Benchmark Results: File Copy Times And Archiving
File Copy Times
When copying from a hard drive to another location on the same disk, the new Ubuntu is a few seconds slower than the previous LTS, both with Unity and using the old GNOME 2 shell of Ubuntu Classic. Ubuntu 11.04 Classic finishes a fraction of a second before Unity.
Copying from a USB drive to the hard drive yields the same results, with Natty Narwhal coming in behind Lucid Lynx by a few seconds. Unity and Classic are again pretty even, with Classic having a negligible edge over Unity.
When copying from the hard disk to a USB drive, which is incidentally the longest file copy scenario, it's Ubuntu 11.04 with Unity that has a clear edge over both Ubuntu 11.04 Classic and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.
Archiving
Whether compressing or decompressing, using either tar.gz or .zip formats, Ubuntu 11.04 Classic and 10.04 LTS hold a noticeable lead over Ubuntu 11.04 with the new Unity interface.