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Ubuntu vs. Windows In OpenOffice.org Benchmark
ahziem writes "Ubuntu's Intrepid Ibex and Redmond's Windows XP go head-to-head in an OpenOffice.org 3.0 performance smackdown measuring vanilla OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, Go-oo, and Portable OpenOffice.org 3.0. Each platform and edition does well in different tests. Go-oo is known for its proud slogan "Better, Faster, Freer," but last time with OpenOffice.org 2.4 on Fedora, Go-oo came in fourth place out of four. Slashdot has previously reported Ubuntu beating Vista and Windows 7 in benchmarks, so either XP is faster or this benchmark carries a different weight."
Who cares? OOo is still slow no matter what platform it's run on.
XP faster then vista/7? I'm shocked. I've been doing some general testing between XP and ubuntu 8.10 as well as dellbuntu 8.04. Ubuntu gets 25% longer battery life on my netbook, but cannot play youtube videos (on either version) without lurching video. XP on the same netbook does youtube just fine, but has a 3 hour batter life to ubuntu's 4 hour. On an old p4 i have xp scrolls smoothly and instantly in firefox, where 8.10 has a delay before anything happens. My conclusion: On a slow system, XP is faster.
Who runs OO on Windows? The only point of this "test" is to see if Linux can keep up or not.
No sig today...
Disclaimer: I'm already a proud Ubuntu 8.10 User, i love that Os, has its issues but i think is good for me and what i do with it, but common, i'm already tired of this benchmark fever slashdot is suffering lately...
How many benchmarks do we need? Really..
Are we gonna benchmark every single app out there to see our loved Ubuntu beats the shit out of Windows?
Ubuntu Wipes Windows 7 In Benchmarks
Java Performance On Ubuntu Vs. Windows Vista
Ubuntu 8.10 Outperforms Windows Vista
Slashdot ya no es que lo era!
"Due to the efficiency of Visual Studio 9 over GCC"... I don't want to pick a compiler flamewar here, but I think it is fair to say that making blanket statements about one particular compiler producing faster code than another is pretty ignorant. There are some things VC does that GCC doesn't do, and vice versa, compiler switches can make a big difference, and you really would need to study the most commonly used code in OO under both compilers to see who is, in fact, generating better code, and, incidentally, for which processor.
This is my sig.
Is speed really the issue here? My LAPTOP was a bargain-barrel purchase 3 years ago and it has no problem running OpenOffice + FireFox + other standard software on either Ubuntu or XP.
What I care about is, "Which one is least likely to crash and make me lose my work?" That's always been my big complaint with the Windows versions of free software (GIMP comes to mind), not speed.
I wonder if the faster warmboot times under XP are due to its prefetching functionality. Another benchmark with prefetching disabled could determine this. Maybe Ubuntu or other distributions can try adding prefetch functionality to their distributions and put Windows where it belongs, (at) last.
On my Mac desktop I used OpenOffice for a long time. I find MS Office on the Mac to be a train wreck. But OO's performance really sucks on the Mac, even with Java turned off. I switched to Apple's own iWork '09 and it's fantastic, far superior to any alternative on the same OS. I prefer open document formats, but I need to get my job done.
My point is I hope the OO teams can focus more on performance across the board. I realize the difficulty when it's built for multiple platforms, but once performance is improved it'll be a much better contender.
Developers: We can use your help.
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I feel OOo is slow both on Linux as well as Windows. Most likely this is due to the bloat and mindless copying of MS Office features. I have a question: Is it possible to weed out the redundant or useless features in OOo and make it sleek and quick? Since this is completely open source, theoretically this should be possible.
In similar vein, I'm also looking for pluck-outs from Firefox which is also bloated. Rather than running extensions called NoScript, AdBlock, FlashBlock etc.; why not remove these products from the installed version itself to make it lean, mean and less resource hungry?
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
It's just me? I don't find very interesting a benchmark of office suites. Look, my suite can write bold text faster than yours! Boring...
