Friday, October 23, 2009

Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Benchmarks

Phoronix is a Linux technology website focusing on product reviews, distribution screenshots, interviews, and news. It is one of my favorite Linux sites and the best site for info on Linux graphic drivers. Today Phoronix released a benchmark comparison between Ubuntu 9.04 Juanty Jackalope and the upcoming 9.10 Karmic Koala release on the Dell Mini 9.

Most of the article is positive, Dell Mini 9/Vostro A90 owners should rejoice. Here is a quick summary:
"There is just one week left until Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" will be released, but is it worth the upgrade if you are running a netbook? From our testing of the development releases, it is most certainly worth the upgrade, especially when compared to Ubuntu 9.04 with its buggy Intel driver stack that caused many problems for Atom netbook users. Ubuntu 9.10 brings many usability improvements to the Linux desktop, various new packages, and the overall system performance has improved too. We have ran a set of benchmarks on both a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 and Samsung NC10 under Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10 to illustrate the performance gains along with a few regressions."

You can find the complete article on www.phoronix.com.

If you can't wait the week and want to make the jump to Karmic, the Release Candidate has been pushed out today. You can download it here.



Have a question or problem that this article doesn't cover?
Ask our Ubuntu Mini 9 Google Group for help.

13 comments:

Ran said...

On both my Mini9 and my X60t it's increasingly being paired with, Jaunty is amazing. Every other dist-upgrade seems to be breaking suspend right now, but it's worth running the beta (RC now?) even with that. I love the new icon themes, too.

The new intel video drivers alone are worth updating -- but as a side note, I was not able to *successfully* dist-upgrade from Jaunty on either machine. Had to do fresh installs on both. (Hey, nobody said it was production ready.)

redDEAD said...

dist-upgrade is hit or miss and usually its a miss.

if you seperate your home and /root folder you shouldn't have too much of a problem.

yooy said...

I confirm. The Koala (bêta release) runs much better than the Jackalope :-D especially when it comes to play a video, which was a frustrating operation under the 9.04 release.
This ubuntu animal seems to be a very good one ;-)

Unknown said...

I know everyone nitpicks these benchmarks, but why benchmark on two almost identical netbooks,and then not try Netbook Remix?


I can't try the RC out since my mini9 is at Dell to fix the charging problem. I'm actually more looking forward to doing a clean install on my Kubuntu desktop.(switching to x64 and ext4) 9.10 Netbook remix seems like a step backwards to me and graphics performance is almost a non-issue for me.

Unknown said...

I got my mini back yesterday. Since they didn't ship back my SSD screws, I have to run off my usb drive. I downloaded 9.10 RC, but I can not get wifi to work. I've tried every combination of install, removal and reinstall using synaptic and the hardware drivers utility. I've tried both the STA driver and the B43 driver, I have restarted two dozen times. I've even tried redoing my usb drive.

The closest I got was wireless connections showed up in the notification icon, but was "not available", then the screen locked and faded to white, then to a cursor and pointer. After restarting wireless is no longer showing.

In the hardware driver utility it says that the "driver is activated but not currently in use".

Any ideas?

redDEAD said...

kppron,

1st go buy some screws or call dell and bitch until they ship you screws. You can find them cheap at Radio Shack.

Second refer to this article. http://www.ubuntumini.com/2009/10/ubuntu-910-karmic-koala-beta-is.html

If those steps don't work file a bug report.

Unknown said...

They are sending me screws. As I said synaptic doesn't help. I'm really not familiar with Ubuntu's bug process, and it's probably too late already, but I will try.

redDEAD said...

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

Scroll to the bottom of the page for even more info.

Netbook Downloads said...

The Remix has been a good addition to the Netbook OS catalog.

Reading for a number of locations all reviews were positive. Meaning, that it is something to keep our eyes at.

I was going through an article where he mentioned that 9.10 was more likely developed keeping Cloud Computing in mind!!! Someone spot the difference??

redDEAD said...

Netbook Download

Ubuntu One and Amazon cloud intergration.

Anonymous said...

Just finished upgrading my mini 9 but it fails to restart. A white ubuntu logo shows up but the screen turns black shortly after. Not sure where to go from there. I tried using recovery mode but that doesn't work either.

Wesley Mason said...

@Anonymous:

Had the same problem, UUID had been screwed up in GRUB.

To fix:
boot off a USB stick, open a terminal and run 'sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst' to open up the GRUB boot script. Scroll down to the first uncommented section and replace the boot line that uses the UUID to access your install (not the line that sets the uuid itself, the line below it) and replace that with /dev/sda1 to reference your SSD itself rather than via the UUID.

Save, reboot (remember to take the stick out to boot off the SSD) and this should have fixed your problem.

Andre Alforque said...

Installed Ubuntu 9.10: Karmic Koala onto the Dell Mini 9 today.

I found what I think was the Dell distro here at http://linux.dell.com/files/ubuntu/karmic/iso-images/. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to install from an ISO.

Instead, I just went the Ubuntu.com route.
1. Download from Ubuntu.com
2. Burn ISO to CD (using this Freeware: http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm)
3. Boot CD on a PC.
4. Select "install to USB Drive" option.
5. Boot from USB Drive on Dell Mini 9.
6. Install (Erase and use entire disk.)
7. Setup.
8. Download and install updates.
9. Download and install Flash.
10. Watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Hulu.com.

Yay! Video isn't choppy!