Ubuntu 9.10: The Karmic Koala Benchmarked And Reviewed

[tipoo]

Why do reviewers always leave Ubuntu in poop brown? It can be made to look gorgeous with transparent menu bars, the darkroom theme, and your preferred background. So show it!

 

[jcknouse]

I tried to update my 8.04 build install of Kubuntu to 9.04 of Kubuntu. EPIC FAIL! I had to reinstall 8.04.2 on the Linux partition and it worked flawlessly and re-installed.

I'm sticking with 8.04 on all my builds til sites like Tom's (and others) say it's safe to use a distro.

 

[Parrdacc]

Wow! I just really do not know why Tom's had such a hard time with this. I installed and been using it just fine on my laptop. Perhaps they forgot on of the golden rules for any Linux OS: check and recheck to make sure everything you have will work before you install it. Do the research first.

 

[Guest]

Benchmarking different Distribution releases based on I/O and stuff like that doesn't make much sense IMO - as long as not the same kernel version is used. If a newer kernel has a regression, the newer release of the distribution will of course suffer from it when compared by benchmarks...

 

[abbringm]

We've been busy for months getting the 3 year old Windows Vista too work properly with some very essential drivers (SATA, videocard, display) on a DELL M4400. We tried everything available. Ubuntu 9.10 worked with all drivers without even having to manually download anything. It still works dead slow because of some SATA issue. If Windows 7 isn't any better in the driver department, than Ubuntu for me beats Windows even in hardware support. And that has always been the last hurdle for me for office productivity. At home I have 2 windows machines (for games) and 3 ubuntu's. My HP Scanner and HP printer do not work any more on Vista and up. But they do still work on Ubuntu. So I can only print and scan via my Ubuntu server. It's just darwinism. Ubuntu survives my demands and Windows doesn't.

 

[JimmiG]

[citation][nom]tipoo[/nom]Why do reviewers always leave Ubuntu in poop brown? It can be made to look gorgeous with transparent menu bars, the darkroom theme, and your preferred background. So show it![/citation]

Well, it's Canonicals fault for providing such an ugly default theme. Windows and OSX are also reviewed with their default themes. It's all part of the out of box experience.

 

[michaelahess]

I've been upgrading my laptop through all the iterations since 8.04 and had no significant issues other than some stupid PAM problems that were my own fault. I've got a highly modified system as well. I think your slaughtering was due to user error. I've noticed no negative performance impact with any of the releases compared to the previous one(s). And complaining about having new (better) software, when you can still use the old stuff, is just naive. This review is garbage and will only cause an unneeded amount of negative attention to the best general use linux distro available.

 

[prathameshdotinfo]

Its Shocking to see such a irresponsible & incomplete, immature review from a well respected & reputed site like Tomshardware as I am a daily visitor of this site. It seems Biased & was the author paid to write such a review by MS???...

I am a lifetime Windows user & have shifted to Linux just 2+ months back.

1) I have installed Ubuntu 9.10 on my Desktop & installation was a Breeze !!!... No lockups or Crashes. It takes 15 to 20 min to make a clean install.

2) I had no issues with ext4 either. I tried moving large movie files from folder to folder after reading this article. No Issues. I have read that ext4 is considerably faster that ext3.

3) Palimpsest does not Replaces Gparted...Its a WRONG INFORMATION. Gparted can be found in the Live environment of 9.10 from where u can make changes to your disk safely without issues.

4)Ubuntu Software Center gives me full access to my bandwidth of 16.5 Kbps ( slow connection ) & had not notices any issues of speed.

The author till Page 10 has not included any positives of Ubuntu in Detail & is foolishly talking about the number of clicks just cause he could not find any more Bad points.

This is not a technical Review of Ubuntu 9.10 which I had expected from Tomshardware. Its a ordinary users review. I being just 2 months in linux can write better explaining the OS & its functioning & not wasting paragraphs on describing number of clicks licks.

5)Claming that the author took 4 Days to Install 9.10 & Reinstall 9.04 is maddening. I can install 9.10 & reinstall 9.04 in less than 2 Hours !!!...

