Revisiting Linux Part 1: A Look at Ubuntu 8.04
by Ryan Smith on August 26, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Applications: CD Burning/Image Editing
Windows Default: Drag & Drop
What I use: Nero
Ubuntu Default: Drag & Drop / Brasero
One of my minor annoyances with Mac OS X and Windows is that their default disc burning abilities are insubstantial. Both offer drag-and-drop file burning, audio CD burning through their respective audio suites, and in Mac OS X’s case it offers ISO burning too, but that’s it. As a long-time Nero user, I would rather have the finer level of control a disc authoring suit such as Nero or Toast offer when it comes to building and burning discs.
As it turns out, this is something that Ubuntu gets right. Not only does it include drag-and-drop burning abilities like the other OSes, but it includes a disc authoring suit: Brasero. In a nutshell, Brasero is a clone of Nero Burning ROM, much like Rhythmbox is a clone of iTunes. It sports similar UI elements as Nero, including the handy disc capacity meter towards the bottom of the window. As such, for anyone used to Nero it’s an easy transition to make.
Where Nero users will feel left out is that it’s only a clone of Nero Burning ROM, and little else. It can burn audio CDs, data discs, ISOs, and copy whole discs, but that’s it. It doesn’t have any audio/video mastering abilities like Nero does. In fact there’s nothing on the default Ubuntu install like this – Windows Movie Maker and iMovie have no direct counterpart on Ubuntu. This makes Ubuntu more capable than Windows or Mac OS X for data CDs, but underpowered for most kinds of media disc creation. Depending on how you use Ubuntu, this may or may not be an issue.
Meanwhile for users accustomed to drag-and-drop burning, you’ll find the drag-and-drop CD/DVD Creator satisfactory. As CD/DVD Creator doesn’t support packet writing, you’re limited to traditional building & burning via the GUI. CD/DVD Creator doesn’t support writing multisession discs either, so it’s entirely a write-once operation. Whether this is a problem or not depends on if you use packet writing – a quick check around here didn’t turn up anyone that uses it, so I’m not sure there are all that many people that are going to miss it.
For power users there are other options. The Ubuntu repositories contain other disc authoring suites, and a cut-down version of Nero is available too. We haven’t had a chance to check out either of these, but it looks like neither option provides a solid audio/video authoring package. Anyone needing such abilities may need to look elsewhere. For daily use however, it has everything I need.
Final Verdict: Meets My Needs
Windows Default: Paint
What I use: Adobe Photoshop CS3
Ubuntu Default: GIMP
In doing research for this section of our look at Linux, one thing became abundantly clear: Image editors on Linux have the potential to be a holy war. For Windows and Mac OS X the gold standard for image editing programs is Adobe Photoshop, but as Adobe does not offer it for Linux it’s up to the Linux community to fend for itself. In doing so they came up with the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) which strives to match Photoshop’s abilities on *nix for free. What results is an interesting situation.
In spite of the fact that I can barely make sense of Photoshop, it’s clear that GIMP is not just a Photoshop clone, for better or for worse. For someone looking for what would amount to a Linux version of Photoshop, they’re clearly going to be disappointed, as GIMP is not Photoshop or even Photoshop-lite. It’s an advanced image editor that is in a class of its own.
As far as default programs are concerned, GIMP is clearly miles and miles ahead of Windows’ Paint, and Mac OS X’s complete lack of a freestyle image editor (iPhoto being the next-closest thing). Even if it’s not up to Photoshop’s level of abilities, it’s a very capable image editor that comes with Ubuntu, rather than needing to be a separate program download on Windows or Mac OS X. This leaves me in a somewhat odd position.
Paint is anything but powerful, but it’s also simple. GIMP and Photoshop have at least one thing in common: they’re both capable of being complex beasts. As such I’m not convinced that it’s a good thing that GIMP is the default image editor on Ubuntu. For a beginner, it may be too powerful for its own good. For those reasons while it’s the most powerful default image editor when compared to Windows or Mac OS X, I’m not sure it’s the “best” if we’re to consider what fits user needs.
At any rate, when it comes to my own uses, I’ve previously mentioned that I’m not particularly competent than Photoshop. For image preparation for our articles it does the job nicely, while it’s clearly overkill for the task. For what little I do with Photoshop, GIMP works quite well, giving it the distinction of being the only default image editor that does what I need. For these reasons while it’s not a perfect replacement for Photoshop overall, it more than meets my needs for day-to-day use.
