Ubuntu 11.10 Review: Benchmarked Against Windows 7

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I would like to have seen a series of tests conducted in a more realistic manner which would have included the Windows machine running with anti-virus and anti-malware software. To test otherwise isn't a precise comparison for most users who have to have these protective systems in place.
 
mapesdhs: Actually, Bulldozer performs much better on LInux, due to superior multicore scaling, and better scheduling by the OS. Google search for the Phoronix Bulldozer review. It nearly gave the fanboys a nervous breakdown, the comments section is full of "OMG NOEZ, THIS CAN'T BE, I DEMAND A RECOUNT!!!".
 
A lot of the benchmarks shows, just how strong Linux/Ubuntu actually is, even more so as it costs no money.

This makes it even more frustrating, that Mark and co. went down the Unity and Mutter road. (Mutter WILL crash if you use a HD 4770 like I do.)

My guess is, that 90% of the people - including me - that earlier moved from Windows or Mac, were initially attracted and inspired by the desktop visual effects: wobbly windows, transparency, desktop cube etc.

And not only is that all gone, you can´t even change the colors away from that terrible purple, pale-orange and ...brown scheme, award-winning potential in ugliness and bad taste.

And the new interface seemes like it´s not there at all yet in useability either.

But still, if that were all to be corrected over time: As long as Adobe, Steinberg and other major players in the app business will not support Linux, it will always be a niche. And why should they? Out of the 3% of people, that uses Linux at home, maybe another 3% are photographers or musicians, not a base for using huge amounts of money on rewriting their whole line-up of apps.

I just went back to Windows 7 after three years of fun with first Ubuntu , then Kubuntu and finally OpenSUSE 12.1, in my opinion the best ever distro. But my need for Photoshop, Nuendo and NetObjects simply made my choice inevitable.

Sadly...



 
I've been using Ubuntu for a while on my netbook, but after trying to update (and actually breaking the system in the process, had to make a backup and install from scratch) didn't liked the new environment . It's true than is the most user-friendly linux i can remember, but i don't like Unity at all.

Ended up formatting and installing OpenSUSE.
 
It's not just that there are more windows users but windows looks better than linux. The GUI is what attracts new users just as much as all the other features. If Ubuntu could make their default GUI's look better I would be more interested. But I don't like the tiny menu bars and old looking icons.

sorry linux, I do love you, but it's true (weep)
 
Shutdown time for Ubuntu 11.10 - This is a bug - caused by its network manager bug.

Ubuntu before 11.10 shut down in about 3 seconds. Users noticed this right away and found it was the network manager app that refused to shut down politely and Ubuntu waited until it killed the process.

Uninstalling the network manager and replacing it with WICD restored shut down times to 3 or 4 seconds (4/2 core vs 1 core).

This shutdown bug still exists in 12.04 alpha. Knowing Canonical, they will likely leave the bug as is.

Also, by uninstalling Unity and even Compiz (opengl settings manager) helps speed things up further. Programs load, run and shut down noticeably faster, and less ram is used. I replaced Unity with Gnome Classic (no effects) and Docky by installing the Cinnamon desktop from Linux Mint. I uninstalled Cinnamon too.

There is one scenario not tested in this benchmark - age. Run the tests again 3, 6 and 12 months later with both OSes used on a daily basis for a common set of tasks. I do not use Win 7 myself but other users have reported Win 7 becoming slower and slower over time like XP. This, in my experience and from what I have read online from other Ubuntu users, does not happen with Ubuntu. in one case, Win 7 became so slow after 12 months, a user recruited the help of a friend to reinstall Win 7 after a year's use.

Like cars, age takes its toll on different makes and models and definitely some more than others. So far, I have only seen tests done comparing newly-installed operating systems.

One more note - usb copy times. Ubuntu behaves differently on different hardware. I have had Ubuntu copy faster on a dual core notebook than on a quad core PC. Also, using NTFS for the usb drive almost doubles the copy speed compared to Fat 32.
 
have both OSes on my PC. I really love Linux... as true server OS - so easier to setup, than Windows, like kernel+apache2+php+mysql+anythingyoulike-guiifyouhavehandsinrightplace. Linux console(shell) is the best I ever seen, Windows command.com-like #$%& is soo sucks. Linux is good in case old hardware - I ran home-brew router using gentoo built from source on pentium-100 with 64 MB RAM, it ran smoothly.
finally i have android smartphone with linux inside. Windows ... well documented api, many bugs, many problems with security. maybe not best performance, less customizations. but excellent game platform. but omfg this is the worst os for server.
 
