For a long, long time, Ati/AMD users were left behind on driver quality. However, the latest releases of Catalyst, have performed rather well on Linux. Release 10.4 (which had been in public pre-alpha for a long, long while as the usual concession AMD makes to Canonical), is performing admirably in compositing performance, overall stability and all-around acceleration - at least on my 4850, the contrast with previous release is huge:

- full-screen acceleration of Youtube video: yup, works rather well, even in a 64-bit browser with an alpha 64-bit Flash plugin. At least, it's not any worse than the experience in Windows XP.

- h.264 acceleration: it is not available by default in Ubuntu, for patent reasons; you can however buy the Fluendo pack, which legally allows you to playback h.264, encrypted DVDs and Blu-ray on a Linux machine. All thanks to software patents being recognized in some countries, existing open source decoders infringe on those patents and can't be distriibuted with the base distribution. Yay.

The Nvidia problem could be tracked to the Composite extension in Xorg: as soon as it is loaded, even if desktop effects don't make use of it, Nvidia hardware gets a huge performance hit. In 8.04, if memory serves me, changing to 'basic' desktop effects required you to log off then back on - unloading the extension, and thus giving Nvidia drivers a boost. Not so in 10.04, I'd say. On the other hand, ever since the 10.04 Catalyst release, loading Composite or not has no impact on performance. At worst, it causes tearing in some OpenGL games.

As for the window controls, they are positioned by the theme. Switching to, say, the Clearlooks theme will put them on the right-hand side of the window. You would thus have to use a theme editor to correct this, not a session-wide setting.
 
I believe one reason 9.10 got too much hype is that the release coincided with the release of Windows 7. Whether or not 9.10 was meant to compete with Win7 launch or not, that is the way it was reported and perceived.

I have found that in 10.4 the new disk utility from Red hat doesn't always report SMART data for all hard drives, whereas the previous disk utility (palimpsest) in 9.10 works every-time.
 
Didn't the brush metal look for OSX thankfully went away years ago?
First step after an install is to move the min, max, and close buttons back to the right where they belong, I'm pretty impressed with the look of ambiance and the new icon set. I don't like the default background though.

The biggest strength that ubuntu 10.04 has (for me for me at least) is that it boots much quicker than Windows XP, making it my OS of choice when I want to do some web browsing. Add on the cool compiz effects and and you have looking a a great OS to put on some old computer hardware.

I'm looking forward to the wonders that await the next netbook edition w/ Ubuntu Unity. Hopefully power optimizations can made to out perform Windows 7 (for idle system states).
 
Great review and I'm glad to see Linux continue to receive some attention here on Tom's. Adam, I've missed ya and am glad to see your name on the article.

If you ever have the chance, it'd be interesting to see how a quad core Phenom II and/or Core i7 fare against your older x2 3800 build. And as other people mentioned, seeing some Windows comparisons(where possible) would be nice too.

I'm really excited to see the improved shutdown and bootup times. Since I've given up on bluray, I may convert my HTPC to lucid :)
 
[citation][nom]mitch074[/nom]For a long, long time, Ati/AMD users were left behind on driver quality. However, the latest releases of Catalyst, have performed rather well on Linux. Release 10.4 (which had been in public pre-alpha for a long, long while as the usual concession AMD makes to Canonical), is performing admirably in compositing performance, overall stability and all-around acceleration - at least on my 4850, the contrast with previous release is huge: - full-screen acceleration of Youtube video: yup, works rather well, even in a 64-bit browser with an alpha 64-bit Flash plugin. At least, it's not any worse than the experience in Windows XP. - h.264 acceleration: it is not available by default in Ubuntu, for patent reasons; you can however buy the Fluendo pack, which legally allows you to playback h.264, encrypted DVDs and Blu-ray on a Linux machine. All thanks to software patents being recognized in some countries, existing open source decoders infringe on those patents and can't be distriibuted with the base distribution. Yay.The Nvidia problem could be tracked to the Composite extension in Xorg: as soon as it is loaded, even if desktop effects don't make use of it, Nvidia hardware gets a huge performance hit. In 8.04, if memory serves me, changing to 'basic' desktop effects required you to log off then back on - unloading the extension, and thus giving Nvidia drivers a boost. Not so in 10.04, I'd say. On the other hand, ever since the 10.04 Catalyst release, loading Composite or not has no impact on performance. At worst, it causes tearing in some OpenGL games.As for the window controls, they are positioned by the theme. Switching to, say, the Clearlooks theme will put them on the right-hand side of the window. You would thus have to use a theme editor to correct this, not a session-wide setting.[/citation]

I still have the screen turn black for a few seconds every time I open a video file and I can really notice video playback taking up a lot of resources (skipping ahead in a video really goes a lot less smooth than it does in windows), I have a HD 5870 with an i7 920, so my hardware definitely isn't the problem.
 
