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$250 Chromebook With Ubuntu Linux Is Very Fast

Posted by timothy on from the choices-getting-nicer dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Google Samsung Chromebook was already interesting for its competitive $250 price-tag and that it can be loaded with Linux distributions beyond Chrome OS, but it turns out that its performance is particularly good, too. When loaded with Ubuntu Linux, the Samsung Exynos 5 Dual ARM SoC on the Chrome notebook had outperformed a 1.8GHz Intel Atom, a quad-core Calxeda ARM server, and a TI OMAP4 PandaBoard."

22 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. But will it blend? first post! by luckymae · · Score: 4, Funny

    But will it blend? first post!

  2. Re:250$ buys you a lot of netbook... by Joehonkie · · Score: 2

    They do compare it to an Intel Atom based netbox, which is the desktop form factor of your "regular Intel CPU based netbook."

  3. How complete and up-to-date is Ubuntu/ARM? by timeOday · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This sounds like a potentially fun, cheap device. Does Ubuntu for ARM have all the same packages as x86? (From a check of the Ubuntu ARM web page it appears a lot of the focus for ARM is on the Server distro?)

    1. Re:How complete and up-to-date is Ubuntu/ARM? by larry+bagina · · Score: 2

      I run debian/ARM on a qnap TS 409 (text only, no X). Some programs/kernel modules are x86 specific by their nature (example: virtual box). Everything else should be available.

      --
      Do you even lift?

      These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

    2. Re:How complete and up-to-date is Ubuntu/ARM? by snadrus · · Score: 2

      (to help GP)
      The open-source JVM is available though, which is very feature-complete. The open-source flash lags behind or (usually) isn't worth it, but YouTube has HTML5 videos now.
      Anything Windows-oriented is unavailable (FOSS or not) like ndiswrapper (which you shouldn't need), wine (not running windows apps directly may affect you). There's KVM (Kernel Virtualization Module), but it only virtualizes ARM systems. If you must, there's bochs to run x86 on ARM, but it's slow and limited.
      Other "common for me" 3rd-party drivers like Lightscribe won't work.

      But otherwise things like scanners & well-supported (openprinting.org) printers should work. You'll even get to use USB devices that work in x86 Linux via open-source drivers.

      --
      Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
  4. Now that ARM is faster than Atom... by CajunArson · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now that the latest ARM chips from late 2012 are actually faster than a similarly clocked Atoms using the exact same architecture that was introduced in 2008 (well at least in some of those benchmarks, the Atom won some too), will we finally see the ARM fanboys talk-up Atom as Intel's best chip of all time?

    Remember, when you say that Atom is a complete PoS and simultaneously crow that you finally beat it in performance 4 years after it hit the market, you kind of sound like someone who bragged about cheating to win the Special Olympics...

    --
    AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
    1. Re:Now that ARM is faster than Atom... by CajunArson · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Catching up with atom in power or efficiency should have Intel running scared.

      Well, these benchmarks don't include power consumption but when Haswell has been demoed at 8 watts running Unigine Heaven and other benchmarks of the Exynos 5 at Anandtech show it running at 8 watts while doing the single-threaded non-GPU Mozilla Kraken benchmark, you kind of have to wonder who is doing the "catching up" and who is "running scared"....

      --
      AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
    2. Re:Now that ARM is faster than Atom... by Joehonkie · · Score: 2

      I was thinking of EXACTLY that review, where they mention all it needs is a lower clock speed. As opposed to the much slower atom used there, which has a higher consumption, or the apparently equal performing atom used in the test above which has a 35W draw AT IDLE with chipset. The Exynos 5 chromebook as a whole system including display has a draw of just over 11W when running a benchmark. So no, the Atom isn't even close on power draw, and clocking it down will not make it work in a phone.

    3. Re:Now that ARM is faster than Atom... by CajunArson · · Score: 2

      Ahem...you are comparing a state-of-the-art 28nm SoC on the ARM side with a several years old 45 nm Intel netbook that includes a separate chipset.

      I find it hilarious that you only looked at that one part of the Anandtech review and declared victory for ARM when even you know that 32nm Medfield SoCs were on sale before the Exynos 5 even launched and have substantially better power/performance ratios than were exhibited in the Anandtech numbers.

      I find it even more hilarious that you summarily ignored the Haswell demos I mentioned since you must think that denying the results will make ARM win...

      --
      AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
    4. Re:Now that ARM is faster than Atom... by rbmyers · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ok, so I noticed that one system is apparently using a solid state disk and the other a conventional disk.

      Given that the limiting bottleneck of a notebook with a decent processor is almost always the disk subystem, I stopped reading. Did I miss something?

    5. Re:Now that ARM is faster than Atom... by 0123456 · · Score: 2

      Please...

      Yes, the original Atom chipset was a power-munching pile of crap, but that's not because they 'pushed most components out' to it. It was a perfectly standard chipset for that time, providing the memory interface and, I think, a crappy GPU. Everything a non-Atom Intel CPU of a comparable time period did the Atom did.

      And my Ion HTPC uses less power at the wall than the Atom chipset used by itself, while providing a faster memory interface and faster GPU. The original Atom problems were due to crappy chipsets, not crappy CPUs.

