Ubuntu 11.04 vs Windows 7 vs OS X 10.7 (Lion)

The tests were run on a brand-new 2.5GHz Core i5-2400S iMac with 4GB RAM. We ran our benchmarks under each operating system, formatting the hard disk and performing a clean installation each time. The benchmarks record in seconds the time the computer takes to perform each task. These scores are then normalised against a PC with an Intel Core i5-2500K processor running Windows 7, which scores 100 in each test. We used the same versions of our three bits of key software – ImageMagick, Handbrake and Mplayer – on all three operating systems. Where possible we used the binary distributions, but ImageMagick 6.7.1 had to be installed from source on our Ubuntu PC.

Image Editing

The Image Editing test uses ImageMagick’s command-line Convert tool to change 24-bit TIFF files to PNG format. It runs with the auto-level, auto-gamma, antialias and contrast options, simulating common operations performed on image files. OS X Lion is slightly ahead of Windows here, but Ubuntu is a huge 17 per cent ahead of its rivals.

Video Encoding

Our video encoding test uses Handbrake to convert a 1080p, 50fps AVCHD video file to iPhone 4 format. It’s a multithreading test which takes advantage of all the processor’s cores, and tests an operating system’s performance in multithreaded applications. Again, OS X and Windows had similar performance, but Ubuntu was streets ahead – as with the image editing benchmark, it completed the video encoding test around 17 per cent faster than the other operating systems.

Multi-tasking

The multi-tasking benchmark runs the video and image-editing tests together, while using MPlayer to play back a 1080p AVCHD video file. The previous version of Ubuntu really struggled in this test, coming out with a worse score than both Windows and OS X, but matters are much improved in 11.04 – while its score wasn’t so far ahead of the others as in the image editing and video encoding tests, Ubuntu still got through the multi-tasking test in the fastest time.

Overall performance

So, while Windows 7 and OS X Lion gained similar overall results – Lion is slightly faster in image editing, Windows in video encoding and multitasking – the new version of Ubuntu is a revelation. It was around 17 per cent faster than its rivals in both image editing and video encoding, and slightly quicker in multitasking.

These impressive scores led to our test iMac gaining an overall score 10 per cent higher when running Ubuntu compared to Windows 7 or OS X 10.7. Looks like the wonder patch really is a wonder.