This Guy seriously needs some technical consultation. It was a Shocking and the Most Biased review ever seen with a clear motive to spoil the ever growing popularity of Linux over Windows.Not expected from Tom's.Please pull down this immature review from such a established site.Write a sensible review not talking about the click & icons but about the OS.I am interested to know about the OS technically & not just a description of its layout...I too can do it.

 

[candide08]

Anandtech is a far superior, and less biased site than Toms (which is mainly concerned with gaming).

http://www.anandtech.com/

 

[saito80]

I install the 32 bits version in a core 2 duo 1.8ghz notebook dell machine and in an amd phenom 2 X2 550 3.1ghz without problems, but I have experienced hang problem, specially with my older core 2 duo, that's true. In general very good article with good details. I feel karmic unstable comparing with jaunty. Waiting for upgrades to improved the reliability, and of course looking forward to lucid lynx..!!

 

[Guest]

i run pclinuxos 2009 on my linux machine and haven't had a problem in years. i love it.

 

[dunklegend]

I installed 9.10 and I had some problems getting the CD to boot, and had some problems editing the default option in GRUB 2 but other than that everything installed smoothly.

 

[Guest]

Nice review. Sometimes some linux distros come sith some bugs. Maybe is teh case. But i use Linux as my Web Surfing OS for more then 2 years. And i recently installed Ubuntu 9.10 at my Phenom II X3 with an 9800GT, and the only problem was that i couldn't install nVidia drivers on first days, but i tried again 1 week later and worked just fine.

I still neew Windows for Gaming and Working (Autocad and other engineering programs), and i have no problem with any of the OSes. I like Windows Vista as much as i like Linux. Each one has it's advantages. Of course that if linux had everything i need, i would never buy a Windows license... But i surely dont buy M$ Office, once OpenOffice (or BrOffice that is version that i actually use) meets my needs.

 

[Guest]

I've installed Xubuntu 9.10 on my USB stick, flawlessly!
Works like a charm, with ext4 and noatime enabled, and a whole lot better than ext3 or ext2 with noatime!

 

[misiu_mp]

You do testing with a watch in hand?

Try http://www.phoronix-test-suite.com/

 

[hannibal]

If some people can install 9.10 easily and some cannot, it means that there are some hardware related issues left in this version. If you are lucky and don't experience any problems, it's ok. If you have to strugle your way thru like in this case it's not so good. The 9.10 version will improve when they can hunt down why some hardware combinations does work and some not. It's a matter of testing and upgrading.
Same thing as with vista. Most people did't have any problems and many have huge problems with it. One bad experience outweights many good one.
I am guite sure that the tester is experienced user (He even says that with 9.04 he didn't have any problems, so this is a case specific situation) I am not even sure if it's possible to make all software to work well with all the possible hadrware combinations. In this forum there seems to be 1/5 of users with hard luck with this release and it seems to be a bit high, but as always bad news does travel faster.
I have a guite optimistic image of this release, but It allso possible that you may got some problems if you are the unlucky one, so it may be wice in that situation to wait for upgrade, sooner than later.
Win 7 seems to be very stable, but it is only minor update to vista. This time there are a guite a lot chances in this Linux version, so it may take an update or two to make it more compatible. All in all very promising feature set!

 

[misiu_mp]

[citation][nom]pkellmey[/nom]I have other PCs to try installing it on for another try, but the average Linux user would rather go with less hassle and go back to a prior version of Ubuntu or an OS that it works properly with out of the box. [/citation]

Go Fedora. Its always been more dependable. They work with upstream and are more flexible. Fedora 12 released recently.

