Can Ubuntu 9.10 Outperform Mac OS X 10.6?

Another Ubuntu Karmic regression was spotted with Gzip. Ubuntu 9.04 came in first with a 2GB file compression time of just 36 seconds followed by Mac OS X 10.6 at 41 seconds, but the 2009-08-29 build of Ubuntu 9.10 came in at 45 seconds.

Ubuntu 9.10 exhibited better performance with Bork file encryption, with a test time of 99 seconds compared to 110 seconds in Ubuntu 9.04. However, Mac OS X 10.6 had an encryption time of just 90 seconds.

OpenSSL performed tremendously better under Ubuntu 9.04 and Ubuntu 9.10 compared to Mac OS X 10.6. The Snow Leopard had a average of just nine signs per second compared to 58 signs per second with both the Jaunty Jackalope and the Karmic Koala. Our earlier benchmarks of Mac OS X vs. Linux have shown similar proportions with the Apple OS struggling in this area.