Netbook Performance: Ubuntu vs. OpenSolaris

Beginning with the Java 2D Microbenchmark, the vector graphics performance was many times better under OpenSolaris 2009.06. However, the reason for this is quite simple. OpenSolaris 2009.06 continues to use all of the older X.Org/Mesa packages that were released previous to all of the invasive work that was done for the Graphics Execution Manager, DRI2, and kernel mode-setting. For months in many articles we have been talking about how the Intel 2D/3D performance has been drastically degraded and The Intel Linux Driver Kills The Netbook Experience. With Ubuntu 9.04 using the newer (bugged) Intel code while OpenSolaris is lagging behind with the X/Mesa packages is actually of benefit to Sun, but hopefully by the time the next OpenSolaris release rolls around (and Ubuntu 9.10), all of these Intel issues will be corrected. Some of the performance issues are in fact already corrected in their latest kernel, DDX, and Mesa code.

OpenSolaris 2009.06 also beat out Ubuntu 9.04 at its text rendering performance due to the aforementioned Intel graphics problems.

At LAME MP3 encoding, the performance on this Dell netbook was virtually identical across OpenSolaris and Ubuntu.