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Is Ubuntu Getting Slower?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the slow-like-a-fox dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Phoronix has a new article where they provide Ubuntu 7.04, 7.10, 8.04, and 8.10 benchmarks and had ran many tests. In that article, when using an Intel notebook they witness major slowdowns in different areas and ask the question, Is Ubuntu getting slower? From the article: 'A number of significant kernel changes had went on between these Ubuntu Linux releases including the Completely Fair Scheduler, the SLUB allocator, tickless kernel support, etc. We had also repeated many of these tests to confirm we were not experiencing a performance fluke or other issue (even though the Phoronix Test Suite carries out each test in a completely automated and repeatable fashion) but nothing had changed. Ubuntu 7.04 was certainly the Feisty Fawn for performance, but based upon these results perhaps it would be better to call Ubuntu 7.10 the Gooey Gibbon, 8.04 the Hungover Heron, and 8.10 the Idling Ibex.'"

5 of 544 comments (clear)

  1. Security Patching? by Ironsides · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ok, the article completely ignores this (as do most of the above posters it appears). Each version of Ubuntu tested seemed to have different kernel builds. How much of the slowdown is due to the kernel being patched for security and bugs and how much is due to the software that has been added?

    --
    Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
  2. Re:What hardware? by gbjbaanb · · Score: 5, Informative

    When you test new software on old hardware of course it's going to be slower though.

    That's hardly a given, lots of software gets better as it ages - new features are added, but also performance tweaks get added.

    The problem is that software should be getting quicker on the same hardware, the alternative is bloaty apps that no-one wants to use. See Vista for the ultimate conclusion to that. You don;t want Ubuntu to end up the same, so its good that someone is pointing out performance issues. Hopefully the next release will have a few of these issues looked at and improved.

  3. Re:xubuntu by Mr.Ned · · Score: 5, Informative

    Xubuntu's performance targeting appears limited to choice of desktop environment, which was a small component of what these benchmarks tested. The big performance increases the article talks about were in databases, compilers, encryption, memory access, and audio/video encoding/decoding, none of which really have much to do with the desktop environment.

  4. Re:Performance Problems AREN'T Where You Think... by BlackCreek · · Score: 4, Informative

    Disk access has been slowing everything down.
    Variable elimination has been done, to varying extent, by multiple people here:
    https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/131094

  5. Re:You're completely wrong by Khashishi · · Score: 4, Informative

    In other words, Ubuntus' not getting slower. The software that Ubuntu bundles is getting slower.

    Ubuntu is the software that it bundles.