Initial Findings: MeeGo 1.1 Netbook vs. Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Initial Findings: MeeGo 1.1 Netbook vs. Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook

Intel and Nokia last week rolled out MeeGo 1.1, which is now officially available for Intel Atom netbooks, the N900 handset, and in-vehicle "infotainment" systems. The netbook spin of MeeGo 1.1 is out there to compete with the likes of Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition, which was released just shy of a month ago. While nothing radically has changed with MeeGo 1.1 compared to the initial MeeGo 1.0 release from earlier this year, the software stack is updated so for the past few days we have begun conducting a performance comparison between MeeGo 1.1 and Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook. Here are some of our initial findings.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=15417

[Shining Arcanine]

MeeGo 1.1 was measurably faster with the PostMark disk benchmark than was Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook. MeeGo is one of the first Linux distributions deploying the next-generation Btrfs file-system by default, while Ubuntu 10.10 is still using the evolutionary EXT4 file-system, but in an upcoming Ubuntu release will switch over to Btrfs.

That is not very useful information. It would be much more useful if you did an Apples to Apples comparison where you had 4 data points to both distributions using both types of filesystems. Having two distributions, each with a different filesystem, makes the numbers worthless for comparing the changes made between them to individual capabilities.

[sirdilznik]

MeeGo wins the most important tests, at least for me, the battery usage test and the disk transaction test. I wouldn't be buying a netbook for playing video games or encoding MP3s.

[smitty3268]

That is not very useful information. It would be much more useful if you did an Apples to Apples comparison where you had 4 data points to both distributions using both types of filesystems. Having two distributions, each with a different filesystem, makes the numbers worthless for comparing the changes made between them to individual capabilities.

I disagree. Most people are going to stick with the defaults, that makes it a useful comparison. Going the extra step of modifying the distro to provide the same filesystem as the competition could be an interesting test as well, but at that point you are testing how to best tweak a distro to perform better/worse rather than actually comparing the distros.

[devius]

Having two distributions, each with a different filesystem, makes the numbers worthless for comparing the changes made between them to individual capabilities.

The point of this comparision is to test the performance they both offer with their default configurations.
BTW, with a similar netbook (minus the SSD) I got 23.5 FPS with Arch Linux, although mesa is version 7.8.3.

[seagull7]

Which OS is more useful (practical) for the hetbook user?

[devius]

Which OS is more useful (practical) for the hetbook user?

Ubuntu's Unity is pretty much slow, buggy and difficult to use, and Meego is the opposite and has better battery life so it's not hard to see which one is more suited to actual netbook usage. Plain old gnome is also a lot more useful than Unity, so it's probably more productive to just use desktop ubuntu instead of the netbook edition.

[FunkyRider]

Meh

My full fledged laptop idles at 7.8 Watts with 10.10 Desktop x64

CPU is Core 2 Duo T9300, 6MB L2, 4GB DDR-2, Intel X25-E SSD, 15.6" LED backlight screen. It can eat the pathetic netbook for breakfast

[devius]

Meh

My full fledged laptop idles at 7.8 Watts with 10.10 Desktop x64

CPU is Core 2 Duo T9300, 6MB L2, 4GB DDR-2, Intel X25-E SSD, 15.6" LED backlight screen. It can eat the pathetic netbook for breakfast

:O That's impressive! What's the chipset in there? That's 7.8W with the screen turned on?

[FunkyRider]

Yes everything on, but the OS has to be tailored and tested against my machine:

Screen on 30% brightness (which is plenty for LED backlight)
Wifi on and connected
PHC kernel with voltage adjustment

The idle power consumption can dip down to 7.5W at times. A full charge (44 W/h) lasts for more than 6 hours idle / 4.5 hours web and it's only a 6 cell battery.

There are various tweaks to be done on stock 10.10 x64, including installing laptop-mode module and enable power save here than there.

I guess the stock Ubuntu netbook edition isn't very well configured for power save too. The main problem is, Linux power saving are having compatibility issues, if you hit it then bad luck for you so I guess default configures have to be conservative enough to support wide range of hardware.