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Ubuntu Wipes Windows 7 In Benchmarks
twitter writes "Recent and controversial benchmarks for Windows 7 leave an important question unanswered: 'Is it faster than GNU/Linux?' Here, at last, is a benchmark that pits Ubuntu, Vista and Windows 7 against each other on the same modern hardware. From install time to GUI efficiency, Ubuntu beats Windows and is often twice as fast. Where Windows 7 is competitive, the difference is something the average user would not notice. The average GNU/Linux user is now getting better absolute performance from their computer as well as better value than the average Windows user."
RTFA it was tested agains Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10 and 9.04. In both x32 and x64 flavors.
"Ubuntu 9.04 we used the daily build from January 22nd."
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
What's wrong? I mean the summary leads you directly to the conclusion you need to be coming to here:
"The average GNU/Linux user is now getting better absolute performance from their computer as well as better value than the average Windows user."
Seriously, that's good enough for me. Don't even need to read the article now...
Wait... oh never mind --
... you sir need to stay off my network.
I'll just leave you with this: A badly administrated box is a badly administrated box. If you honestly don't think you need to be checking your box for virii
Boot up time was also measured from the moment the machine was turned on, and the timer was stopped as soon as the desktop was reached.
Anyone who has ever used WinXP knows that you can't really do anything until all the services and task bar things have loaded. You still have several seconds (20-30 on my machine) once the desktop appears before you can actually do anything.
I have no idea why it took so long. It would freeze on each step, even just after selecting trivial things like keyboard and languages. A google search revealed this was a common problem. After about 30-40 minutes of waiting I finally got to the partition section where bizarrely there was no option to create an Extended Partition, so I had to cancel the install and use the Partition program manually. Why???
Then it would be a repeat of all the old steps as I restarted the install sequences, taking about 30-40 minutes each time. Several times there was a new bizarre problem at the partition stage, which caused me to restart several times. After installing I had no large resolutions even though I have a major brand graphics card. A Google search and a download later, that problem was solved but no dual monitor support yet. A google search revealed it was a pain in the ass and I don't have the heart for it yet.
I've installed various distros bunches of times but never had anything as slow as Ubuntu. Obviously the install program is buggy or I have some hardware conflict, but I've installed windows (A LOT) and never had that problem
Now that I've got Ubuntu up and running I should say that I'm very impressed and its running nicely, though it is still slower than windows at graphics intensive operations.
The average GNU/Linux user is now getting better absolute performance from their computer as well as better value than the average Windows user.
Okay, but this is almost meaningless. Tell me instead, how much value would the average Windows user get from GNU/Linux?
It really can do the basics, is FREE and isn't prone to viral infestation.
It's suitable for a lot of people, they just need to
get over their Microsoft vendorlock fixation.
Incidentally, Macs have the same exact benefits minus the FREE part.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Should have been fair and included FreeBSD in the comparison.
( in my personal experience, its noticeably faster then any Linux distro on the same hardware, )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm guessing the real root of both of your problems is old graphics drivers, unless you really seariously prefer IE over Firefox?
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
You're modded troll because they already do run at comparative speeds. GTA IV? On a 2.66 GHz dual-core 64-bit processor, 4GB of 800MHz DDR2, and a 512MB 9800GTX+ under Windows gives framerates reminiscent of Shadows of the Colossus on PS2. Under Ubuntu, it's about the same.
Loading MS Word? Just use OpenOffice because it's compatible with those document formats. Or run word in WINE - it just fucking works and speed differences are negligible. Ditto Visual Studio, most of that time is going to be hardware, not software, dependent.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
> Hands up everyone who got it down to less than 30, any distro.
Here is cold boot to desktop under 10 seconds with Asus Eeepc (not by me, but just to show that it is not that impossible):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzkQhHaFE0I
> 2- Video editing. Super simple video editing.
Not sure what you count as super simple, but have you tried http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/ ?
I do. I haven't bought a whole computer since 1987 and paid for and installed several versions of DOS and Windows. Quite frankly, Windows is a complete and utter pain in the ass to install. It takes hours (XP was the last one I bought so YMMV with later releases) and you have to babysit the whole process; you never know when something will pop up and ask for something.
Mandriva takes maybe half an hour, asks everything up front at the start of the process and you only have to come back to change CDs. For sniggering windows fans, it takes several CDs because all the apps get installed at the same time as the OS, whereas with Windows you have to install each and every app separately.
In short, it matters to anyone who has to install the OS. I'd guess since slashdot is "news for nerds" that's almost everybody here.
