Revisiting Linux Part 1: A Look at Ubuntu 8.04
by Ryan Smith on August 26, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Linux
File/Networking Performance
Finally we have file and networking performance. As Ubuntu uses a different file system (ext3 versus Windows’ NTFS) there’s the potential for some significant differences here.
Starting with file performance, we will be using a collection of roughly 1500 files, totaling 380MB.
Even after SP1, file performance has long been a thron in the side of Vista. Here it manages an embarrassing loss to Ubuntu, taking over 50% longer to make a copy of the same folder.
Looking at ZIP compression times, it’s an even larger gap. Vista needs 75% longer to compress the same folder. While compression can be CPU bound, looking at our data this specific test is largely I/O bound. We’ve already established at Windows’ built-in ZIP abilities are pretty bad, but we’ve never figured out why this is.
Decompression is even worse for Windows. It takes nearly 4 times as long to decompress the same archive. It’s not even a contest – Ubuntu wins, if only because it’s the only competent operating system out of the two.
Meanwhile in our network copy tests, we are copying that folder to a server running Windows Server 2003. This gives Windows an advantage since we’re using SMB, but since SMB is the predominant protocol for consumer file server gear, it’s a fair test of such use.
Here it’s nearly a dead heat. Both Ubuntu and Vista need just as long to copy our file collection to the server, meanwhile Windows needs a bit less time to copy that same folder off of the server.
Switching gears, using a 2.6GB ISO we see a clear performance difference. In both copying to and from the server, Ubuntu needs at least 50% longer. Since this test isn’t using a lot of CPU time, our best guess is that Windows is doing some buffering that Ubuntu doesn’t get to do. The transfer rates for Linux are below what the hard drives on either end can manage.
Ultimately for users with lots of local storage, Ubuntu appears to outshine Vista. But for users with lots of remote storage (e.g. a NAS), Vista outshines Ubuntu.
Finally we have the amount of time it takes to start up each operating system, another disk-bound test. Vista is not something I would consider particularly speedy, so I’m a bit surprised that Ubuntu did not manage to outperform it here. The 2 second difference is measurable, but small enough that it won’t make any real impact.
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LittleMic - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_link">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_linkWell, Windows 2000 had symbolic links for a long time :-p (only for directory until Vista though)
ekul - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
ntfs has symlinks but the windows shell can't create or manipulate them. Pretty pointless. MS can (and does) use them in vista/7 but you can't make your ownEeqmcsq - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
"hint: symlinks are your best friend. My home dir is littered with links to places on the filesystem I visit a lot to avoid a lot of clicking/typing"I use Gnome's bookmarks for that. Those bookmarks even include SMB shares on my other computers.
ekul - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
gnome bookmarks are very handy I just find symlinks to be more flexible since they work regardless of gnome vs kde, gtk vs qt and gui vs cli. Even wine can take advantage of themjigglywiggly - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
one more thing you should have covered is battery life on laptops. Linux in general is pretty awful at managing battery life. Just web browsing 4 hrs on Vista on my vostro 1310(not using 7) but with Ubuntu 2 1/2. It's a huge difference, but oh well.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
Laptops are out of our domain, that would be Jarred. If this two-part series is successful, I'll see what I can do about talking him in to putting some Ubuntu (or any Linux for that matter) battery benchmarks in. But I'm told a complete workup takes a while.strikeback03 - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
On my Thinkpad T43, battery life is essentially equal between XP and Ubuntu. Ubuntu may even be slightly better, though I have never bothered with a formal test to put real numbers on both. Have you looked at whether the processor is throttling down properly or not while in Ubuntu?sprockkets - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
"Now we have yet to touch on hardware accelerated playback, which is something we’re going to hold off on until we take a look at Ubuntu 9.04. Linux does not have a common media framework like Windows and Mac OS X have DirectShow/DXVA and QuickTime respectively. Rather the desktop environment that Ubuntu is based off of (GNOME) includes a lesser framework called GStreamer, which is closer to a basic collection of codecs and an interface to them. As such hardware accelerated playback is not as easy to do under Ubuntu as it is under Windows and Mac OS X. We’ll take look at the APIs and the software for this in our look at Ubuntu 9.04."Well, not exactly. There is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VaAPI">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VaAPI, which is not exactly widespread yet. nVidia's VDPAU, which provides hardware acceleration for h.264 and if you have the latest version of PureVideo in your card, it does VC-1 as well. It can work with this or alone as well.
Also, while it is wacky that bin or binaries are in one spot, and lib or libraries are in another, and anything you install is in a /usr/lib/local, it does keep all related files in one spot. Keeping all your libraries registered as packages also makes it easy to repair.
Also, one click installs are possible on openSuSE as well, though it does involve a small gui process and adding a repository as well. But doesn't any program require this?
Also, I believe your problem with SMB shares is something I run into as well, but only on GNOME. On KDE, browsing shares is quite normal. Since I never bother mounting the share, I can't directly access it without KDE caching the file locally.
Isn't /home/$Your Name$ intuitive as to where your stuff would be? That is very nice, as I can keep my stuff separate from the OS, thus I can reformat the OS partition without having to touch my data. Imagine reinstalling Windows and finding all your apps working exactly as before with no work. Can OSX do that (not rhetorical)?
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
VDPAU is something we'll specifically be covering in the Part 2; in fact it's what I'm working on at this moment.GeorgeH - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
I'm sure the comment section will quickly be swamped with quibbles, so I just wanted to say that I found this article to be very informative, accurate (WRT my own Ubuntu experiences), and thorough. Kudos - now it's time to ask for a raise. :)