It’s that time again. Like before I’ve decided to re-run my previous tests this time using the following distributions:
- Debian 6.0 (GNOME)
- Kubuntu 11.10 (KDE)
- Linux Mint 12 (GNOME)
- Linux Mint 201109 LXDE (GNOME)
- Mandriva 2011 (KDE)
- OpenSUSE 12.1 (GNOME)
- OpenSUSE 12.1 (KDE)
- Sabayon 8 (GNOME)
- Sabayon 8 (KDE)
- Sabayon 8 (Xfce)
- Ubuntu 11.10 (Unity)
- Ubuntu 12.04 Beta 2 (Unity)
- Xubuntu 11.10 (Xfce)
I will be testing all of this within VirtualBox on ‘machines’ with the following specifications:
- Total RAM: 512MB
- Hard drive: 8GB
- CPU type: x86 with PAE/NX
- Graphics: 3D Acceleration enabled
The tests were all done using VirtualBox 4.1.0 on Windows 7, and I did not install VirtualBox tools (although some distributions may have shipped with them). I also left the screen resolution at the default (whatever the distribution chose) and accepted the installation defaults. All tests were run between April 2nd, 2012 and April 9th, 2012 so your results may not be identical.
Results
Following in the tradition of my previous posts I have once again gone through the effort to bring you nothing but the most state of the art in picture graphs for your enjoyment.
Things to know before looking at the graphs
First off if your distribution of choice didn’t appear in the list above its probably not reasonably possible to installed (i.e. Fedora 16 which requires 768MB of RAM) or I didn’t feel it was mainstream enough (pretty much anything with LXDE). Secondly there may be some distributions that don’t appear on all of the graphs, for example Mandriva. In the case of Mandriva the distribution would not allow me to successfully install the updates and so I only have its first boot RAM usage available. Finally when I tested Debian I was unable to test before / after applying updates because it seemed to have applied the updates during install. As always feel free to run your own tests.
First boot memory (RAM) usage
This test was measured on the first startup after finishing a fresh install.
Memory (RAM) usage after updates
This test was performed after all updates were installed and a reboot was performed.
Memory (RAM) usage change after updates
The net growth or decline in RAM usage after applying all of the updates.
Install size after updates
The hard drive space used by the distribution after applying all of the updates.
Conclusion
As before I’m going to leave you to drawing your own conclusions.
Leave a Reply