Ubuntu vs Vista Resource Usage
Everyone always rambles on about how much of a resource hog Windows Vista is compared to Linux, so I figured why not find out exactly how much of a hog it really is?
For this comparison, I have pitted the following versions of Ubuntu and Vista against each other:
- Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate with Service Pack 1 and all system updates to 29th October 2008
- Ubuntu Linux 8.04.1 Hardy Heron with all system updates to 29th October 2008
- Ubuntu Linux 8.10 Intrepid Ibex Release Candidate with all system updates to 29th October 2008 (just for kicks)
The tests would be simple. A fresh vanilla install of Ubuntu and Vista doing four of the most common things a typical user might do everyday:
- Nothing
- View a web page
- Listen to an MP3 music track
- Play Solitaire
To keep things as fair as possible, I used Virtualbox 2.0.4 and created three VM’s each sporting 1GB RAM, 32MB video RAM and an 8GB HDD file each, except for Vista which needed more HDD estate, so it got a 20GB HDD file instead (this is not boding well for Vista already!).
The Ubuntu installs each had a 512MB swap partition created while Vista went ahead and stormed in with an automatically-created 2GB swap file. Shouldn’t be an issue as the tests are not going to tax the OS’ anyway.
All installed OS’ are the 32-bit versions. All had the Virtualbox Guest Additions drivers added, but since these drivers do not support acceleration, OpenGL and DirectX eye-candy (such as Compiz in Ubuntu and Aero in Vista) were automatically disabled by the system.
The host hardware for the VM’s is an Intel Quad-core Q9450 based machine with 8GB RAM running the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 8.04.1 Hardy Heron.
Installed Disk Usage
So let’s start with the simple stuff – how much disk space does a vanilla install of each OS chew up? The following table shows a completely stock installation of each OS, including subsequently downloaded update files:
| Vista Ultimate SP1 | 11.9GB (!!) |
| Ubuntu 8.04.1 Hardy | 2.7GB |
| Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid RC | 2.3GB |
Ubuntu has been dubbed by some to be the “Windows” of Linux distros in terms of its overall weight, but it’s anorexic compared to Vista. Why does any OS need over 10GB of disk space just for itself? Consider also that Ubuntu’s installed space also includes a full office suite – not even Vista has that, yet it’s so much bigger.
It was interesting to note that Ubuntu Intrepid consumed a whole 400MB less disk space than Ubuntu Hardy, however part of this could be attributed to possibly less extra update files downloaded compared to Hardy. In any case, both are well under 5GB, let alone 10GB!
So far one point to Linux and a big fat zero to Vista.
Idle RAM Usage
With disk usage now established, how does the RAM stack up? Each desktop was at its standard setup with standard wallpaper, panels, widgets, etc and only the resource manager window on-screen:
| Vista SP1 | 411MB |  |
| Ubuntu 8.04.1 Hardy | 122MB |  |
| Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid RC | 142MB |  |
Another win for Ubuntu by a good 250MB. Also, again a surprise showing by Intrepid that despite the smaller HDD footprint, its resource usage was 20MB greater than Hardy, but what was alarming was that Vista was already using 387MB of its 2GB swap file while both Ubuntu installations had not touched theirs…!
Two points for Ubuntu, none for Vista.
Browsing a Common Web Site
Now to up the ante – all three installations now used their default web browser (Firefox 3.0.3 for Ubuntu, Internet Exploiter, uh, Explorer 7.0.6 for Vista) to view a common website containing Flash, animated GIFs, lots of frames, blocks of formatted text and graphics – the Sydney Morning Herald homepage.
All three OS’ do not have Flash installed as standard and thus did not play any of the Flash content, however the rest of the page did load and render successfully.
The memory usage now stands at:
| Vista SP1 | 490MB |  |
| Ubuntu 8.04.1 Hardy | 179MB |  |
| Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid RC | 198MB |  |
A notable jump by all three candidates in this case, as one might expect, though while Ubuntu jumped up some 55MB, Vista jumped up an extra 80MB.
