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Ubuntu is getting slower

phoronix.com

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Re: Ubuntu is getting slower

#2
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!

Re: Ubuntu is getting slower

#3
post #2

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!

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.

Re: Ubuntu is getting slower

#4
post #3
post #2

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!

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.

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.

Re: Ubuntu is getting slower

#6
post #5

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

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.

Re: Ubuntu is getting slower

#7
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.

Re: Ubuntu is getting slower

#8
post #3
post #2

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!

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.

[deleted]

Re: Ubuntu is getting slower

#9
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Ubuntu is getting slower

#10
post #3
post #2

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!

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.

You're right. It's valid and necessary when you want to compare the performance of different machines. When you're comparing software to software, hardware should not be a limiting factor unless you're testing for specific cases.
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