Fedora 16 And GNOME Shell: Tested And Reviewed

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Ubuntu and Mint don't want it; Linus called it an “unholy mess.” While most other distros are passing up or postponing GNOME Shell, Fedora is full steam ahead. Does Red Hat know something the rest of us don't? Or is GNOME 3 really as bad as everyone says?

Benchmark Results: Multimedia

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Video

HandBrake

Again, Fedora and Ubuntu nearly tie, both holding nearly a one-minute lead over Windows.

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Audio

Lame

The Lame MP3 encoding test also ends in a tie between the two distros. And both are again ahead of Windows, this time by just nine seconds.

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Images

RawTherapee

We use the 64-bit version of RawTherapee 4.0.7 for Fedora and Windows, and 4.0.6.16 for Ubuntu. We use ten image files of various raw formats as the test files for this benchmark. Both 8-bit JPEG and 16-bit PNG output is tested. Timing begins when the start command is pressed on the process queue, and ends when the process queue is cleared. RawTherapee is timed using a stopwatch measuring in milliseconds, and three iterations are performed.

Fedora only beats Ubuntu by about two seconds in the 8-bit JPEG, but soars ahead of Windows by over 13 seconds. In 16-bit PNG conversions, Ubuntu 11.10 takes the lead over Fedora by six seconds, while Windows 7 is again in last place, another ten seconds behind Verne.

Overall, the Linux distros come out ahead of Windows 7 in multimedia testing.