It's a free operating system
and much better than windows. I
added links on the left where you can download it free or order a CD
for as little as $0.99. Some sites like Ubuntu will send it
to you free of charges and they will pay for the shipping.
Ok, that
headline may be a bit overblown -
but Microsoft
Research has released part of a report on the "Singularity" kernel
they've been working on as part of their planned shift to network
computing. The
report includes some performance comparisons that show
Singularity beating everything else on a 1.8Ghz AMD Athlon-based
machine.
What's noteworthy about it is that Microsoft
compared
Singularity to FreeBSD and Linux as well as Windows/XP - and almost
every result shows Windows losing to the two Unix variants.
For
example, they show the number of CPU cycles needed to "create and start
a process" as 1,032,000 for FreeBSD, 719,000 for Linux, and 5,376,000
for Windows/XP. Similarly they provide four graphs comparing raw disk
I/O and show the Unix variants beating Windows/XP in three (and a half)
of the four cases.
Oddly, however, it's the cases in which they report Windows/XP
as beating Unix that are the most interesting. There
are three examples of this: one in which they count the CPU cycles
needed for a "thread yield" as 911 for FreeBSD, 906 for Linux, and 753
for Windows XP; one in which they count CPU cycles for a "2 thread
wait-set ping pong" as 4,707 for FreeBSD, 4,041 for Linux, and 1,658
for Windows/XP; and, one in which they report that "for the sequential
read operations, Windows XP performed significantly better than the
other systems for block sizes less than 8 kilobytes."
So how did they get these results?
The
sequential tests read or wrote 512MB of data from the same portion of
the hard disk. The random read and write tests performed 1000
operations on the same sequences of blocks on the disk. The tests were
single threaded and performed synchronous raw I/O. Each test was run
seven times and the results averaged.
umm…
The
Unix thread tests ran on user-space scheduled pthreads. Kernel
scheduled threads performed significantly worse. The "wait-set ping
pong" test measured the cost of switching between two threads in the
same process through a synchronization object. The "2 message ping
pong" measured the cost of sending a 1-byte message from one process to
another and then back to the original process. On Unix, we used
sockets, on Windows, a named pipe, and on Singularity, a channel.
So why is this interesting? Because their
test methods reflect
Windows internals, not Unix kernel design. There
are better, faster, ways of doing these things in Unix, but these guys
- among the best and brightest programmers working at Microsoft- either
didn't know or didn't care.
And if they're the best
and brightest, what do you think happens when the average Microsoft
programming whiz gets asked to program for Linux?
The
Ubuntu team is proud to announce the Release
Candidate for version 7.04
LTS of Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu - codenamed
"Dapper Drake". The Release
Candidated includes installable live Desktop CDs,
server images, alternate
text-mode installation CDs and an upgrade wizard
for users of the current stable release.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Make sure you have good bandwidth since the
upgrade requires
that you download several hundred
megabytes of new packages!
* Because this is the Release Candidate, you need
to invoke the
update manager
explicitly. To do this, press Alt-F2 (or open
a Terminal using Applications ->
Accessories ->Terminal)
gksudo
"update-manager -d"
This step will not be necessary on the
final release.
* Make sure you are up to date - click the
"Check" button. If you
are connected to the network the update
manager should now tell
you about the 6.06 LTS ("Dapper Drake")
release
* Further information about this upgrade
procedure is given at
------------------------------------------------------------
* In Adept go to Manage Repositories and change
"breezy" to "dapper"
* Click "Fetch Updates"
* Click "Full Upgrade"
* Click "Commit"
To Get the Ubuntu Release Candidate CD
------------------------------------------------
Download the Ubuntu Release Candidate here (choose
the
mirror closest to you):
United States:
Please download using Bittorrent if possible.
The final version of Ubuntu is expected to be
released soon.
At that time, we will mail
pressed CDs free of charge
to people
who have made a request to one of the Shipit
services. This is the first
release with Shipit CDs available for Kubuntu and Edubuntu.
About The Release Candidate
---------------------------------------
The purpose of the Release Candidate is to solicit one last
round of
testing before the final release. Here
are ways that you can help:
* Participate in installation testing using the
Release Candidate CD
images, by following the testing and
reporting instructions at
Feedback and Helping
--------------------
If you would like to help shape Ubuntu to better meet your
future needs,
take a look at the list of ways you can participate at
Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions will
help turn
this release into the best release of Ubuntu
ever. Please report
bugs through the Launchpad Malone bug tracker:
If you have a question, or if you think you may have found a
bug but
aren't sure, first try asking on the #ubuntu IRC channel on
FreeNode,
on the Ubuntu Users mailing list, or on the Ubuntu forums:
More Information
----------------
Ubuntu is a Linux distribution for your desktop or server,
with a
reputation for making things "Just Work" out of the box, a
fast
and easy install, regular releases, a tight selection of
excellent
packages installed by default, every other package you can
imagine
available from the network, and professional technical
support from
Canonical Ltd and hundreds of other companies around the
world.
You can find out more about Ubuntu and about this preview
release on
our website, IRC channel and wiki. If you're new to Ubuntu,
please
visit:
Kubuntu is a user friendly operating system based on KDE, the
K Desktop Environment. With a predictable 6 month release
cycle
and part of the Ubuntu project, Kubuntu is the GNU/Linux
distribution
for everyone.
The Edubuntu Linux distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu
to schools,
through its customised school environment.
To sign up for future Ubuntu announcements, please subscribe
to
Ubuntu's very low volume announcement list at:
Download a FreeOS!
Here are links
to download