[citation][nom]omgnoez[/nom]mapesdhs: Actually, Bulldozer performs much better on LInux, due to superior multicore scaling, and better scheduling by the OS. Google search for the Phoronix Bulldozer review. It nearly gave the fanboys a nervous breakdown, the comments section is full of "OMG NOEZ, THIS CAN'T BE, I DEMAND A RECOUNT!!!".[/citation]

Which versions of Linux were used? The main ones I'd be interested in are RHEL, Suze and Centos.

Ian.

 
ClearType is the worst font renderer around - utter garbage. OS X's fonts look pretty but aren't always as clear. Ubuntu is in the middle - look great and really clear to read.

The one benchmark that makes me wonder is the "HDD to USB" benchmark where Windows 7 won "considerably". As the USB drive is formatted FAT 32, it's pretty understandable that Windows would have better support for it (I know there are problems with FAT and software patents so it's possible that Ubuntu simply can't perform better with it). Would be interesting to see more benchmarks in this area because from personal experience I've found Ubuntu to be much faster with file copying to and from all kinds of devices.

As for the people giving Linux hate, and speaking as a professional programmer who deploys applications on Linux servers, it isn't (and I quote) "a pile of shit" - it's just that you don't understand it. Hell yes it's more complicated than Windows (though Ubuntu is closing in and - well, if set up and working well - is often easier to use), however it's not really for that. As an IT professional and someone who knows what they're talking about - it's so much better it's not even funny.
 
Whilst the review is pretty good it doesn't cover the realities of living with Ubuntu on a day to day basis. On the ubuntu website they claim compatibility with loads of hardware, which is true. However the amount of hardware compatibility is never enough. I have tried various versions of ubuntu on this laptop since 9.x and its only since version 11.x that all of the hardware and functionality is supported out of the box. That would be 2 years after release of the laptop that its mostly supported. In that two year period a bunch of new hardware has been released that will likely need to wait to be supported properly.(look at the age of the hardware used for the review)

Then there's the stability, the linux kernel is stable however programs that run on top have a tendency to crash. I've had to use the xkill function numerous times whilst using ubuntu (which would be similar to end tasking a program in windows) I have never experienced the same level of program crashes and stalls in windows, ever.

Then there's flash, saying it works is an over statement. On linux flash limps. People have a tendency to dis flash for various reasons, which may or may not be valid. The reality is the internet is fully of flash and for linux to be used as even a basic internet browsing machine it should have better flash support. Which will never happen, so essentially your going to have to wait for the entire internet to switch from having flash as a common place to technology to HTML 5 or whatever the latest greatest technology is and then hope that it will be supported adequately under linux. Which probably won't happen any time soon.

Hibernate and suspend rarely work across the board and even more rare is for it to work out of the box. This can be especially annoying if your using a laptop.

Then there's unity. Unity is laggy. There's about a one second delay between pressing the windows key and getting the menu to appear. This can be quite annoying, compare this to windows vista on the same laptop which has a a delay so short its not an issue. The same goes for exploring the menu, its laggy. Again vista feels faster. The same lag is apparent in gnome 3 used with 11.1. Ubuntu 10.04 menus were a lot faster and snappier under gnome 2 so it seems things are getting worse not better. This may be a hardware issue which is ironic, so after waiting 2 years for the laptop to have reasonable support under ubuntu it is no longer powerful enough to use with ubuntu. That said I think the slow laggy interface is just poor/bloated coding more so than hardware issues. The same slow laggy response is felt under unity 2d and the gnome equivalent. With and without tweaks suggested by the community

Those are the main issues with ubuntu 11.1 my list of small but annoying issues would go on and on (such as setting up my touchpad in 11.1)

The benchmarks in the review shows ubuntu has a slight edge in various tasks but for the most part this edge is so insignificant that performance isn't really a good enough reason to switch to ubuntu from windows. In fact the only valid reason for using Ubuntu is internet security. All in all with ubtuntu you get what you pay for.
 
I would love to use a Linux system for the non-SGI stuff I do (video encoding,
gaming), but the reality is that Windows is easier to setup for this sort of
thing, easier to use, and the free GUI tools available are good. Last time I
tried it with a Linux distro (ie. x86 platform able to process SGI JPEG video
data), it was a nightmare to sort out. Works fine right out of the box with
Windows.