Free Martian Whores!
This or that application doesn't work on Linux or there isn't a comparable one (my favorite to mention is Sibelius's music notation software, aptly named Sibelius [or Coda Music's Finale, but I hate Finale]), it's not as easy to use, hardware, etc.
Some music notation software on linux (not complete list, just a quick search):
Its ok, the article's first half is a bunch of benchmarks that are utterly meaningless on Windows anyway. Who cares if Window's takes twice as long to install as Linux? I mean seriously, I'm waiting. Are operating installs a frequent event? I can count on my hands and feet the number of times I've performed them.
Its all well and good that Ubuntu can install itself faster, but it doesn't matter, because it is by definition an infrequent workload. This is theoretically true for Ubuntu to. After all, wasn't the infinite in place upgradability something that has long been touted as a strength of Debian and co. Thats even more important with Ubuntu, because I sure as hell don't want to reinstall and OS every 6 months.
Same goes for startup and shutdown. Windows Vista was explicitly designed with the idea that in general, the OS is going to be suspended/hibernated, not rebooted. I'd be much more interested in seeing benchmarks of a comparison between the speed with which Windows and Ubuntu are able to hibernate/unhibernate. I've always been curious about this, as subjectively, an older Ubuntu installation hibernation seemed faster than in Windows. Alas, I guess in order to give us that benchmark, the reviewers would have to actually find hardware Linux could suspend on. How does one plot a hard lock on resume anyway, time for the system to reboot and come back up?
The other thing they failed to mention on the I/O benchmarking side is whether or not the drives were set to write cache mode or not in Windows. AFAIK the default for removable media to disable write caching in Windows, but to enable in Linux.
Oh, and why the !@#$ are they benchmarking compute intensive tasks in Python? Is it to exacerbate differences, because the chosen runtime is so absurdly slow? But, in reality, there is no reason for compute intensive tasks to vary on the same hardware. This test is highly dependent on the system services running and the python version. I would consider this more of a benchmark of python instead of Windows/Ubuntu.
Seriously, and if it takes more that 1 GB of my 500 GB hard drive then there's something wrong.
Why don't they benchmark some more important timings like how long it takes to shutdown, how long it takes to paste text in an email and how long it takes to run a disk defrag.
Boot-up/shut-down are there. I was focused on the Windows 7/x86 & Ubuntu 9.04/x86 'cuz that's what I run. Windows 7 boots about 13 seconds faster and takes about 4 seconds longer to shut down.
Disk I/O is there too. For moving large files around, the numbers were more-or-less comparable. For moving small files (probably comparable to running a disk defrag), Windows 7 got its ass handed to it. Hopefully Microsoft is aware of this and does something about it before subjecting users to it.
Everything took more than 1 GB of hard-drive space installed, but Windows was 3-4 times as big (7.9 GB rather than 2.3 GB).
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Rejoice!
May the Maths Be with you!
Well, the real problem is that one of the charts is a gross distortion. Look at the "Large File USB to HD" chart. All the other charts are absolute, in that the starting y-axis value is zero. In this chart, the numbers are so close that the author fudges by starting them at 16.5. This makes Ubuntu look almost twice as fast as Windows, when the reality is that the biggest delta is about 5%. I don't think it was intentional, but it has no place in a benchmarking report.
Thank you for that.
True, there was one interesting metric where Windows got its ass kicked (copying small files around). But for the most part, I saw no major ownage. In fact, it showed that Windows did a better job with large files and had a faster turn-around time to boot & shut-down.
Windows takes longer to install and takes up more hard drive room... Meh. I don't re-install my OS very often and my hard drive is big enough that the extra 5 GB is just a nit-picky annoyance and a point I can use to bash Windows, but not actually something that will inconvenience me. Other than that, they stacked up pretty evenly (at least the x86 versions of Ubuntu 9.04 & Windows 7 - That's all I was really looking at).
How exactly did "Ubuntu Wipe Windows 7"? And in what way did these metrics show that "The average GNU/Linux user is now getting better absolute performance from their computer as well as better value than the average Windows user"?
This whole article is a troll. I'm going to have check out whoever this guy is that submitted it.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Can't speak for Windows 7, but I'm writing this from Firefox, running under Ubunut (sitting here building a new Ubuntu system for my kids). I have about 4 dual boot systems, and I'm to the point I'm not booting XP much anymore.
I'm obviously a fan, but here is my honest to goodness feeling on XP vs. Ubuntu: Straight out of the box, XP is just as fast as Ubuntu.
