Preview Of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS vs. Ubuntu 12.10 Performance

When Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" is officially released there will be more Ubuntu 12.10 performance figures to publish beyond what's already been benchmarked. In this article are a preview of some Intel performance figures comparing an updated Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS installation to Ubuntu 12.10 with its near-final packages as of this week.

This early benchmarking "preview" of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS against Ubuntu 12.10 was done from the common HP EliteBook that served as Intel's Software Development Vehicle (SDV) for the previous-generation Sandy Bridge notebooks. The Intel Core i5 2520M was running with its HD 3000 graphics backed by the well-supported open-source Intel Linux graphics driver. The updated Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS and 12.10 installations were compared with each operating system's stock settings.

With the official 12.10 release will come Intel, AMD, and ARM benchmarks to see how the performance of 12.10 Quantal Quetzal compares to the 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin. We already know there are some x86 compiler improvements, some open-source graphics improvements, and ARM performance improvements, but also some slow-downs in large part on the graphics side due to continued pain with the Unity desktop.

All of this Ubuntu Linux benchmarking was handled in a fully automated and easily reproducible way using the open-source Phoronix Test Suite software.