

Ubuntu is getting slower - urlwolf
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_bench_2008&num=1

======
kxt
Seeing benchmarks conducted by Phoronix always fills me with emptiness on the
inside. While I really welcome the idea of benchmarking Linux, their
methodology always seem lacking for me.

All we get are a bunch of numbers, without any actual investigation of what
those numbers should represent, what can be the reason of the outcome, and
sometimes the measurements make simply no sense.

For example, according to these benchmarks, Ubuntu 7.04 reads memory twice as
fast as newer versions. There is no possible way it can be a valid result. At
least assuming that the exact same compiled code was used on every
installation. Which brings us to another problem: no information on the tests.
All we get is a software name, a version number and the result numbers. Which
would be almost fine if they were prepackaged binaries, but with FOSS
different compile time options and compiler flags can make quite a difference
in the results too.

About the nonsensical tests: RAM speed should be the same regardless of the
OS. So dedicating a full page to RAM speed tests should be senseless. No. It's
actually a nice control to the tests, and the numbers show that there's a
problem somewhere. Either the tests, the measurements are off significantly,
or there is something flawed in either the 7.04 configuration or the others
that cause almost 50% difference in such test.

Also, measuring compile times. They managed to measure the time it takes to
compile 3 software written in C using an unspecified compiler with unspecified
options.

At the end, no conclusion were drawn, just the results summaried in English
instead of plain numbers. The whole thing gives me the feeling that they don't
really know that they are testing, they're just running a bunch of programs
and reporting the numbers they output.

I'm sorry if it seems like I'm just ranting, but I've tried a couple times
sending emails that point out the flaws in their methodology, to no use.

------
mdasen
I've always found that benchmarks are not good at showing OS performance for
desktop applications. Why? I don't really need raw speed. What I need is
something that will allow me to switch tasks and use other applications while
one is locking up/doing a ton.

BeOS was great at that. I'm guessing the new Comlpetely Fair Scheduler that is
debuting in Intrepid is better in that way too. My use of Intrepid shows it to
be noticably faster in my daily usage. However, I'm not compressing video. I'm
running several apps at a time and need to switch between them a lot.

------
woodsier
Eugh. I quit the site as soon as I saw it was divided into 10 pages. No
thanks.

~~~
Harkins
Yeah. I have a simple way to find out if Ubuntu is getting slower:

1\. How many people are assigned to adding features and making upgrades? What
level of authority do they have? 2\. Same questions, but assigned to
performance monitoring and enhancement.

Software is such a product of the culture that produced it that sometimes you
don't even need to run benchmarks.

~~~
lacker
I appreciate your angle but really the number of people working on a problem
is a very bad indicator of how well the problem is being solved.

------
delano
There are a lot of superfluous details in this article. After doing a few
initial benchmarks it should have been obvious that the largest performance
decline occurs between the 7.04 and 7.10 releases. The article should have
answered that question first before throwing 8.x into the mix.

Also, don't use a laptop for benchmarking operating systems!

~~~
palish
_don't use a laptop for benchmarking operating systems!_

Why not? Laptops are poised to overtake desktop PCs. It seems valid (even
necessary) to test your product on popular consumer configurations.

~~~
JoelSutherland
Agreed.

In my experience I have found that XP boots and runs faster than Ubuntu 8.10
on my laptop. This was not the case on the same machine back in the 7.04 days.

~~~
delano
That's a different type of test. You're talking about testing the performance
of your laptop with various configurations. This article is comparing the
performance of several versions of Ubuntu and the reason you don't want to use
a laptop for that is because laptops have significantly slower hard drives
than desktop models (even at the same RPM). Also the laptop they're using has
a 5400 RPM drive which doesn't help.

~~~
JoelSutherland
Why is it bad to use a slower hard drive for a benchmark comparing software?
You haven't explained this yet.

~~~
delano
I answered that question in my reply to palish.

------
erik
When slashdot ran this story, the readers commented that the results seem
suspicious. Misconfigured power saving settings are likely the cause of the
speed difference.

[http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1008879&cid=25...](http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1008879&cid=25525597)

