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.