I recently installed karmic on an HTPC and it worked great so I decided to try a dual boot on my main system which has a recently installed ATI 5830 from Gigagyte.

Here is what I found:

Karmic 9.10 did not recognize the 5830 card and GNOME would only load in "low graphics mode". I downloaded the driver from ATI but it wouldn't install no matter which sudo I used in the terminal.

I went to ubuntu forums and was told to try Lucid, I installed Lucid and immediately noticed an improvement. Also the hardware drivers installer in 10.04 found the driver right away and installed without a hitch. Now I am using full graphics effects and have played a few 3D games which are playing great.

Meanwhile in XP since I don't have win 7 yet crashes when I run a simple 2D game but Lucid hasn't crashed yet.


Furthermore I built a system for my father and he went with the 5770. With this card installed the ubuntu splash screen would show for a few seconds but I couldn't see GNOME to even enter the password. I rebooted and went into "low resolution mode" and was able to get to the desktop, then I was able to install the driver and now it works great.

Maybe these tips will help new installers
 
[citation][nom]snarfies[/nom]This is tomsHARDWARE, not tomsSOFTWARE.[/citation]

What's your point? Let's see how useful your hardware is without any software.

The article itself was good imo, but there was one quirk that bothered (confused more like it) me a bit. You seem to be taking out your dislike for Gnome on Ubuntu itself. You make it quite clear that you prefer KDE, so I'm curious as to why you didn't just go with Kubuntu?
 
Goddamit, Ubuntu, you've outdone yourself: the upgrades are always nightmares and usually destroy more than they fixed. I'm fighting a battle against the OS to let it use my graphics drivers (it wouldn't even install the fglr drivers) and who's idea was it to have the maximizie, minimze, close screen buttons in the left corner all of a sudden?

Ubuntu + multimedia = hell

Well, I'm off reinstalling my ubuntu partition...
 
[citation][nom]Gulli[/nom]Goddamit, Ubuntu, you've outdone yourself: the upgrades are always nightmares and usually destroy more than they fixed. I'm fighting a battle against the OS to let it use my graphics drivers (it wouldn't even install the fglr drivers) and who's idea was it to have the maximizie, minimze, close screen buttons in the left corner all of a sudden?Ubuntu + multimedia = hellWell, I'm off reinstalling my ubuntu partition...[/citation]

If you find it a nightmare to go to the upgrade manager and click the "upgrade distro" button just stick with Windows; you will better off in the long run and you won't have to make yourself look so uneducated to people that are capable of installing / using operating systems other then Windows. Windows has it purposes for me (Gaming) and it's used at work due to Active Directory; but that does not stop me from using a better alternative for what 90% of people do on their PC at home such as browsing the net, emails, video, music, etc.
 
[citation][nom]Wheat_Thins[/nom]If you find it a nightmare to go to the upgrade manager and click the "upgrade distro" button just stick with Windows; you will better off in the long run and you won't have to make yourself look so uneducated to people that are capable of installing / using operating systems other then Windows. Windows has it purposes for me (Gaming) and it's used at work due to Active Directory; but that does not stop me from using a better alternative for what 90% of people do on their PC at home such as browsing the net, emails, video, music, etc.[/citation]

No, don't come here with that crap. It's not my fault the OS during the upgrade complained about all kinds of errors that it couldn't install fglrx and that it doesn't let me install fglrx or ATI's proprietary drivers. These are major bugs that need to be addressed BEFORE releasing it and claiming it's the best thing since sliced bread. Every time I do an Ubuntu upgrade I get errors or things that used to work before are suddenly f*cked and every time I've found a lot of people online complaining about the same things, including this time.

If it was as simple as pressing the "upgrade distro" button I wouldn't be complaining here, now would I? At least Microsoft is honest when they say upgrading your OS instead of reinstalling it can cause problems.
 
I have been using Ubuntu full time since Win 7RC was shut down in January, and I have been loving it. I have used other flavors Linux in the past, Mandrake in college, Crunchbang (basically Ubuntu + Openbox) at work, and now I'm fully switched over. The only gap is in the games I play, WoW runs stable and fast enough through Wine for 25 man raids, albeit at lowered graphical quality. Also, Steam doesn't play well with Wine, but hopefully the rumors are true that Valve will be moving the Source engine over to Linux in the next few months.
 
Tried setting up the boot directory and your home directory on different partitions? That way you should be able do a clean install to a new version very quickly, without having to move your data to/from other disks and with minimal configuration issues.
 