Curiously, Vista’s CPU usage jumped up and down a lot while the site sat idle and the spike of usage you see at the end of the graph is when the site automatically refreshed itself. No such major jumps from Ubuntu.
Another point for Ubuntu for a total of three. Vista is yet to score.
Listening to an MP3 Music Track
Browsing any website would just not be fun without some background music. Using the default music player (Totem 2.22.1 and 2.24.2 for Ubuntu Hardy and Intrepid respectively, Windows Media Player 11 for Vista), I perused the SMH website (without clicking on any new links) and listened to the same 3.3MB MP3 music track for 1 minute to allow memory usage to level out.
| Vista SP1 | 560MB |  |
| Ubuntu 8.04.1 Hardy | 211MB |  |
| Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid RC | 237MB |  |
Memory usage has increased by nearly 40MB on Ubuntu but by 70MB on Vista. This is not really too surprising given the heavyweight that is Media Player versus the simpler Totem, though Totem did prompt me to download and install the GStreamer Extras MP3 codec, so there’s extra memory usage there too.
The observant among you might say that it would be a fairer comparison to compare Windows Media Player with Rhythmbox, however I decided to go with whatever launched as the default MP3 player and at the end of the day, all that matters is that I can hear my music and Ubuntu has delivered 30MB ahead here.
Four points for Ubuntu, still none for Vista.
Playing Solitaire
Surfing the ‘net is hard work and what better way to unwind than with a relaxing game of Solitaire. In this test, I played Solitaire for two minutes whilst listening to my MP3 track and leaving the web browser open with our self-refreshing homepage.
| Vista SP1 | 605MB |  |
| Ubuntu 8.04.1 Hardy | 224MB |  |
| Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid RC | 244MB |  |
Really, Solitaire isn’t a terribly complex application and Ubuntu’s Solitaire bears a remarkable resemblance to all the Windows versions… except Vista which was drastically revamped with extra visual effects, new card textures, etc. No wonder the memory footprint is so much bigger, but a 45MB difference??
Ubuntu Hardy went up 13MB and Intrepid didn’t even break double-figures with only a 7MB increase.
We could keep testing common applications until the cows come home, but I think it’s pretty clear that the established pattern is that Microsoft Vista uses up much more memory and disk space on average than Ubuntu Linux.
Probably what was the most worrying here was that Vista’s swap usage had increased to 692MB and there was an unusually high amount of CPU usage, while both Ubuntu’s had left their swap on the plate, uneaten.
So the final score is five points for the trim and healthy Ubuntu and still nothing, nada, zip for the obese whale that is Vista.
Conclusion
I think some people might say all I’ve done is confirm what everyone already knew, and perhaps that is the case, but it still made for an interesting comparison and certainly highlights that Microsoft need to do some serious fat trimming.
For those that are interested, the host machine used up a total of 4GB RAM to run all three VM’s simultaneously plus a bunch of other apps that I had running at the time of testing, and it only nibbled at 44MB of swap. 
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The comparison is quite wrong, since it’s watching the wrong parameters. The only one which might matter is disk space. RAM usage and CPU usage are not good params to monitor since they are resources which cost nothing to use (for caching, idle processing, etc).
Also using two different OS and monitors is subject to differences in monitor programs. For example, is RAM used as disk cache reported in the same way by the two OS ?
Trusting the numbers of task manager and/or top is stupid without knowledge of the underlying OS, its usage patterns, etc.
One fair comparison you can do is running benchmarks of apps common to the two OS (which would be interesting) such as running times for a Gimp filter, VirtualBox, OpenOffice.org sheet calculations, MySQL queries.
Another meaningful test would be measuring battery life of a notebook.
Finally services should be enabled/disabled accordingly: Vista offers a search service, for fairness Beagle or similar should be enabled in Ubuntu, or the indexing service disabled in Vista, etc.
I’m not sure why you believe RAM usage and CPU usage or not good parameters to monitor? Both can have a direct impact on how any and all applications run. If you have 100% CPU, then other CPU-intensive applications will suffer. If you have high RAM usage, then you will inevitably begin to hit the swap file as you load more data.