Because...well, I didn't read the article, but are we benchmarking Word Processing applications now? How fast a spreadsheet can calculate the sum of a column? Whether there's a pause between fade-in transitions in a presentation?
I'm trying to think of a good car analogy here...maybe how fast your passenger side door closes?
Nothing like testing on modern hardware! Wait, I've got a P4 sitting around here somewhere we can test with.......
the people that care are the one using open standards. If you use .xls, you better stay on ms office.
I've love this! This is the site where "benchmarks are all important," and ubuntu "is the greatest OS, evuh!" When XP beats ubuntu, we have:
. Slashdot has previously reported Ubuntu beating Vista and Windows 7 in benchmarks, so either XP is faster or this benchmark carries a different weight.
I don't love windows, but I've found it really annoying how the site has truly turned into a cult of Ubuntu and OS X.
For others (like me) who are familiar with OOo but never heard of "Go-oo", Wikipedia says,
Go-oo is a concentrated set of patches for the cross-platform OpenOffice.org office suite. Go-oo is also one of OpenOffice.org variants created from these patches. It has better support for Office Open XML file formats than the official OpenOffice.org releases produced by Sun Microsystems, and other enhancements that have either not yet been accepted into the upstream Sun version, or will not be because of business or political reasons. Some of these changes or enhancements will eventually be part of the Sun version, too; the process of assessing patches, "upstreaming", just takes time.
It's a shame that even the Go-oo website does a poor job of explaining this on the front page (doesn't mention OpenOffice.org until nearly the very end) nor on the "about" page.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Not all of us use or want to use a linux dist clearly designed for the point-and-click brigade. Not to mention the daft name (no I don't care what it means in Zulu, to an English speaker it sounds idiotic), daft release names, moronic default restrictions (to a power user) such as a locked root account. Perhaps I'm just a crusty old git but anything with release names like "gutsy gibbon" and "intrepid ibex" to me sounds like something aimed at pre teens which makes me wonder what other "user friendly" cutesy rubbish they've hacked into the system itself.
How about some benchmarks of Suse or Fedora or even Slackware?
Oh wait. It was a rhetorical question. Sorry.
Deleted
I use xls on both Excel and Open Office and they are mostly compatable. If you are one of those accounting types with 100000 lines in an excel file then you you should stick with excel.
Open Office is a replacement for M$ office for 95% of the use cases. Still the proprietary formats of M$ Office made it difficult to port. Since those standards are now published I think cross program support will improve.
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
Speed? Fix the feature set first.
Until Open Office Writer gets a Track Changes that works reasonably and Mail Merge allows the most basic of custom fields (and maybe even integrates with email), then organizations like mine will continue to pony up to Microsoft. I keep trying it out, and it's still just not good enough to push onto my users.
the people that care are the one using open standards. If you use .xls, you better stay on ms office.
Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. I personally would love to have open formats all the time. Heaven knows that it would make my job easier. But, the fact of the matter is, most companies/people/etc use MS Office. You must have that compatibility. It's nice to hold to ideals, but you can't shoot yourself in the foot while doing so...
Seriously. ... Who cares if OpenOffice opens a .xls document 4 seconds faster, since it takes me a good 25 minutes to reconfigure all the graphs formating that it lost from MS Office??
Is that 25 minutes taken into factor? ... That's right, I didn't think so.
That's just silly.
If you need Excel, why would you be running OO? If you've got all kinds of graphs and formatting and whatever else that's going to take 25 minutes to fix in OO, why wouldn't you be running Excel? That time adds up pretty quickly and before long it becomes very easy to justify the cost of a license for Excel.
That's like the folks who switch to Linux or OS X and then load up their machine with some kind of VM and run everything in Windows anyway. If you need Windows, why not just run Windows?