[citation][nom]WheelsOfConfusion[/nom]Tried setting up the boot directory and your home directory on different partitions? That way you should be able do a clean install to a new version very quickly, without having to move your data to/from other disks and with minimal configuration issues.[/citation]

Did that a long time ago because of problems with other upgrades, but I do have a lot of settings that I would have to reconfigure, plus things like getting the new installation to actually recognize and mount the other partition can be a pain, but I guess I don't have a choice...
 
These benchmarks are pretty worthless if there isn't a comparison to Windows, as it is the OS used on 90% of PC's. If Linux is to gain confidence in its product, it MUST be shown how it compares to the OS most users that are thinking of switching to Linux already have: Windows.

The programs, games and methods tested are also available for Windows. Especially in the gaming side of things it would be nice to use the same games on Windows, and see if there is a performance increase or decrease compared to Linux.

If you want to add more Linux users, you should not say "Look how much better 10.04 LTS is against 8.04 LTS", but "Look how much better 10.04 is against Windows 7"
 
Is it so hard to make the graphs consistent? Blue for one product, green for another, and so on? It's easier to see which color is which product, memorize it, and read all the graphs. You've made that impossible!
 
I could not install this in Virtual PC on Windows 7 Pro. I got to the menu, where choosing install or boot live would cause the virtual PC to crash. I figured out this was caused by 24bit graphics not being compatible with Virtual PC. The boot option "vga=791" fixed the problem for me (it tells Ubuntu to run in 1024x768 with 16bit color).
 
I'm liking Kubuntu 10.04 a lot right now. KDE is pretty slick and a nice alternative for those used to a Windows environment. It's very customizable, too.

I'm looking forward to your comparisons with Windows. It will be interesting to see how these two options compare in benchmarking.
 
So far I think KDE is better than Gnome as well, however I started using Gnome first and I am still learning linux period so I will stick with Gnome for now until I am comfortable with trying a different interface.

I do wish I had installed Kubuntu first and made myself familiar with it first but eventually i will play with it more and get used to it.
 
A quick google search led to a quick and easy adjustment to move the min+max+close icons back to the RHS of the window frame, I'm not sure what you found difficult about it.

This release also broke Sony laptops' ability to adjust brightness.

Another big question you need to ask is the functionality of the new indicator applet. For years on both Ubuntu and Windows (and others) when you had an application in the tray, you would left+click to 'show' the window, and left+click again to 'hide'. And the right+click would show an application menu.

The new panel now works like left+click to show a menu with an entry to 'show' the window. And right+click pulls up an indicator applet properties menu. This means that, not only are right+clicks now the same over each icon (huge waste of functionality, there could just be a handle, or in the deadspace between icons) but you now have double the number of clicks if you're a big tray user.

A lot of users use multiple workspaces, but for those of us who prefer one workspace and using a tray for always-on apps, the new indicator applet is a nightmare and the worst usability choice by far in the new Ubuntu.
 
i tried it. it is not good. lucid does not work with dual-link dvi (large 30 monitors at 2560x1600 that are used often in professional settings) the KMS is just poor in the 2.6.32 kernels. ick.

the buttons are a real problem. it makes no sense to move them with claims of fun new features for the right side _in a LTS release_. There are not supposed to be any fun new features for the product life cycle. and the mouse scroll bars for just about every app is on the right. so useablity is poor. menus left. window controls right. we have been doing this for ages. yes, the horse is dead.

the sounds themes never changed. i bet this theme issue was indeed a last minute thing. ick. very dead.

no feature that has 30% performance penalty should be enabled by default. canonical is not investing in improving the apps. where are internal benchmarks. where is release QA. it is good to see the whole push toward better experience with the themes, music store, social network components, and new apps. but it should have been virtually bug free.

lauchpad.net is slow. why.

server install with gui should not have any of the extra useability cruft. this is bad news.

no firewall enabled by default.

no way to manage system services.

the fast boot splash is wasted manpower because on very fast computers it shows for a few seconds. but the transitions from bios messages to splash to gdm/kdm are _not_ smooth. so the experience is ruined. barf.

yes i am pissed.

drop the non-LTS release all together. just have a rolling "ubuntu now" product. make the kernel ABI fixed ala redhat. get gnome/gtk kde/qt to fix the api. then make the shell fairly stable. all all use apps to be updated versions independent of OS release. stablity+security+speed should be hallmarks.

then you will get the prized OEMs.

integrate beloved microsoft products ala OSX. then you get enterprise.

use the opensuse style grub menu and bootsplash. use the yast style system config tools. dont every use garbage like pup and pirut. stick to apt.

make something innovative!
 
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