If the GUI direction of Linux is to move towards visual styles aimed at
tablets, that'll just put me off even more. Atm the desktop GUIs for Linux
still look kinda naff to me; even Win7 looks more professional (never thought
I'd find myself saying something like that). I loathe GNOME and KDE with a
passion (as anyone used to SGI's IID would).

And theshadow2001 is right, Flash is a pain but it's a solid reality one must
accept.

Linux (some version thereof) certainly has its many & varied uses, but as an
overall general desktop environment? Not quite yet IMO.

I tried Slackware once on my old PII laptop, was stunned at how slow it was.
Whenever I mention this, Linux fans gives all sorts of excuses; sorry, but I
don't want to have to mess around with a UNIX inst after it's done in order to
make it run properly. I don't have to with IRIX, even on a huge system. Win7
does need a fair bit of post-inst configuring, but I know how to do it now,
doesn't take long & is partly automated; worth it for the proper JPEG support I
need.

Ian.

PS. Don't take me for a Windows fan. I'm not. Loathe it big time. But that doesn't
mean I then ignore its better suitability for the work I want to do, that would be dumb.

 
[citation][nom]theshadow2001[/nom]Whilst the review is pretty good it doesn't cover the realities of living with ...[/citation]

I've set up Ubuntu on numerous laptops and only once I've seen that it didn't have drivers for the sound card. I wonder what kind of laptop do you have, that most of the stuff doesn't work OTB? On my laptop (Inspiron 1564) everything works perfectly including hibernate and suspend.

Flash limps because it's a proprietary product and Adobe doesn't give a fuck about linux people, just as Microsoft would rather see us hanging. So, no it's not "our" fault, that flash doesn't work very well. And who cares... Flash is already dead.

I don't comment on Unity, because I've never used it. :)
 
I've set up Ubuntu on numerous laptops and only once I've seen that it didn't have drivers for the sound card. I wonder what kind of laptop do you have, that most of the stuff doesn't work OTB? On my laptop (Inspiron 1564) everything works perfectly including hibernate and suspend.

Flash limps because it's a proprietary product and Adobe doesn't give a fuck about linux people, just as Microsoft would rather see us hanging. So, no it's not "our" fault, that flash doesn't work very well. And who cares... Flash is already dead.

I don't comment on Unity, because I've never used it.
Click to expand...

Certainly there is hardware that ubuntu or other distros will work perfectly on and there's hardware that it doesn't. If you have hardware that it doesn't it can become increasingly annoying trying to search for fixes and implementing them with no guarantee that its going to work. Even more annoying is while your trying to get hardware to work in linux you know that everything is going to work perfectly well if you just boot into windows. My laptop is an acer 7535G and broken audio driver for the mic was a deal breaker for me. So I moved from 10.04 to 11.10 which as I said previously gives me support for most of the hardware (two years after first trying ubuntu on it, I first started with either 8.04 or 9.04 ).

I think that most people understand why flash operates poorly on linux. The whys of the situation are largely irrelevant. If your a user you want flash to work, purely because its relied on by so many websites the whys of the situation doesn't change the reality. Flash may die off eventually it may not I don't know enough to make a prediction either way. If it does and is replaced by something that linux can support then thats going to be great for linux. But as of right now and the past how many years flash is certainly not dead.

If flash is truly dead then I assume that you never bothered to enable it on any of the laptops you installed linux on.
 
Ubuntu has its place, but for the majority of consumers its not the best option as it takes more technical knowledge to operate it efficiently. Windows is for the majority who just need a system to do what they need
Click to expand...

I'm not a particularly big fan of "Ubuntu", but many Linux distributions don't take any more "technical knowledge" to run than Windows. In some cases, it's easier. But what it does take is a little time to learn what it can do.
You read your new car's manual to find out what the switches do, or how to program the clock because it's not identical to your previous car. Various operating systems (or distributions) aren't much different in that regard. You might find some features that will make you slap your head and say, "Wow! That's great!"
disclaimer: BTW, I use Windows 7 at work, but OpenSuse Linux at home.
 
I don't know about you guys but I haven't used Flash in months and I don't regret it one bit.

You say it's not dead? Ok... If you say so. *cough* Farmville lovers!
 
Is there a way to install a 64-bit version of Ubuntu onto a computer..."Wubi-style"...using a 64-bit version of Windows (7)? So far, I have been unsuccessful finding the software with which to do it...
 
