Download the application’s .deb file from the GetDeb website and install it with:

$ sudo dpkg -i subdownloader_2.0.9-1~getdeb1_all.deb

(or if you’re afraid of the command line, just double-click it within a window to launch the GUI version of the Package Installer instead – either way will take care of the QT4 and Python dependencies for you)

…and that’s it. now just fire it up from the Applications->Sound & Video menu, browse to your movie folder and let the app find the subtitles for you. Sweet!

You don’t have to search by your collection, though – you can do a regular title search as well.

The selected subtitles are then downloaded into the same directory as your source video, allowing you to execute them in Totem or other subtitle-supporting player right away.

Simple, yet effective. This really should be in the Ubuntu repositories.

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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:

1. Nothing
2. View a web page
3. Listen to an MP3 music track
4. 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:

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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To address the CRC issues, the drive had CHKDSK /F run on it within Windows, and this reported a number of issues that were supposedly fixed. Unfortunately it seemed to make things far worse – you plug the drive into a Windows PC now and the drive would take several minutes to appear, and even then the Explorer window was empty! All his files were gone! Panic stations!

Not one to give up so easily, he asked me to have a look at it. First thing I did was plug it into my Ubuntu-based EeePC 701, and while still slow to appear, Nautilus popped up showing most of the files! Some entries appeared to be missing, but we put that down to CHKDSK having removed corrupted entries from the allocation table.

Unfortunately I didn’t have enough space to make an image copy of his drive which would be the preferred method of recovery (it’s a 750GB drive), so we decided to try and hit the files directly.

I tried copying a single directory of files, and they copied successfully, so I spent an evening doing drag and drop between two Nautilus windows (I tried using RSync to do it from the command line, but there are several individual files that come up as corrupt and throw RSync out). Copying one directory at a time seemed to be the best way to keep track of what was recovered and what wasn’t.

This weekend I’ll be trying to go deeper and see if I can recover the “lost” files that CHKDSK managed to hide away from us.

It’s great to see that Linux can do a better job of recovering NTFS than Windows can!

EDIT: Well, the recovery of nearly everything was successful. Unlike Windows, Linux did an admirable job of trying to copy as much of an existing file as possible before aborting at the CRC error in the file. Turns out not too much of the hard-drive was corrupted and my friend only lost half of about 5 individual movies and some of his non-essential work backups. All in all, a good recovery.

As a test, we tried plugging the drive into a Windows PC again to see if it could read any of it, and true to form, Windows Explorer remained blank – oblivious to the files that Linux was so aptly able to read and recover.

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