 

[tpi2007]

I fully read the article, and every comment until now, and I must say two things to start with:

1. I wish I had not had the idea to TRY to install Ubuntu 9.10 two days ago if I knew this article was coming; I could have read reviews elsewhere, true, but the fact is, it didn't work for me;

2. Some users are getting negative ratings just for posting their own experience, positive or not.

This just goes to say that Ubuntu 9.10 is not ready for prime time. Some people are getting no problems and others are getting serious problems. But this has it's roots in a much bigger problem, which is Canonical's release cicle. A new OS version every six months is by all acounts ridiculous, and seing how many changes 9.10 brings, is just cannot be tested extensively on a wide range of platforms, even if a whole community is involved. Microsoft, which is an empire, probably has a way more solid infrastructure for testing their OS'es on a wide range of platforms and special and faster communication channels with the manufacturers to solve problems, and they, Microsoft, released an OS like Windows 7 three years after Vista, with the next one in another three years. And they had everything I cited above, plus a public Beta and RC period of around six months, after all the internal testing had been done.

If you compare the difficulties an open source communty has when it comes to talking faster with the manufacturers, if they can talk at all, you definitely have to look at these releases with a grain (or more) of salt. It simply is not possible, so it's not their fault in the way they did something wrong, but it's certainly their fault to have released it in such a short time. If linux really wants to gain market share they cannot continue with this agenda. A release a year would seem more adequate; they could still post it on the website before, but they should cleary state it's in beta.

It's all about expectations. Linux enthusiasts are likely to forgive the mishaps and know that all this innovation brings possible intability, but the general audience simply does not have this tolerance or understanding when they see a final version of an OS on Ubuntu's homepage, and if they want to be aknowledged and an OS you can rely on, they should adopt longer release cycles until the final version is released. They could still post beta versions inbetween, but hte general public should have a stable version on their main page to download. It's all about expectations, like I said.

All in all, I fully agree with the author. Wait, let me rephrase it, I agree with the author up to the point where he cites installations problems. That's just because I simply could not install it properly.

And yes, I tested my memory for defects and everything was ok, I also tested to see if the DVD I burned the ISO was intact, and everyting was ok.

I did a clean installation on the following system (a secondary computer)

Pentium 4, 2.8Ghz w/HT
MB: MSI 848P Neo-V (Intel 848P chipset, basically an value version of the 865 with just a single memory channel)
1 GB Ram DDR 400
Nvidia GeForce 7600GS AGP
Seagate 120GB Sata

The first time I tried to install it, I had a Geforce 6200 intalled in this system, and I did manage to run the live CD and install the OS, but once installed I would give a black screen after a few seconds into boot, and an "out of frequency" response from my monitor.

The second time, with the 7600GS, it gave my an "out of frequency" response right when I tried to boot the live CD.

And yes, both graphic cards are working ok, I have another P4 system running Windows XP SP3 and they both run fine.

I then tried to run a 7.04 version of Ubuntu I had lying around, and the same problem occured, I could only boot the live CD in safe graphics mode, but once loaded it ran fine with all colours, and I could access the internet normally, for example. I couldn't find the safe graphics mode option in this new Ubuntu 9.10, if it did, I would eventually be able to boot the system and install a different, updated, driver.

And seing how this problem has persisted all the way from 2007 when 7.04 was released, it makes it hard to swallow such a problem is still lying around, especially when you consider the hardware I have used to test the OS is not by all means something exotic with a SIS or Via Chipset, and given that many people are likely to test Ubuntu on their secondary machines first just to be safe, hardware support for this kind of tried and tested hardware is supposed to be there and almost flawless.

 

[Guest]

i upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10 and had problems....them reinstalled 9.10 over previous install and had problems...i dual boot with xp so i went into xp disk management and deleted the ubuntu partitions and then reinstalled 9.10 from scratch and its workin great

 

[fulle]

hannibal... is your "q" key broken or something? What the fuck is "guite"? I would have let it go, but you misspelled a the same word 3 times in the same comment.

I was also 'quite' annoyed with your statement that Win7 is a minor update to Vista. So Win7 is a "minor update", and this Unbuntu release is not? I swear... there's no excuse for the amount of problems this 9.10 release has, and frankly, its a little depressing to see how poorly the dev team has its act together on what should be pretty mature releases. Fiddling with horrible installation problems for days is what drives users back to Windows and OSX. When Unbuntu has crap releases like this, it does serious damage to whatever pitiful momentum Linux has. I'm not a Linux fanboy, but if I was, I'd be freaking pissed, not making excuses.

