Ubuntu 11.04 vs Windows 7 vs OS X 10.7 (Lion)
We use our cross-platform benchmarks to compare Windows with the latest versions of OS X and Ubuntu - which is the quickest?
The Expert Reviews benchmarks, which consist of image-editing, video-encoding and multitasking tests, can be run on Mac OS, Windows and Linux PCs. If we run the benchmarks on the same machine under three different operating systems, we can gain an insight into how the differences between the operating systems affect how quickly you can perform intensive tasks.
The last time we did this, we found Windows was quicker than Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) in both image editing and video encoding, but was level in multitasking. Ubuntu 10.10 was significantly quicker than Windows 7 and OS X in image editing and video encoding, but lagged behind in multitasking.
Now we have both the new Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) and Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) operating systems to play with, we’ve run our benchmarks again. We were particularly interested in Ubuntu’s scores, as 11.04 includes the so-called ‘wonder patch’ to the Linux kernel, which is claimed to help speed up intensive tasks.
Read on to see how the operating systems stack up…