Ubuntu Unity Proves Very Slow To KDE, GNOME, Xfce, LXDE

Written by Michael Larabel in Operating Systems on 7 September 2012 at 10:58 AM EDT. Page 6 of 6. 63 Comments.

Now running some of the same test profiles again but at lower resolutions.

Ubuntu 12.10 Beta Desktop Benchmarking
Ubuntu 12.10 Beta Desktop Benchmarking
Ubuntu 12.10 Beta Desktop Benchmarking
Ubuntu 12.10 Beta Desktop Benchmarking

These lower-resolution full-screen tests just largely confirm the earlier data with KDE 4.9 being the fastest Linux desktop when having KWin automatically suspend its effects on full-screen windows. The good news for KDE users is that KWin is about to get even faster! Xfce and LXDE overall are very strong competitors without having some heavy compositing window manager interfere with the OpenGL gaming performance. GNOME Shell 3.5.4 with its Mutter compositing window manager also did rather well overall and was sitting in the middle performance-wise. Unity 6.4 with Compiz meanwhile was the slowest in the majority of the benchmark results.

Next up are benchmarks showing the 2D performance on the Ubuntu desktop.

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Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.