Early Ubuntu 9.10, OpenSuSE 11.2, Mandriva 2010 Benchmarks

Last week we provided benchmarks of Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 4, but Ubuntu is not the only Linux distribution preparing for a major update in the coming months. Also released in the past few days were OpenSuSE 11.2 Milestone 6 and Mandriva Linux 2010.0 Beta 1. To see how these three popular distributions compare, we set out to do our usual Linux benchmarking dance.

The package versions between Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 4, OpenSuSE 11.2 Milestone 6, and Mandriva 2010.0 Beta 1 are quite similar. The latest development build of the Karmic Koala provides the Linux 2.6.31-rc5 kernel, GNOME 2.27.5, X Server 1.6.3, xf86-video-intel 2.8.0, Mesa 7.5, GCC 4.4.1, and an EXT4 file-system by default. The sixth milestone of OpenSuSE 11.2 is running with the Linux 2.6.31-rc6 kernel, GNOME 2.27.5, X Server 1.6.3, xf86-video-intel 2.8.0, Mesa 7.5, GCC 4.4, and an EXT4 file-system by default. Mandriva Linux 2010.0 Beta 1 has the Linux 2.6.31-rc6 kernel, GNOME 2.27.5, X Server 1.6.3, Mesa 7.5, xf86-video-intel 2.8.0, GCC 4.4.1, and uses the older EXT3 file-system by default. Running these three Linux desktop distributions on an Intel Atom netbook, we were using the 32-bit builds. As always, all three distributions were left running with their stock settings.

Our test hardware was again the Samsung NC10 netbook with an Intel 945GME + ICH7-M chipset, 2GB of DDR2m memory, a 32GB OCZ Core Series V2 SSD, and Intel 945 integrated graphics with a 1024 x 600 LCD panel. Through the Phoronix Test Suite we ran the Tremulous, LAME MP3 encoding, FFmpeg, PostMark, SQLite, GnuPG, John The Ripper, dcraw, PyBench, and GtkPerf test profiles. These are just a few of the 100+ tests available through our testing software, but should provide a rough estimate as to where the latest development releases of Ubuntu, OpenSuSE, and Mandriva are performing.