I understand where you are coming from with regards to RAM used as cache versus RAM used to store physical programs and data, but at the end of the day it’s still RAM usage. What is the operating system loading and reloading that requires that information to be cached so much in the first place?
The Task Manager (Vista) and System Monitor (Linux) are the tools provided for the end-user to monitor their basic system resources. If they are wildly inaccurate, then why are they in the OS in the first place? They are not intended to be the be all and end all of tools – they provide a general overview of what your system is currently doing, that’s all. The only way we could possibly know at a specific level is if we were monitoring the kernel directly, which under Vista is of course impossible, being closed source.
The main goal of the article was to show general resource usage for performing basic every day tasks. Not everyone does complex image manipulation, virtualisation, or SQL, and some people use their Office package for nothing more complex than writing up a one-page advertisement for a lost cat. The main reason I did not include an Office comparison is because I was evaluating resource usage “out of the box”, and unfortunately Vista does not come with an Office package, nor do I own (or wish to purchase) a licence for Microsoft Office – Vista is expensive enough as it is! Everyone browses the Internet, plays MP3′s and plays Solitaire, however, and both vendors provide such functionality out of the box. This also wasn’t a benchmarking test to see who performs better or faster – it was a resource usage test.
Battery life is a good idea – I’ll consider that for a future comparison.
Also note that we deliberately did not make any tweaks or modifications to either OS. This tests what each vendor believes the end user should have as a default desktop and as a result, how much of the system it takes to provide it. Microsoft do have a habit of preloading a number of things into memory as evidenced by the simple fact that the hard-drive keeps rattling away even after you’ve logged in. Ubuntu chooses to only load it if you asked for it, which in the past has brought it accusation of slow loading times of certain apps, in particular OpenOffice.org.
For the record, Ubuntu does ship and load an indexing and search service by default as well – called Tracker – and it also loads an interface applet for it as well, it’s just not visible by default, but rest assured it’s indexing in the background as a service. See System->Preferences->Sessions and scroll down the list of startup programs.
Thanks for your input, and Happy New Year!
> I’m not sure why you believe RAM usage and > CPU usage or not good parameters to
> monitor?
RAM and CPU usage very very useful thigs also using swap file to. Most of PC today low-end or middle-end and have limited memory/cpu resources – is very important to use all PC resources at all speed.
Also you forget about Superfetch (http://www.howtogeek.com/wiki/SuperFetch) this is only one thing why sometime Vista show best perfomance.
In old time – making resource hungry stupid apps like games – will make hardware developers and market happy – all people want to upgrade.
Yes, I’m aware of SuperFetch and it seems suitable for a bloated OS like Windows, but personally I’d prefer my OS to cache things only when I want it to, not when it think I want it to.
For example, if I need to quickly start my laptop only to check my mail, shutdown and nothing else. The last thing I want is for the OS to be caching up Firefox, my media player and Office “just in case” I’m going to use them. If there’s to be any caching, I prefer the way Ubuntu already does it – caches it after first use.
I don’t know about other people but I’m starting to see a new pattern when it comes to computer soft and hardware: nobody cares about how much RAM or CPU time an application ( or even an OS ) consumes. I don’t think it’s a good thing, it’s the result of laziness and (too much) comfort. I have a lot of friends ( even here, in Romania, where although we can’t complain, we don’t have the money that 1st world people have ) that prefer to buy another 2 GB of RAM because Vista doesn’t run very well instead of tweaking whatever they can or switching to another OS. It’s like driving a Hummer to the grocery store and not caring that it will probably eat-up 1-2 gallon for a 10 mile trip (“It’s ok. I can afford it.”). I believe in optimizing everything, even if we can afford not to ( at least for the moment ). So the conclusion is that i liked your test, they kind of confirmed my expectations. I personally use Windows XP and Ubuntu at the moment. I’ll probably try-out other distros to in the near future. I also use Pidgin instead of YMess and Foxit Reader instead of Adobe Reader ( on WinXP ). Cheers !