DescentBB

My friend just got a Windows 7 netbook. It has almost exactly the same specs except it has an extra gig of ram, 2 gigs. So we did a side-by-side comparison between the two.

Booting up to the login screen was the same amount of time. After entering in the password, the time to load the desktop and get on the net was about the same as well. However, even after two attempts, Ubuntu shuts down faster by far, which isn't that important.

Here's why I'm posting...

We had trouble finding a linux/windows general application performance benchmark, but since we both run Chrome we decided that running a browser benchmark would be fair. We got a few tests comparing HTML5 and Adobe Flash, and we ran each one at a time, side-by-side.

Windows 7 lost to Ubuntu 10.10 (which had compiz running with extra effects) on all tests. It even lost in the Adobe Flash test, which I wasn't expecting.
http://themaninblue.com/experiment/Anim ... ark/flash/

At this point I figured that Windows 7 was just too cumbersome an OS for his netbook and required too many resources to run other applications with any resource surplus. But we wern't satisfied for the following reason.

It's well known that Adobe retarded Flash for Linux, so we tried two other tests. Windows also lost to Ubuntu on a different Flash benchmark from Newgrounds. So I came up with a Youtube test to see which performed better.... I expected his to loose.

The test Windows won was the Youtube frames per second test, which we measured by just seeing who could run an HD full-screen video with out choppy-ness. His was perfect quality on full-screen! Ubuntu was...well.. you know how Flash for Linux can't do full screen as good....

Why!?!? Ubuntu can out-perform Windows 7 in all other Flash tests, but not video? That's completely backwards!

How could that happen?
edit: Did adobe only injure Linux's Flash video player? Or is there a codec conversion that only takes place under Linux?

Thanks!

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also, my Ubuntu netbook outperformed him on all of these tests:
http://themaninblue.com/experiment/Anim ... mark/html/
http://themaninblue.com/experiment/Anim ... rk/canvas/
http://themaninblue.com/experiment/Anim ... hmark/svg/
http://themaninblue.com/experiment/Anim ... ark/flash/

Its because the video architecture under linux is seriously impaired - namely you don't consistent access to the acceleration hardware for video.

So why are youtube HD videos under Totem, the non-flash video player, so incredibly smooth? Or were you referring to just Flash videos?

Also, flashvideoreplacer ( http://www.webgapps.org/addons/flashvideoreplacer ) seems to not have this problem (wow I found a use for firefox!)

The question is which API is flash using to draw in linux, find that you'd probably find your answer.

In /etc/adobe/mms.cfg, adding:
... should force enable hardware scaling. If you have VDPAU (e.g. an nvidia GPU), adding:
... should enable h.264 decoding in hardware.

Nvidia are the only ones who seem to have their ★■◆● together these days.

Thanks Jeff!
didn't find it, but you've given me more than enough to research the issue.

Funny, $70-$130 vs $0 was comparison enough for me.

I'm curious about the timing you get to boot. There are some people on arch that have achieved 12s boot times- power on to login screen. I know that my wife's vista laptop boots slow as molasses. The most interesting part is that the longest part is login screen - painting the desktop.

If you want to improve your performance, take a look at xubuntu.

I'm in the class break right now:

From On-button-press to login screen: 26.9 seconds.

During the comparison with my friend, Ubuntu 10.10 and windows 7 pro took almost the exact same amount of time. I won the first try by a half second and the second try he did by about half a second.

I don't think boot time is important since my power button = sleep mode. I just push it and it knocks out. I'm sure most netbook users do the same. You have one?