Slick1, the idea of installing Linux from Windows has never really clicked with me.

You get an "Uninstall Ubuntu" entry in the Add/Remove Programs. Yay! But if you get a virus, your Linux install gets a virus. Installed separately, Windows can't touch ext4 partitions (not without 3rd-party drivers, which give you to the option to mount them as Read-Only).

Then you'll also get the fugly Windows bootloader prompting you to choose between Windows 7 or Ubuntu. Pff. Google "burg themes". Here's a little preview: http://www.techdrivein.com/2011/12/6-best-burg-themes-and-how-to-install.html

Wubi is a training wheel, man. Just burn it on a CD/DVD or on a USB stick and install it separately from Windows.
 
Say whatever you want.
I am now using a 3 year old crap top that I had no use for at all until I tried it with an Ubuntu install. Works fine now.
 
I don’t like the installer
I have win7 on my Net book and I left 30Gig free on the drive set aside to try Ubuntu
But the installer won’t use the free unpartitioned space it wants to reduce the windows partition and totally ignores the free space the other option Something Else no clue how to set this up?? It’s Something Else!
Screwed up windows uninstalled Ubuntu now windows won’t boot the Ubuntu boot loader wont boot anything wiped the whole system and reloaded windows and done with Linux
 
Last year is when I really started playing around with Linux distros. I hit my ISP's cap 2 months in a row because I wanted to download every single flavor I could get onto standard DVDs. I'd installed all of them, updated them, and downloaded tons of applications and that's why I hit my cap x2. I know I could have used very light images on usb sticks or CDs, but I also wanted to build up a nice library of install DVDs that have most of what I'd want right from the start.

I didn't ever reach a point I felt really comfortable with linux, or have a feeling like I really knew what I was doing, but I was making progress and had some use(s) for it.

When I recently tried this ubuntu, I felt lost all over again, lol... There may be some truth to that old saying, "you can't teach an old dog new tricks." So to be fair, the majority of the blame falls on me for not liking it very much, but the end result is still that I don't like it very much, or at least, enough to make regular use of it.

Prior to Windows 7, any linux OS was great for making old hardware not feel so old, but now Win7 does that pretty well too, so that 7 yr old laptop that enjoyed many versions of linux, purrs well enough on Win7, I think I'm done experimenting until the next really killer breakthrough whenever/if that happens.
 
Ubuntu, Linux in general is like the best social network without any users. You know it's great and could be even better, but you friends simplier aren't there.
Windows is marketing, a OS that your Dog could use and with a good look. For games is really hard to use Linux as main OS without Directx and almost no great games.
I'm a gamer, anyway, I still see Linux as a great secondary OS, really secure, easier to install general use software and to develop using it. Keep a dual boot and you should enjoy boot. You will se each one has its strengths. And never say Linux is crap, probably your cell phone, TV, set-top box, router, even if you're a MAC user, all these devices have Unix kernel based OSs.
 
The whole DX being an identifier for a great graphic'd game is an invalid argument. OGL can come up with the same as DX except currently a handful of features that most games, if any, don't even use properly at the moment anyways. Looking at the Unigine engine is proof of this.

Also the argument of which Distro to support is also only valid for developers not familiar with linux. You just need to know a few things, 1). what packages it requires to run effectively and 2). which linux kernel will be lowest to run it with. Infact linux kernels don't really come into effect, cause when designing a game you generally use OGL and audio libraries that take care of any driver issues. But to answer question 1). There are a few package managers, but the main ones that are used in 90% distro's are Debian or Fedora based. So if you package the game with the package managers from either, the package manager will take care of necessary libraries. If you're worried that the computer might not have access to certain packages, linux is open source therefore distributing and installing them in the occasion the package manager can't find it.

These are just a few issues any linux developer can overcome. It's up to the game developers to hire experience linux developers not random programmers who have a background on porting the code itself.
 
to make linux more appealing to end-users (and to increase its value proposition), canonical should try to find hardware partners to ship systems with ubuntu as the default OS. sure, linux is free, but when any computer you buy has the "windows tax" built-in, why would you install an OS that allows you to do less? how do the linux proponents out there realistically expect less technically-inclined people to go through uninstalling windows and doing a fresh OS install? canonical seems to be making real strides in terms of increasing the accessibility of linux, but until they start bundling it with actual off-the-shelf systems that people can buy, i don't think it will be able to gain much acceptance.
 
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