Revisiting Linux Part 1: A Look at Ubuntu 8.04
by Ryan Smith on August 26, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Linux
It's Free - Gratis
When doing the initial research for this article, one of my goals was to try to identify all of the reasons why I would want to use Ubuntu. While there are many reasons, a lot of them are what amount to edge cases. At the risk of being accused of shortchanging Ubuntu here, after using Ubuntu for quite some time the main reasons came down to this: It's free, and it's secure. That's it. Many of the popular Linux applications can be found for Windows, non-gaming performance largely isn't a concern on a high-end desktop such as mine, and no one is making any serious claims about ease of use when compared to Mac OS X. Ubuntu is free and Ubuntu is secure, but that's about it.
We'll start with “free”, since that's one of the fundamental subjects. When we say Ubuntu is free, there are two elements to that. The first is that Ubuntu costs nothing; it is free (gratis). The second is that Ubuntu's source code is open and can be modified by anyone; it is free (libre). This is expressed in the popular and simplified slogans of “free as in beer” and “free as in speech.” Many software products are freeware (e.g. Futuremark's PCMark) but fewer products are open source. The former does not necessitate the latter or vice versa, although practical considerations mean that most open source software is also freeware in some fashion since you can't keep people from compiling the source code for themselves.
There's fairly little to explain with respect to Ubuntu being freeware. It can be downloaded directly from the Ubuntu website in the form of an ISO disc image, and copied, installed, wiped as many times as anyone would like. Ubuntu's corporate sponsor/developer Canonical also sells it for a nominal price (currently it's listed on Amazon for $12) but there is no difference between the retail version and the download version. It's a free operating system, and free is a very good price.
Being free does mean giving up some things that would normally come with purchased software. Official support is the first element, as since it's a free OS there is no one being paid to support users. We'll dive into support in-depth in a bit, but for now it's enough to remember that Ubuntu does not come with official support. Support options are limited to the Ubuntu Knowledge Base, the forums, and whatever additional help can be found on the internet.
There's more to being able to offer Ubuntu for free than just not offering official support. Incidental expenses of assembling and distributing Ubuntu are covered by Canonical, who expects to eventually make a profit from Ubuntu through selling enterprise support. Development of Ubuntu and the underlying Linux components are done by a variety of volunteers working in their spare time, and paid employees from companies such as Novell, IBM, Red Hat, and others who use Linux in their commercial products and have a vested interest in its development.
However - and this is where we're going to take a bit of a detour - there is also the matter of who is not paid because Ubuntu is free. The United States patent system allows for ideas and methods to be patented, along with the more typical physical devices. What this means is that everything from encryption methods to video codecs to file systems can be and are patented by a variety of companies. As a result a lot of technologies in common use are patented, and those patents must be licensed for use when it comes to the United States (and many other countries with similar patent systems). Ubuntu includes software that uses patented material, but since Ubuntu is free, no one is paying those license fees.
Now I want to be very clear here that the reason I bring this up is because it's interesting, not because it's a problem. The chief example of where patents are an issue is media playback. MP3, MPEG-2, H.264, AAC, and other common formats have paid license requirements. This directly rears its head for the user when you first fire up Ubuntu's movie player and attempt to play a movie using a patented codec. Ubuntu goes through great lengths to point out that it needs to use a patented codec to play the material, and that unless the user has a valid license for the codecs it may be a patent violation to play the material, ultimately giving the user the option to download what Ubuntu calls the “restricted” codec set that is not distributed for legal reasons.
With that said, the legal issues are entirely theoretical for the end user. While using the restricted codecs is technically a patent violation, to our knowledge no individual has ever been sued or otherwise harassed over this, and we don't expect that to ever change. The licensing bodies like MPEG-LA are concerned with commercial products using their property – if someone is making money from their property, they want a piece of it. They are not concerned with home use of their codecs, and quite frankly users have nothing to be concerned about.
It should also be noted that Ubuntu (and other Linux distros) are not alone in this. VLC, Media Player Classic, various Windows codec packs, and many other free media players are also technically in violation of patent law for the same reasons. Even if someone is a Windows user, there's still a good chance they're violating patent law. For all practical purposes it's very hard to avoid being an IP violator, no matter the platform.
Meanwhile for those that absolutely must stay on the right side of the law, there are options, but it's not pretty. Canonical sells licensed software packages that can play back most media formats; Cyberlink's PowerDVD Linux for DVD playback, and Fluendo Complete Playback Pack for everything else. However the price may be shocking: being legit is going to cost you $50 for PowerDVD and another $40 for Fluendo. This makes a small but notable difference from Windows and Mac OS X. It's hard but not impossible to be both free and legitimate on those platforms through legal software that is given away for free – Winamp, Quicktime, DivX, and Flip4Mac all fall under this umbrella. Again, this makes no practical difference – no one who's holding a patent cares – but it's something any Ubuntu user trying to playback media is going to have to pay attention to for a fleeting moment.
Ultimately, the important bits to take away from this are that Ubuntu is free as in beer, and for the price you're only giving up official support. There are some patent issues, but since no one on either side actually cares, it doesn't matter. If nothing else, Ubuntu will be the best-priced operating system you will ever use, and price matters.
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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?