However, after you install a virus scanner, have 10 different little malware scanners you have to run to catch everything, and then every mother f'n program you installs on Windows thinks it needs to run as a service...hell yeah, Ubuntu is faster.
Man, Windows users just don't know how wonderful it is to have a hard drive that doesn't have CHURN 90% of the time. It's freaking awesome!
And games? As stated, all my systems are dual boot. I find my kids playing games in Linux about 3 out of 4 times I see them on a computer.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Same thing would happen. Ubuntu is much more secure out of the box, not to mention it doesn't even run 99% of the malware out there. Set them both with the same user password, and the Windows machine would be much more likely to be owned.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
unacceptable slowness of the X-windows GUI
I have a E4500 2.20GHz with 4GB RAM and a 256MB GeForce 8600GT (do they make a 512 model??) and it FLIES on Ubuntu 8.10; did you install the restricted driver?
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
I don't care how fast Windows 7 does a defrag, it still can't win. The average home user of Ubuntu (or any other Linux or Free-BSD for that matter) will never have to defrag their hard disk because of a better system of deciding where on the disk to put files as they're created.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Uh, direct what? Seriously, what productivity software uses Direct-X? None.
DirectX is a library interface, one that is fairly adequately implemented on Linux as well FYI.
If you want to instead state that Windows is presently a better gaming platform than Linux, then I'll let you win that one hands down. No problem. Way to go Windows, you got games. Whoopie.
Stupid question: Why do games need an Operating System as bloated as Windows? They don't. That's why Direct-X exists, ironically.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I wouldn't mind if they bundled everything they make, and everything they don't make as well! Just put a price tag on it and let the market sort it out. What I can't stand is that they essentially GIVE the software away through bundling deals with the OEM's, but tell them that they can't install any other software that competes with their products, essentially causing the OEM's to eat the difference, and pass the savings on to their customers. THAT'S anti-capitalistic. Unfortunately, government's only answer is to do what they've done, which includes forcing Microsoft to GIVE MORE of their software away to schools, further entrenching their monopoly. Gah!
Microsoft's making all their money from corporate sales, who are basically beholden because of the Office monopoly. All I want is for Microsoft to sell the same piece of software for the same price to everyone. Let them have 42 editions, for all I care, but just box it and price it and let the market sort it out.
How many individuals do you know have paid full retail price for either Windows or Office? If I could go buy either one for what they cost the OEM, the tier-1 Select customer, or the college student -- or if THEY had to pay what -I- pay, then I would consider that competition. I'd even consider it fair to meet in the middle. If Vista Ultimate cost what a new copy of OS X cost, that would seem to be about right. Have you seen what it actually retails for? Scary.
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
You're going to love Windows 7. I installed it in 30 minutes on my 5-year-old laptop and all the questions were at the beginning except for user setup.
but as for my computer, uh, let me know when i can play simcity 4 on it.
You can play SimCity 4 on Linux right now.
you mean this simcity 4?
Apparently you need a partial crack to run it, but that's true with many games on Linux because they usually have Windows specific CD/DVD protection that needs to be disabled (usually a no-CD file from some place like GameCopyWorld which removes or spoofs the protection checks). You can read about the legality of it there, but most people think it's legal to manually disable protection since you can legally do anything you want to your own copy.
Pfft. I'm sure a single Chuck Norris could still wipe the floor with them.
http://directxwine.sourceforge.net/
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Now you know. And knowing's half the battle.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
How long to install - Relevant to those deploying system regularly, especially for scripted or automated installs rather than imaged setups.
IN our virtual lab, we may be asked by departments to setup several machines a day - it makes a big difference in enigneering time if it is 10 minutes as oppsed to 20.
Disk space used - may not be important to a home user with a terrabyte local drive, but we run hundreds of virtual servers. For Windows 2003 images we allocate 30GB system volumes. For the linux servers we allocate 5GB for root and 5GB for /var/log and 5GB for /home (this one may vary depending on application). Not much of a difference until you have 100 servers to manage on a SAN.
Just to comment though my Vista home peremium install and Office 2007, Trend Micro takes nearly 20GB. My OpenSuse 11.3 with KDE4 only takes 8GB with every app I need on it (including Open Office 3) - Vista took much longer to install as there were many drivers to setup and install on my tablet, however All I needed for SuSE was information from the net on what settings to use for the wacom tablet. (Linux handwriting input REALLY needs to get with the times though)