Chrome OS Benchmarked Against Moblin, Ubuntu
Chrome OS goes up against Fedora 12, openSUSE 11.2, Moblin 2.1 and Unbuntu Netbook Remix 9.10.
We've heard an awful lot about Chrome OS over the last week or so. Between hour-long Google presentations and getting the stripped down OS to run on virtual machines, there's been a lot of talk. However, for all this talk, there's been very little in the way of numbers. For example, how does Chrome OS compare to similar solutions already available?
With the release of the Chome OS source code following hot on the heels of Moblin 2.1 and Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10, the folks at Phoronix decided it was high time for some benchmarks. The resulting data covers areas such as video playback performance, encoding, battery power consumption and CPU/memory usage tests. OSes put through the wringer include Fedora 12, openSUSE 11.2, Moblin 2.1, Unbuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 and of course, Chrome OS.
Chrome OS can't handle running OpenArena so it drops off rather suddenly in some of the graphs but the results are interesting all the same. All told, Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 came out on top, with openSUSE 11.2 also performing quite well.
While perusing the results you'd do well to remember that ChromeOS isn't actually out for another year. Google has only offered a vague release date of "next year," which suggests later is more likely than Q1 or early Q2. With approximately a year to polish things up, the final build will probably perform better than the version used by Phoronix.
Read more here.




That's the difference between an open source project and an internal project.
It's based on a stripped down Ubuntu.
That's the difference between an open source project and an internal project.
aka. for CPU usage, average numbers not calculated on same period for all distro, when usage was not constant... the "result" 66% versus 51% seems huge when the trace shows that they all behave same. Shame on Phoronix for that.
The good thing is that you can see where the performance penalties are for some of the design decisions being made (like the EXT3 vs. EXT4 filesystems), and since it's open-source developers can contribute back by submitting optimizations or tweaks.
Also keep in mind that Chromium OS compiles and runs just fine right now, so people can use it if they want. With a benchmarking article like Phoronix's, they can tell what they're headed for if they choose Google's OS over its competition at the moment. When Chrome OS is officially finalized and released, by that time Ubuntu will probably be on the 10.4 version of their Netbook Remix, which is scheduled to have even more optimizations for booting fast and being usable on netbook hardware. For the time being it definitely looks like the overall best mainstream option for netbooks, and Chrome will have some work to do in order to catch up by release.
Personally, I was suprised that Chromium OS ran as many of the benchmarks as it did, being basically a browser sitting on top of the kernel. Not really shocked that it couldn't run the games.
You already can make your own Chrome OS easy, just take the Linux kernel compile it, add Chrome, the browser, and you're done.
What's the big fuss?