Mac OS X 10.6.2 vs. Ubuntu 10.04 Performance

Mac OS X 10.6.2 "Snow Leopard" was slightly faster than Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" with the TSCP chess benchmark/

Mac OS X 10.6.2 managed to pull a surprisingly large lead over Ubuntu 10.04 LTS with the Tachyon ray-tracing benchmark.

With C-Ray, another ray-tracing benchmark, Mac OS X was faster than Ubuntu Linux still but by a smaller margin.

Mac OS X pulled another win in our final test, which was with the Java-based Bork file encryption benchmark.

We will draw our conclusions once we test the final releases of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS along with Apple Mac OS X 10.6.3 and the other operating systems we will be throwing into the testing mix along with Microsoft Windows 7. For now though, Mac OS X as of the 10.6.2 release seems to have the stronger performance advantage over Ubuntu 10.04 in general. The OpenGL gaming performance between the two was tight, but with Mac OS X 10.6.3, it may turn out to be Apple's advantage, and in the other areas, the Snow Leopard operating system most commonly came out ahead. This though could all change around again by the time Ubuntu 10.10 is released late into the year.

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