Of course the best solution would be to get everyone working from some kind of open format, so it didn't matter what software you were using. So there was absolutely no vendor lock-in. But that won't be happening any time soon.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Not trying to be a troll, but I kind of laugh when I see the "OOo benchmarks on various OS" reports. I use openSUSE for the most part and the Go OO version of OpenOffice on both Vista and openSUSE. What I've found interesting is how much faster and more responsive Office 2003 is running either natively or under Crossover Office (which I posted before in the openSUSE mailing lists).
I really like OOo - and especially Go-OO - for it's user interface and nice clean setup, when working in Calc or Text. However, I would like to see some serious speed improvements in starting time, especially for the bundled versions coming with the distros.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Why are benchmarks considered important here? How about real consumer acceptance that goes beyond the Ubuntu and Open Office hobby community? Wake me up when desktop Linux hits 5% of consumer desktops.
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Anyone who wants documents readable in 10 years?
I would rate you at +10 insightful if I could...
I have better reasons for choosing Ubuntu than how fast a given application runs on it.
Abiword FTW! \o/
A week or two ago, I installed Gimp on Windows. Gimp takes forever to start on Vista 64. I figure it's because Gimp uses GTK, which is not Windows native, where as on my Ubuntu install GTK is native and Gimp starts up very quickly.
OpenOffice.org is a unix application rigged into running on Windows, sort of like Pidgin or GIMP on Windows.
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Windows
And if you go over each of the official build services, you will find that one of the big differences between go-oo.org, StarOffice, and OpenOffice.org vanilla is simply build engineering. Specifically, if they're building with cygwin, it provides some major performance issues. Although Windows has some native POSIX support, you don't use it quite the same way as you do in Linux or Solaris- rather than accounting for these differences, OOo uses a POSIX emulation layer in order to avoid extra work. Despite the fact that Windows is the primary platform for distribution, it's simply too much trouble for Sun or Novell to screw with it. I know Novell is trying to move their build service (go-oo) into a straight GCC cross-compile solution, so the speed issue will not get any better on Windows.
My point is that this is built with Visual Studio 2005 as more or less a standard Windows application, not a Vista/7 application- it's not using the NT 6+ API's, so it's invalid as a true performance test. This would be similar to us testing Microsoft Office 2003 (I don't think OOo is quite feature comparable to 2007) on Windows vs. Wine and then declaring that Windows is the hands down superior platform.
So let's talk about Platform inequities. The Microsoft optimizing C compiler is a better compiler than GCC-- but GCC is really not half bad anymore. Visual Studio's really superior because of its debugging, refactoring, and profiling tools, not so much JUST its compiler. I think this is part of why Firefox runs faster in Wine than in native Linux. In fact, by writing your application in like vim and debugging with gdb then just using Visual Studio as a build slave, you're really getting the short end of the stick in both directions. But I digress, a native unix application like OOo is a native unix application, and I wouldn't expect you to get tremendously better success in Windows unless you're running it on Interix or something. Of course, that's not to say Windows doesn't do unix tasks like NFS better than UNIX, just that it doesn't necessarily run direct unix code better.
But this is all fluff, the fact of the matter is that OOo is not a Windows application and most people are Windows users, so let's look at some logical alternatives:
So... if you're running Windows and you just need to type a paper for school for free/cheap.... why not just use Softmaker Office 2006... or Softmaker Office 2008 if you have 20 bucks. Just use Office 2007 if you're doing long reports- the bibliography handling alone will make the 60 bucks to get it through ultimate steal worthwhile when writing something long and arduous. Consider the time you save on formatting and grammar checking and such over a semester or two- it's worth it. If you're paying thousands a year for your education, the least you can do is not waste time with shitty office software.
Personally, I use OOo on my linux netbook and Softmaker Office 2006 on my Windows box and just keep my documents in ODF. It's the cheap-ass pro solution.
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That's a whole Insightful per year!
