Ubuntu 9.04 Beta vs. Fedora 11 Beta Performance

Of the 15 tests, the Ubuntu 9.04 Beta won 10 of these Linux tests -- in a few of the tests though, the performance was close. This is a bit surprising considering Fedora 11 Beta uses the newer Linux 2.6.29 kernel and our internal benchmarks have shown this kernel to perform better overall than its predecessor. However, the development builds of Fedora 11 do have various debugging options enabled, which may partially explain these figures. Fedora 11 is also tracking GCC 4.4 instead of GCC 4.3, but we have yet to explore this forthcoming compiler release in-depth to know what to expect when it comes to its performance.

We wanted to deliver these initial numbers today and we will publish more results once both of these Q2'09 distributions are released. When looking at the final builds, we will also be testing out the graphics performance, which is one area where there will be definite change considering the different bits Fedora has already incorporated when it comes to living on the bleeding-edge of X.Org development. For those looking forward to the Fedora 11 Beta, it should be formally released within a few hours.