 

[kennon]

I put 9.10 on a thinkpad T61p and it worked flawlessly. I too was a little annoyed about Empathy but that was super easy to fix, just deleted it and installed Pidgin. Otherwise I think 9.10 is awesome. I love how the encrypted home partition is decrypted on user login, a feature that none of the other distros I use has seemed to be able to accomplish. Also the boot time on my laptop is amazing. From power off to GDM login screen in

 

[sonofliberty08]

hope to see a benchmark for Mandriva 2010 too

 

[digitalrazoe]

I now use Debian almost exclusively but had to give Ubuntu 9.04/9.10 a whirl. I had a not so pleasant experience with 8.10 intrepid ibex and Fedora 10 and 11. traced it back to 1 thing. VIA chipset ... I noticed one of the BioStar boards you did a test on had the P4M800 series ... This chip has been the bane of my issues since I owned it .. its now part of some scrap heap never to be used again( I don't care if it could run windows thats not what I wanted on that system.) all this to say: If you run Ubuntu PLEASE make sure you have a good motherboard and a good chipset ! Bios update is your friend and could be your savior of sanity. nVidia drivers ... Get them make sure you have your kernel headers and source ready... and you should have no issues.. iF you dont need the latest/gratest... Try Debian - most of Ubuntu is a tweaked Debian Sid distro anyway. else Ubuntu works on my old crusty laptop. no issues...

 

[tpi2007]

[citation][nom]digitalrazoe[/nom]I now use Debian almost exclusively but had to give Ubuntu 9.04/9.10 a whirl. I had a not so pleasant experience with 8.10 intrepid ibex and Fedora 10 and 11. traced it back to 1 thing. VIA chipset ... I noticed one of the BioStar boards you did a test on had the P4M800 series ... This chip has been the bane of my issues since I owned it .. its now part of some scrap heap never to be used again( I don't care if it could run windows thats not what I wanted on that system.) all this to say: If you run Ubuntu PLEASE make sure you have a good motherboard and a good chipset ! Bios update is your friend and could be your savior of sanity. nVidia drivers ... Get them make sure you have your kernel headers and source ready... and you should have no issues.. iF you dont need the latest/gratest... Try Debian - most of Ubuntu is a tweaked Debian Sid distro anyway. else Ubuntu works on my old crusty laptop. no issues...[/citation]


I also have a Motherboard lying around with a via Chipset, the famous AsRock 775 Dual-VSTA and another one with a SIS chipset (for P4 systems), and I agree that these chipsets are problematic, sometimes because they cut on corners to cut on price, sometimes not implementing the AGP or PCI-X protocol fully, and when GPU makers start leaving legacy support for these odd things behind in the drivers, you start having problems.

For example, I used the AsRock Motherboard to build a system to test Windows 7 Beta and RC, at the time I used the 7600GS I mentioned above in my other post, and I had a documented graphics corruption during installation and everytime Windows 7 dimmed the screen for a UAC request and only the UAC box got corrupted), but otherwise it was fine, even with games. And Windows XP on the same machine had no problems whatsoever; it was a driver problem.
I then installed an ATI PCI-Express card, tweaked the settings in the BIOS (also documented), and everything was fine.

The problem here is I ran into the same problems as the author of the article, but using an Intel Chipset, that proved flawless for two years with Windows XP installed (and the same 7600GS, which, along with the 7600GT, used to be favourites for people still with AGP in 2006).

So, GPU drivers are a problem, but your solution

"nVidia drivers ... Get them make sure you have your kernel headers and source ready... and you should have no issues.."

is wat too complicated for someone, especially someone unfamiliar with Linux (but probably very familiar with Windows)trying to take the OS on a test drive.

 

[sublifer]

7zip compressed the files to 313.7MB while zip only shrunk them to 332.6MB. That's more than ten times the compression of zip.

I assume you had a typo? 7zip compressed to 31.7MB?