Being able to do everything Excel can do and being able to import an Excel file perfectly are two completely different situations. Anytime you do any sort of format shifting, there are going to be problems. Try taking an old DOS Quattro Pro or Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet and bring it into a new version of MSOffice and not have formatting problems. You can't even bring an old Excel 4 spreadsheet into a new version of MSOffice without having to reformat the entire document.
"Being able to do everything Excel can do and being able to import an Excel file perfectly are two completely different situations."
They would be different if opening and displaying an Excel file wasn't one of the things Excel can do.
Gnumeric works better Excel than Excel works with Excel...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
My laptop and desktop aren't that new. (desktop 4+ years old, laptop 3 years old) and I can manage to run OOo quite well on both. The laptop runs XP and the desktop is Ubuntu.
Maybe people need to get their porn from somewhere that doesn't load their PC with spyware to slow the system down.
The Microsoft optimizing C compiler is a better compiler than GCC-- but GCC is really not half bad anymore...
--You are on crack, aren't you...
I'm not really running OO, for the exact resons you listed. I'm just saying I tried using OO, and my response was a criticism of all the advice I got from linux zealots who love to rub in your face how OO is perfect and can do everything Excel can do. Bullshit.
Not to put too find a point on it, but: that's what happens if you listen to zealots. There are plenty of rational, helpful people in here that will tell you exactly what OOo can and cannot do. The GP, who says "use Excel if you need Excel" is one of these.
Your comment was disingenuous and came off as an attack (rather than a criticism), as you made the statement that OOo "slows your work". Well yeah, trying to use a screwdriver as a hammer will slow your work too.
My advice is this: ignore the zealots who say obviously wrong things (that's pretty much trolling in any case), and listen to the plenty of informed people instead.
If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
OMFG. We're pointing back to the "how many clicks does it takes" "benchmarks" on the pre-perf-tuned BETA now where "DRM checks" impacted copyfile?
I would like to celebrate this continued example of technical dishonesty on Slashdot. It's a biased site in all directions (which makes it fun and interesting, as opposed to sites that only tilt one direction), but that's pretty ridiculous.
I puked a little.
Can we be proud enough of our technical excellence that we actually require technically interesting tests? JFC, have some pride.
1/
Measuring "speed" of a human interaction limited UI editor is simply daft, and the idea that you should reboot ever few minutes indicates a Win mentality, re-boot often since the OS memory leaks. Next since the scripting is unlike real behavior.
2./
What matters is how good the layout algorithms are, and what functionallity you get. I use vanilla OOO all the time, on my laptop for all personal and business purposes, even though I can/do run M$ Word under Wine or virtualised in an XP environment and all are fast enough for all realistic practical purposes, at least on a dual core with 2GB.
Subjectively OOO is easier to use, and less likely to cause idiots to miss-use its functionality, but much more important, with improved and now almost bug free font management, the output looks good. For a publisher/word-processor that is good. If I want it to look beautiful, I use La(Tex), OOO is acceptable and if, never, I dont mind ugly then M$ Word.
Exactly like IE, Word is a hostage to M$ marketing, so they waste time with ribbons in the UI rather than making the layout right.
You can just tell what typeset stuff, if you have reasonable eyesight, and an understanding of typography, you will easibly recognise TeX, OOO, and M$-Word output and I leave the rest to your own judgement.
The files OO.org creates are also larger than those created by MS Office.
you should be sent on a training course for how to use a spreadsheet.
I cursed the day I heard the new version of Excel would let people go to a million rows. The kind of atrocities people create already, they're only ever forced to stop and think about what they're doing when they hit that 65,000 row limit and say hey, maybe I'm duplicating too much here, maybe I should rethink my design and organise my data better.
The more people get the new Excel, the more they'll continue eternally down the screen, copy and paste and edit, copy and paste and edit, and they'll email a million-row monstrosity to everyone in the company and kill the email system for hours. What's to stop them? Why should they ever rethink if they never hit the bottom? They'll just keep on as they are, generating more and more unnecessary work through sheer ignorance.
