Ubuntu 9.10: The Karmic Koala Benchmarked And Reviewed

Features
By Adam Overa
published

Benchmark Results: Render, Lame, Gaming

Like the rest of the suite, these benchmarks are cross-platform and free. Unlike the benchmarks on the previous page, they are application-based and therefore did not require a stopwatch and an average of many tests to get their scores.

Blender Render

For this test we used the “non-official” Blender benchmark Render file.

Karmic once again edged out Jaunty, this time by 10 seconds.

POV-Ray

Version 1.02 of the POV-Ray benchmark was used with POV-Ray version 3.6 in this test.

This test put Jaunty in a negligible lead by an insignificant amount of time.

LAME

This test was run using LAME version 3.98.2. I converted a 542.1MB .wav file to .mp3 format at a bitrate of 160 Kb/s.

Ubuntu 9.10 was able to create my mp3 file ten seconds faster than 9.04.

Games

Since our Linux test system is currently limited to on-board graphics, I decided to go with a couple of older, free titles. openArena made the cut, as did a game that hasn't made an appearance in Tom's Hardware's benchmark suite for several years: Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.

9.04 was the winner in openArena by a very slim .167 FPS. Karmic shot back with a half frame per second win over Jaunty in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. The gaming performance on this limited system is essentially a draw.

Adam Overa
146 Comments Comment from the forums
  • burnley14
    The new Upstart feature sounds terrific. Windows needs to take notes, I hate the awkward limbo of seeing your desktop but not being able to do anything.
    Reply
  • Hi,

    I was a bit surprised to read your slaughter of Ubuntu 9.10, because that does not reflect my experience with it. My first thoughts when reading this were related to the (possible lack of) integrity and technical skills of the author (sorry about that). Then I remembered that I experience a few minor issues when upgrading from 9.04 to 9.10 as well and that I read about people which were unhappy with it. However, none of these would IMHO deserve the label "epic fail".

    Spending four days for installing 9.10 and reinstalling 9.04 seems like way more time than you should need. I upgraded my computers running Ubunutu in less than an hour. I have not tried a clean install but it would surprise me that this would be any harder. My parents have also been using Ubuntu for more than a year now without any complaints (this includes an upgrade to 9.10). Maybe I have been lucky?

    I have been using Ubuntu at work and at home for the last 3-4 years and I am pretty happy with it. I am also happy with the fact that you (Tomshardware) have been writing about Linux a bit more frequently. Keep it up, but don't be so harsh :)
    Reply
  • jj463rd
    I tried it on one PC.Had constant problems with the Mouse not working,system locking up etc.I went back to installing rock solid older 8.04 LTS on it which worked without problems (except for the time consuming (about) 450 updates).
    Reply
  • rsmith13
    I also got the Kernel problem error messages after installing Xubuntu 9.10 on an AMD 64 system. They went away after doing an update. I now have Xubuntu 9.10 on 5 single and dual core AMD 64 systems. with no problems.

    Do the update!
    Reply
  • cyberkuberiah
    hardware driver support from the hardware makers themselves is lacking , i installed ubuntu , could not connect to belkin wifi even after using the prop drivers , and then uninstalled it . patience over .
    Reply
  • haplo602
    nice article ... I mostly skimmed through it :-) anyway can you include a windows 7/vista benchmark base for the same hardware ?

    I know some of the test will be irrelevant (like the timed installation) but most should work.
    Reply
  • DGriffin
    I had 9.04 and upgraded to 9.10 with out any problems at all... I have a AMD 64 processor and had no problems with the 64bit vir... ..idk maybe I got lucky, but I sorta doubt it..
    Reply
  • MaxTesla
    The screensaver starts after 5 min so when you install Ubuntu the screen saver will start and the screen will go black you need to move your mouse too see the instalation again, this could of course be mistaken for a crash
    Reply
  • MaxTesla
    The screen saver starts after 5 min so when you install Ubuntu the screen saver will start and the screen will go black you need to move your mouse too see the installation again, this could of course be mistaken for a crash
    Reply
  • I tried installing Ubuntu 9.10 via Wubi, immediately after rebooting from Windows and seeing the Ubuntu bootscreen it gave me a black screen, with my monitor reporting that there was no signal. Back to Windows I go, I suppose. :/
    Reply