    6. Re:Now that ARM is faster than Atom... by hattig · · Score: 2

      The next generation of 22nm Atoms with the new core has been delayed until 2014.

      A best of breed current generation Atom (dual-core, quad-thread) is thoroughly beaten in many benchmarks by this slightly slower clock-speed, first generation, 32nm dual-core Cortex A15 product. Next year brings a lot of 28nm quad-core A15s at 2GHz including the Exynos 5450.

      And because it is cheap - no Intel tax - you can get a very decent computing device using it for $250, which is a darn sight better than the pricing of Atom netbooks, AMD netbooks and certainly anything called an Ultrabook.

    7. Re:Now that ARM is faster than Atom... by hattig · · Score: 2

      This Exynos 5250 is a 32nm SoC.

      The 28nm Exynos 5450 is coming out next year, with two more cores, twice the GPU and a faster clock speed.

      Haswell is simply not going to compete in this area of the market, where price, power consumption and performance come together. It will compete at higher price points, maybe even at low power in single-core ULV (ultra-low-clock too) variants, but not all three.

      Intel's 22nm next-generation Atoms are coming out in 2014.

  5. Re:250$ buys you a lot of netbook... by Baloroth · · Score: 2

    Second, they only compare the performance to simular system configurations rather then a regular Intel CPU based netbook.

    Uhh, an Atom is a regular Intel CPU based netbook. Atom was designed specifically for netbooks, in fact. I'm not sure how much more "regular Intel CPU based netbook" you want, because you can't get more regular Intel netbook than that, unless you expect them to compare it to "Ultrabooks" 2-3x the price (which aren't netbooks). Agreed, the site is terrible.

    --
    "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
  6. Re:250$ buys you a lot of netbook... by evilbessie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That'd be an Ultrabook as the 'standard' of which you talk for a small light machine, which isn't really fair as the machine will be faster with an i3/i5 and DDR3. But it'll also cost 3 times as much so. The question then becomes will a $250 netbook in 2 generations beat the ultrabook (ie would you be better to buy a new $250 machine when one comes out for 3 generations than spent the same money in one lot now. That's an interesting question but not one many people would care to ask. I don't know but if you find out you can let the rest of us know.

  7. Re:250$ buys you a lot of netbook... by beelsebob · · Score: 3, Funny

    But said 15" standard laptop will be 3 inches thick, and made out of cheese and string. Come back when you have something small, light, solidly built, and as fast.

  8. Re:250$ buys you a lot of netbook... by Obfuscant · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But why? It's not like you are going to be encoding video or rending a Pixar movie on the thing. You want video playback, document editing, some gaming, and web surfing,

    What's interesting is that you use as examples of "high performance" activities those things which can most easily be left running unattended, and use as low performance activities those things that need the most system performance to provide realtime interactivity. Encoding video can be done on a P90 (given enough time) and nobody will know when it is done that it took a minute or a week. Watching that video on a system that skips and jumps because the CPU/GPU cannot keep up is immediately noticeable and would be unacceptable to most people.

  9. Re:250$ buys you a lot of netbook... by bfree · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Acer C7 Chromebook £199 from amazon.co.uk (for a sterling comparison as you said £229). This has a Sandy Bridge Celeron so it's a cut back Core processor but it would be the one I'd be most interested in seeing benchmarked like-for-like with this $250 Arm Chromebook.

    --

    Never underestimate the dark side of the Source

  10. Re:250$ buys you a lot of netbook... by preflex · · Score: 4, Informative

    Hogwash.

    Chromium and VLC have been working just fine on Ubuntu ARM for years (as well as Ubuntu PPC). No need for virtualized processor. They're compiled for ARM. Dropbox and Jungledisk should also compile just fine if the source is available. That's the beauty of free software.

    There's a source tarball for Dropbox here.

    Jungledisk (never heard of it before) appears to be propretary, so fsck 'em.

  11. Re:250$ buys you a lot of netbook... by admdrew · · Score: 2

    VLC does run on ARM, and I believe you can get Chromium (but NOT Chrome) on ARM as well, but I haven't tried that. No luck for Dropbox, though :(

    --
    LegendMUD
  12. Re:Upgradeable? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

    The internal storage device is an eMMC module soldered to the motherboard. Unless you have a BGA rework setup and nerves of ice, no go.

    this gallery has motherboard shots.

    It does support SDHC cards and USB mass storage devices.

  13. Re:lxde on chromebook unity on atom ?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm not affiliated with phoronix, but I'm the one that ran the benchmarks.

    You can go to any Phoronix article with benchmark results and get the command line for the benchmark run.

    So once I had ubuntu up and running on my Chromebook, I went on Phoronix, found a benchmark set that they ran with comparable processors (that would not take more than a few hours), and I ran it too. The results get uploaded to Open Benchmarking. Nobody is trying to trick you.

    The Phoronix guys (guy?) noticed the results a few days later and and posted the graphs. There was NO attempt on my part to keep the OS exactly the same as what Phoronix used in their earlier benchmark runs in the comparison. I don't have acceleration in X, so I'm using lxde...

    Phoronix just posted the results because they thought they were interesting. I'm sure proper benchmarks are coming since he posted chromebook pics in that article. These are just benchmarks that some random guy (me!) ran to see how his chromebook compares to Atom/Cortex-A9.