You often hear nerds flaming Access. Reasonably enough too: people create awful half-arsed relational databases using that app, which we then end up having to tidy up. But I tell you what, they're creating awful half-arsed relational databases in Excel too, and they're far worse. When all you have is a VLOOKUP(), everything starts to look like yet another $AF$210:$AH$409,3,FALSE. Give me a left join created in a click-and-drool GUI any day.
As far as spreadsheets go: 65 thousand rows should be enough for anybody.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Anyone writing "M$" rather than MS automagically loses all credibility.
It's the key located left to D.
And the layout of the executable. If commonly used pages are stored sequentially then they'll be loaded more quickly from a normal hard drive than if they're intermixed with code that's infrequently used. MS Office, for example, is linked to take advantage of this.
As for OO being slow, in my experience the slowest link is me typing/reading
So you have some text in your head, and you want to get it onto the screen. How much of a delay is there between starting OOo Writer and it being ready to accept input? Or do you use the Notepad/gedit workaround, where you start a lightweight text editor in the foreground, type the first sentence or two, then paste it into OOo Writer once it has loaded? And how much of a delay is there between opening a document in your file manager and the document being ready to view?
Some of these changes or enhancements [in Go-oo] will eventually be part of the Sun version, too; the process of assessing patches, "upstreaming", just takes time.
So would Go-oo is to OpenOffice.org as XEmacs is to GNU Emacs be entirely inaccurate?
There was no way of replacing Windows with Linux (a lot of legacy third-party apps for making orders from suppliers, one for each, most of them written for Windows, and some even for DOS), but OO - no problem with that at all.
You should feel lucky that these third-party apps weren't built to run on top of Microsoft Access. I don't think the typical accounting/POS/inventory management app written for Access would run on OOo Base.
But a locked down root account clearly shows they're not expecting anyone to do any serious sys admin on it because no one is going to want to type sudo for every single command they need to run under root.
Type sudo bash to see how not locked down it is. Disallowing login directly as root is a security feature to slow down computer vandals a bit.
No,
33% longer than 3 hours is 4 hours.
25% shorter than 4 hours is 3 hours.
Or if you're making a paper for school, why not just use LaTeX? Produces better looking output, autoupdates your reference numbers for you, Bibliography handling is still the easiest yet, typing mathematic symbols and formulae is infinitely easier than any other word processor on the market, etc etc. (Ok, I'll stop derailing this now with fanboyisms).
If you are one of those accounting types with 100000 lines in an excel file you should consider to use a decent DBMS.
I load Openoffice-Writer i 2,5 seconds on FreeBSD... how is that slow?
oh my god! Operating System X loads OOo faster than Operating System Y! I'm going to switch immediately! Because clearly that is the deciding factor between my using Windows or Linux. not program availability or compatibility or actual usefulness, no.
Loading times is where it's at dog.
Or if you're making a paper for school, why not just use LaTeX? Produces better looking output, autoupdates your reference numbers for you, Bibliography handling is still the easiest yet, typing mathematic symbols and formulae is infinitely easier than any other word processor on the market, etc etc. (Ok, I'll stop derailing this now with fanboyisms).
I'd be lying if I said I hadn't tried that. Maybe I am just not smart enough for unix or something, but I've sort of come to like spelling/grammar check and good WYSWYG. Office 2007 handles so much of the headache for you it's just crazy... bibliography is as easy as adding the fields to a simple gui app and then clicking generate bibliography.
If it's easier than that, I must have been using a different LaTeX.
"Then maybe you might try compiling it yourself or find a different binary package."
OOo: Faster than MSOffice...if You're a Nerd.
Seriously though, OOo should obviously be compared after it's been compiled against the latest libraries, and it's the developers job to release that latest version on their site.
In any case, a fair comparison should be done using the same version. All I know is that OOo is snappier on Linux, and without the bleeps, sweeps, and the creeps which the Windows version suffers from.
Who doesn't love it.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.