Ubuntu 8.10 Outperforms Windows Vista

Anonymous writes "By now a lot has been reported on the new features and improvements in Ubuntu 8.10; it also looks like the OS is outperforming Vista in early benchmarking (Geekbench, boot times, etc.) At what point does this start to make a difference in the market place?" (And though there are lot of ways to benchmark computers, Ubuntu 8.10 with Compiz Fusion is certainly prettier on my Eee than the Windows XP that it came with.)

Comments

Re:Faster than Vista!

[dsginter]

This is just more sensationalism.

I run Ubuntu 8.10 and yet I am somehow able to assess the situation pragmatically. As it sits, if I were to install Windows on my Ubuntu box, then I would probably make up the cost (aka "Micro$oft tax) with the annual power savings - Ubuntu *still* doesn't suspend-to-ram on my system (Biostar nforce 6150 motherboard with an Athlon X2 processor).

And while I try to shut the system down, when possible, I always find myself walking away for "just a moment" only to find myself not returning until the next day (or more). When Ubuntu can put up the functionality of Windows (including power management), then it becomes a proper comparison. Until then, it pains me to defend Microsoft...

Re:Faster than Vista!

[thepotoo]

OK, it really depends on what you're doing. Also, a lot of the stuff I do (games) is not dependent on OS at all, but on the drivers.

Vista is so slow as to be utterly useless - it came with my laptop, and after waiting 10 minutes for it to boot up, I reformatted and put Ubuntu on it.

If you're doing processor-heavy work (for example, recoding a DVD), I've yet to find anything faster than an N-lited copy of XP. You can slim down Ubuntu, but I'm not Linux savvy enough to do this yet.

And if you're playing games, the drivers in Ubuntu are so piss-poor that you'll see a 10-20% drop in framerates (this is an Nvidia 7900 GS, benchmarked in Unreal 2004 max settings, same hardware). ATI drivers don't even fucking work, so I can't even compare them to the XP ones on my laptop (if anyone knows how to get an X1250 working in Kubuntu with ATI's proprietary drivers, respond. Machine crashes on resume, games crash on screen resolution change or exit).

So it breaks down like this, in my experience:

Out of the box XP gets it ass handed to it by Ubuntu.

Ubuntu gets beat (slightly) by an N-Lited XP.

Everything beats Vista.

Startup times vary based largely on RAID array type (hard drive speed if you're in a laptop) and processor speed, but always go (slowest to fastest): Vista, Ubuntu, XP, 2000, N-Lited XP. Installing more programs slows this down in XP, but not enough for Ubuntu to beat it.

Also, (this is settings related) torrents seem to run about 25-50 kb/s faster on Ubuntu than they do on Windows. I suspect this is related to half-open TCP/IP connections, but I don't know.

Feel free to correct me if your mileage varies.