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MeeGo Netbook Performance: It's Beating Ubuntu & Co

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  • MeeGo Netbook Performance: It's Beating Ubuntu & Co

    Phoronix: MeeGo Netbook Performance: It's Beating Ubuntu & Co

    The last time we ran a performance comparison of different Linux distributions on netbooks was in late November when benchmarking Chromium OS, Moblin, Fedora, openSUSE, and Ubuntu Netbook Remix. The results were interesting, but now we have a new set of Linux distributions out there, so we have carried out a new comparison. In particular, we are looking closely at how the MeeGo distribution -- which marries Intel's Moblin and Nokia's Maemo projects -- is performing now that it has reached version 1.0. Also in the testing mix are Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04 LTS, Moblin 2.1, and Fedora 13.

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Michael, I wonder how do you install distros for all the tests? Do you do disk images, automated installs, just click through manually, or something else?

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    • #3
      Originally posted by curaga View Post
      Michael, I wonder how do you install distros for all the tests? Do you do disk images, automated installs, just click through manually, or something else?
      Just go through the install process as any normal user would, while selecting all of the default options and doing clean installs that occupy the entire drive each time.
      Michael Larabel
      https://www.michaellarabel.com/

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      • #4
        How many times do you run each test?

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        • #5
          I suppose Meego is optimized for Atom processors and that's why it won in encoding tests, right?

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          • #6
            Originally posted by crispy View Post
            How many times do you run each test?
            Look at the Phoronix Test Suite source. It varies by test and the std variation between runs.
            Michael Larabel
            https://www.michaellarabel.com/

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            • #7
              Very nice article! This comes at a great time since I'm in the process of testing several distros on my Eee PC to see which one works the best for me. 8 seconds boot time is just amazing!

              Anyway, Apopas, moblin was also supposed to be optimized for atom cpus and it's performance is not so great. The guys behind meego are doing something right, that's for sure. This could be the distro that manages to outcast that awful windows 7 starter from netbooks.

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              • #8
                Oh, I forgot something.

                My only concern with meego is installing software. I know there is the garage, but I suppose it's software library is not as extensive as ubuntu's. Can we still install software from other sources? What about the package format it uses? I've seen these same questions on the meego forum but no straight answer.

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                • #9
                  What I'd really like to see in a future Phoronix article is a benchmark of the most popular (and new) lightweight linux distros.

                  Distros like Puppy, SliTaz, Zenwalk, TinyMe, Lubuntu and Quirky Linux.

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                  • #10
                    So in MeeGo 1.0 we've worked quite a bit on performance and power optimizations (and it seems it pays off ...):
                    * We are using a gcc with Atom optimizations (backport from gcc 4.5 basically)
                    * We're using SSSE3 for floating point everywhere (-mfpmath=sse); quite some gain on Atom for floating point code
                    * We have an Atom optimized memcpy() in glibc (same for some related functions like memcmp etc)
                    * We've made sure that the environment variables are set so that normal apps that get compiled get the same CFLAGS as system RPMS get; likewise we've tried to make sure configure detects Atom correctly (there is some funky uname stuff in some configure scripts that get confused easily; don't ask)
                    * We've reduced OS overhead from background apps (if background apps take 1% cpu away, this costs both power and 1% performance for foreground apps)
                    * We've done a bunch of work on optimizing Qt (unfortunately, due to the 4.7 release dates, most of this did not make it into the 1.0 release)
                    * closely monitoring disk performance and working with btrfs upstream
                    (this is a balance between data integrity and performance. common sense data integrity wins of course)
                    * ... well many more little things all over the map to help performance


                    As the article says, there's still a bunch of work to be done, the compositor and graphics are clear areas of work for this.

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