Final Verdict: Meets My Needs
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ParadigmComplex - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
I concur - while most of the article is quite good, Ryan really seemed to have missed quite a bit here. His analysis of it seemed rather limited if not misleading.Not everything *has* to be a package - I have various scripts strewn around, along with Firefox 3.6a1 and a bunch of other things without having them organized properly as .deb's with APT. The packaging system is convenient if you want to use it, but it is not required.
Additionally, Ryan made it seem as though everything must be installed through Synaptic or Add/Remove and that there where no stand-alone installers along the lines of Windows' .msi files. It's quite easy on Ubuntu to download a .deb file and double-click on it. In fact, it's much simpler then Windows' .msi files - there's no questions or hitting next. You just give it your password and it takes care of everything else.
The one area I agree with Ryan is that there needs to be an standardized, easy, GUI fashion to add a repository (both the address and key) to APT. I have no problems with doing things like >>/etc/apt/sources.list, but I could see where others may. I suspect this could be done through a .deb, but I've never seen it done that way.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
Something I've been fishing for here and have not yet seen much of are requests for benchmarks. Part 2 is going to be 9.04 (no multi-Linux comparisons at this point, maybe later) and I'd like to know what you guys would like to see with respect to performance.We'll have a new i7 rig for 9.04, so I'll be taking a look at a few system level things (e.g. startup time) along side a look at what's new between 8.04 and 9.04. I'll also be taking a quick look at some compiler stuff and GPU-related items.
Beyond that the board is open. Are there specific performance areas or applications that you guys would like to see(no laptops, please)? We're open to suggestions, so here's your chance to help us build a testing suite for future Linux articles.
cyriene - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
I'd like to see differences between PPD in World Community Grid between various Windows and Linux distros.I never really see AT talk about WCG or other distributed computing, but I figure if I'm gonna OC the crap out of my cpu, I might as well put it to good use.
Eeqmcsq - Thursday, August 27, 2009 - link
Cross platform testing is pretty difficult, considering there are a multitude of different apps to accomplish the same task, some faster, some slower. And then there's the compiler optimizations for the same cross platform app as you mentioned in the article. However, I understand that from an end user's perspective, it's all about doing a "task". So just to throw a few ideas out there involving cross platform apps so that it's a bit more comparable...- Image or video conversion using GIMP or vlc.
- Spreadsheet calculations using the Open Office Calc app.
- Performance tests through VMware.
- How about something java related? Java compiling, a java pi calculator app, or some other java single/multi threaded test app.
- Perl or python script tests.
- FTP transfer tests.
- 802.11 b/g/whatever wireless transfer tests.
- Hard drive tests, AHCI. (I read bad things about AMD's AHCI drivers, and that Windows AHCI drivers were OK. What about in Ubuntu?)
- Linux software RAID vs "motherboard RAID", which is usually only available to Windows.
- Linux fat32/NTFS format time/read/write tests vs Windows
- Wasn't there some thread scheduling issues with AMD Cool and Quiet and Windows that dropped AMD's performance? What about in Linux?
While I'm brainstorming, here's a few tests that's more about functionality and features than performance:
- bluetooth connectivity, ip over bluetooth, etc
- printing, detecting local/network printers
- connected accessories, such as ipods, flash drives, or cameras through usb or firewire
- detecting computers on the local network (Places -> Network)
- multi channel audio, multi monitor video
Just for fun:
- Find a Windows virus/trojan/whatever that deletes files, unleash it in Ubuntu through Wine, see how much damage it does.
Veerappan - Thursday, August 27, 2009 - link
I know you've said in previous comments that using Phoronix Test Suite for benchmarking different OSes (e.g. Ubuntu vs Vista) won't work because PTS doesn't install in Windows, but you could probably use a list of the available tests/suites in PTS as a place to get ideas for commonly available programs in Windows/OSX/Linux.I'm pretty sure that Unigine's Tropics/Sanctuary demos/benchmarks are available in Windows, so those could bench OpenGL/graphics.
Maybe either UT2004 or some version of Quake or Doom 3 would work as gaming benchmarks. It's all going to be OpenGL stuff, but it's better than nothing. You could also do WoW in Wine, or Eve under Wine to test some game compatibility/performance.
Once you get VDPAU working, I'd love to see CPU usage comparisons between windows/linux for media playback of H.264 videos. And also, I guess, a test without VDPAU/VAAPI working. Too bad for ATI that XvBA isn't supported yet... might be worth mentioning that in the article.
