Is Arch Linux Really Faster Than Ubuntu?

Often when we are preparing for cross-distribution comparisons or benchmarks of different operating systems (like our recent Mac OS X 10.6 vs. Windows 7 vs. Ubuntu 10.04 benchmarks) we are often asked to include Arch Linux in the mix. This is usually on the basis of including a rolling-release distribution to provide a performance look at a constantly evolving distribution with many of the most recent open-source packages rather than a traditional distribution with packages that may be months older. Many of those requesting Arch be included in our testing mix also claim that Arch performs significantly faster than Ubuntu and our usual test candidates. The main reason we do not deliver many benchmarks of Arch, Gentoo, or other distributions that use a rolling release approach is that they are not very reproducible with their results since their packages are frequently changing and there are more end-user customizations going on compared to most other distributions. However, to test the performance claims of Arch versus others, we have compared the performance of the newest Arch 2010.05 media against Ubuntu Linux.

Experiencing Arch Linux with the Archbang Live CD

So I got my new laptop ready for a hardcore multi-boot install, and one of the distributions I’ve always wanted to test is Archbang. I’ve tried Arch before and installed it a couple of times just for fun, both in a virtual environment and on disk, but haven’t been serious about it. It was just to practice the installation and play around.

Ubuntu 10.10: 12 reasons to try it now

As Ubuntu 10.10, or "Maverick Meerkat," hits the streets this Sunday, it's a pretty safe bet that legions of existing Ubuntu users will be updating to the new release. After all, it looks to be Canonical's most user-friendly Ubuntu Linux yet, and many of the new features promise to be must-haves.

For those in the business world who haven't yet tried Ubuntu, however, the reasons to download and give it a whirl are even more compelling. Here are just a few of them.

9 Things I Did After Installing Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat"

The final release of Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat is here with a ton of improvements. I think, it's time to stop talking about the great strides Ubuntu 10.10 has made on the usability fronts and lets just concentrate on the things you need to do and you could do with the new Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat".

Is Ubuntu 10.10 Worth the Upgrade?

Newest is not always best. Take the Ubuntu 10.10 release that came out on October 10th. Ubuntu users who are happy with their current release may want to hold off before taking the plunge.

The Ubuntu 10.04 release was very solid, with a lot of major improvements that made it a no-brainer for an upgrade. That, plus the fact that it’s a Long Term Support (LTS) release, which is the right time to grab an upgrade for almost all users. The 10.10 “Maverick” release brings some improvements over 10.04, but they’re so minor that it’s probably not worth making the change.

C++ Snippets on Linux: Vectors Vice Arrays As a Better Way to Store Data

You may have read and enjoyed my recent article "C++ Snippets: Converting Hexidecimal Values to Decimal Values." In that article, I briefly discussed a secret project that I have undertaken that will eventually result in my first GUI application for GNU/Linux, Windows, and perhaps even MacOS. At that time, I said that I could not reveal the exact nature of the program. I still cannot reveal the exact nature of the program, but I am releasing more of the source code under the GNU GPL license version 3. If you look at this code, run and compile it, you may glean a few more hints as to what kind of program I am actually aiming to write. in this article, I will reveal a few more details as to how I came up with this program idea.

GNOME 3, Activites, and KDE 4

There have been a slew of new articles detailing the progress of work on GNOME 3, and the refrain in all of them has been that "GNOME 3 will revolutionize the desktop". The focus on GNOME 3, ever since the release of the first mock-ups, has been on the new GNOME Shell and GNOME Activities (which are really just two sides of the same coin). The thing is, GNOME Activities has essentially the same concept (and even the same name) as KDE 4 Activities. So I was thinking for quite a while: how can this be called "revolutionary" with a straight face? Today it hit me: while KDE may have had the idea first, GNOME presents a far superior execution of this idea; GNOME Activities in the alpha and beta versions of GNOME 3 was very usable and improved with each iteration, while KDE Activities remained very slow, very buggy, and nearly unusable until the release of KDE 4.5.

Oracle Confirms Committment to OpenOffice.org

During OpenOffice.org's tenth anniversary, Oracle announced it will participate in ODF Plugfest, one of the conferences aimed at furthering the Open Document Format interoperability, held October 14 - 15 in Brussels . Oracle also stated they would continue developing, improving, and releasing OpenOffice.org as open source software.