Benchmark Comparison Between Chromium OS, Moblin & Ubuntu Netbook Remix

Phoronix is a Linux technology website focusing on product reviews, distribution screenshots, interviews, and news. Today they released a benchmark comparison between Chromium OS, Moblin, Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala did extremely well.

From the article:

"Well, these results were certainly interesting to say the least and surprised us in some areas. When it came to our netbook performance tests from the desktop, there were not too many dissenting test results between the gaming, video playback, encoding, and disk test profiles. However, for those tests that did differ, Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 usually came out in front as being the best performer."

These test were done with a Samsung NC10. The NC10 is almost identical to the Dell Mini 9/10v and Vostro A90, they all use the Intel Atom N270 processor and Intel 945GME + ICH7-M Chipset with the standard Intel 945 integrated graphics at a resolution of 1024 x 600 .

While I am not the biggest fan of Ubuntu Netbook Remix this release, the results hold true for the standard Ubuntu release. All Ubuntu Karmic Mini/Vostro users should be satisfied that their operating system is preforming nicely against the competition.

You can read the full article here.

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

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.

Intel Video Performance in 9.10 Alpha 3

I don't know whether to categorize this article as good news or bad news

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. Friday Phoronix published an article detailing Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Alpha 3's Intel video driver's performance on the Dell Mini 9's, it wasn't completely positive:

"We also wanted to deliver new OpenGL results from Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 3 using an Intel 945 IGP found in the Dell Mini 9, but that was to no avail. The Intel graphics performance was bad in Ubuntu 9.04, but at least World of Padman, OpenArena, Tremulous, and Urban Terror were able to run successfully. With Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 3 on the Dell Mini 9 and with each of these games being run through the Phoronix Test Suite, the system would lock-up at various points. None of the tests had finished successfully even when trying to run them multiple times"

Good thing misery loves company, because they said the same thing about the performance of Intel G43 chip in their test machine:

"This same problem had then occurred with the Intel G43 too. Mesa 7.5 has regressed badly in this area, but hopefully hitting in time for Ubuntu 9.10 will be Mesa 7.6 or at least more updates and patches to Mesa 7.5.x."

I agree Mesa 7.5 has brought some serious regressions. Even the Mesa developers recommend waiting for the Mesa 's 7.5.1 bug-fix release. There is some good news that at the end of the Phoronix article that should bring hope to Mini 9 users:

"While it cannot be told via benchmarks, Ubuntu 9.10 is running better with Intel graphics using UXA and is certainly more stable, artifact-free, and causing less problems. As Canonical's Bryce Harrington recently shared, the bug count for the Intel driver within Launchpad has dropped quite a bit. Hopefully though these Intel 2D/3D performance problems will be fixed within the next three months for Ubuntu 9.10."

I have personally found that Karmic's Intel video and flash playback performance is much smoother than 9.04. I am running Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Alpha 3 on both my Dell Mini 9 and my media box with an Intel X4500HD integrated chip and loving UXA's performance and stability for the first time since Ubuntu 8.04.

With Mesa 's 7.5.1 bug-fix or 7.6 release around the corner, there still is time for Ubuntu's developers to get Intel video driver working properly. I'd like to know how anyone else is finding UXA and Intel performance on 9.10 Alpha 3.

Source: http://www.phoronix.com

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