You also might want to search around for any available OpenCL demos which exist. Nvidia's newest Linux driver supports OpenCL, so that might give you a common platform/API for programs to test.
I've often felt that DVD Shrink runs faster in Wine than in Windows, so the time to run a DVD rip would be nice, but might have legal implications.
Some sort of multitasking benchmark would be nice, but I'm not sure how you'd do it. Yeah, I can see a way of writing a shell script to automatically launch multiple benchmarks simultaneously (and time them all), but the windows side is a little tougher to me (some sort of batch script might work). Web Browsing + File Copy + Transcoding a video (or similar).
Ooh... Encryption performance benchmarks might be nice. Either a test of how many PGP/GPG signs per second, or copying data between a normal disk partition, and a TrueCrypt partition. The TrueCrypt file copy test would be interesting to me, and would cover both encryption performance and some disk I/O.
One last suggestion: Folding@Home benchmarks. F@H is available at least in CPU-driven form in Windows/Linux, and there's F@H benchmark methodologies already developed by other sites (e.g. techreport.com's CPU articles).
Well, that's enough for now. Take or leave the suggestions as you see fit.
haplo602 - Thursday, August 27, 2009 - link
you are out of luck here ... linux does not compare to windows because they are both different architectures. you already did what you could in the article.especialy in a binary distribution like Ubuntu, compilation speed tests are meaningless (but Gentoo folks would kiss your feet for that).
boot up times are also not usefull. the init scripts and even init mechanisms are different from distro to distro.
compression/filesystem benchmarks are half way usable. on windows you only have NTFS these days. on linux there are like 20 different filesystems that you can use (ext3/4, reiser, jfs and xfs are the most used. also quite many distros offer lvm/evms backends or software raid.
I do not think there is much benchmarking you can do that will help in linux vs windows, even ubuntu vs windows because the same benchmars will differ between ubuntu versions.
the only usable types are wine+game vs windows+game, native linux game vs same windows game (mostly limited to unreal and quake angines), some povray/blender tests and application comparisons (like you did with the firefox javascript speed).
GeorgeH - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
Not really a benchmark per se, but I'd be curious to know how the stereotypes of Windows being bloated and Ubuntu being slim and efficient translate to power consumption. Load and idle would be nice, but if at all possible I’d be much more curious to see a comparison of task energy draw, i.e. not so much how long it takes them to finish various tasks, but how much energy they need to finish them.In know that’d be a very difficult test to perform for what will probably be a boring and indeterminate result, but you asked. :)
ioannis - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
is there some kind of cross platform test that can be done to test memory usage? Maybe Firefox on both platforms? not sure.By "no laptops", I presume you mean, no battery tests (therefore power and as a consequence, heat). That would have been nice though. Maybe for those looking for a 'quiet' setup.
but yes, definitely GPU (including video acceleration) and the GCC vs Visual Studio vs Intel compiler arena (along with some technical explanation why there are such huge differences)
ParadigmComplex - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
If you can, find games that are reported to work well under WINE and benchmark those against those running natively in Windows. It'd be interesting to see how the various differences between the two systems, and WINE itself, could effect benchmarks.Fox5 - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
Number 1 use of Ubuntu is probably going to be for netbooks/low end desktops for people who just wanna browse the net.In that case, the browsing experience (including flash) should be investigated.
Boot up time is important.
Performance with differing memory amounts would be nice to see (say 256MB, 512MB, 1GB, and 2GB or higher). Scaling across cpus would be nice.
Ubuntu as a programming environment versus windows would be good to see, including available IDEs and compiler and runtime performance.
Ubuntu as a media server/HTPC would be good to see. Personally, I have my windows box using DAAP shares since Ubuntu interfaces with it much better than Samba. And as an HTPC, XBMC and Boxee are nice, cross-platform apps.
Finally, how Ubuntu compares for more specific applications. For instance, scientific computing, audio editing, video editing, and image manipulation. Can it (with the addition of apps found through it's add/remove programs app) function well-enough in a variety of areas to be an all-around replacement for OSX or Windows?
Speedwise, how do GIMP and Photoshop compare doing similar tasks? Is there anything even on par with Windows Movie Maker?
What's Linux like game wise? Do flash games take a noticeable performance hit? Are the smattering of id software games and quake/super mario bros/tetris/etc clones any good? How does it handle some of the more popular WINE games?