Results Table: FC5, Kubuntu 6.06.1, openSUSE 10.1

Comparison of current Linux "Desktop" distributions, as described in Moving from Gentoo to ... SUSE, Ubuntu, or Fedora Core?

My original intent was to run all tests under both KDE and GNOME. However, a few things changed my mind:

  1. As the test set grew it became too time consuming.
  2. In the dual-testing I performed, I noted very few differences between KDE and GNOME (mainly in removable media handling).
  3. Since I prefer KDE, GNOME performance is really irrelevant (i.e. if app "A" peforms better in GNOME than KDE, that's not going to make me switch to GNOME).

Therefore, all the tests below were run from KDE. YMMV slightly when running under GNOME.

The distributions were installed per:

Ratings key:

Item Kubuntu 6.06.1 openSUSE 10.1 Fedora Core 5
Recognized all memory (1G) YES YES YES
Network auto-config OK (DHCP) YES NO YES
DVD Playback YES YES YES
YouTube YES YES NO
iFilm [using Quicktime] YES NO YES
iFilm [using RealPlayer] PARTIAL(4) NO NO
USB Thumb Drive ("Do something reasonable") YES YES YES
Auto-Detect DC10+ Video Capture Card YES YES YES
SSHFS & FUSE
(without having to compile a kernel and/or kernel module) 		YES PARTIAL(7) SEE NOTE(1)
Live365.com YES YES NO
SHOUTcast.com YES YES NO
Reuters.com Video YES YES NO
CNN.com Video (Windows Media) YES NO!!(8) PARTIAL(11)
jEdit YES YES NO
NVIDIA Accelerated OpenGL PARTIAL(2) PARTIAL(9) YES
wings3d YES NO(3) YES
Trailers @ Apple.com YES NO(14) YES
Google Video YES YES NO
Java Test #1 (KGS) YES YES NO
Java Test #2 (Xiangqi) YES YES NO
Java Test #3 (Crossword) YES YES NO
Java Test #4 ("Java Web Start") YES YES NO
wxPython demo.py YES YES YES
Camera: Olympus D-510 ("does something reasonable") YES YES PARTIAL(12)
Camera: Canon S3 IS (USB PTP) ("does something reasonable")
[Using digikam Auto-Detect] 		YES YES NO
Passes MSTT Corefonts Test YES YES YES
Open PDF files in Firefox YES YES PARTIAL(6)
Play MP3 from Firefox YES NO YES
Play M3U stream from Firefox (realplayer) YES YES NO
Play WMA from Firefox (gmplayer) YES YES NO!!(13)
Play MPEG-1 from Firefox YES NO YES
Open Bittorrent in Firefox (ktorrent) YES YES PARTIAL(5)
Open XLS file from Firefox (oocalc) YES YES YES
Open DOC file from Firefox (oowriter) YES NO!!(10) YES
Open PowerPoint file from Firefox (ooimpress) YES YES YES
Open WAV files in Firefox YES NO YES
Open WMV files in Firefox YES NO YES
Open OGG files in Firefox YES NO YES
Interactive Flash YES YES NO

Notes:

  1. I think this should be "YES". When I tested it, I got an error: "failed to exec fusermount: Permission denied". I later saw this same error under Kubuntu, and figured out the workaround. The same thing should work for Fedora.
  2. Had to hand-edit xorg.conf to get it to work.
  3. Had to manually install.
  4. Sound only, no video.
  5. Using Bittorrent GUI - ktorrent not available!
  6. Opens OK, but not embedded in Firefox.
  7. Had to "modprobe fuse" as root, didn't autoload for normal user.
  8. Crashes Firefox when closing video window.
  9. Had to run NVIDIA installer, driver not packaged. Have to re-run every time kernel is upgraded.
  10. Actually opened OK, but locked up Firefox when closing.
  11. Sound only, no video.
  12. "Safely Remove" failed to unmount camera.
  13. Crashed Firefox when closing gmplayer.
  14. Quicktime, as well as many other multimedia codecs had been working perfectly, until Packman updated to an apparently unstable version of mplayer plugin. So, these may change back to "YES" at some point.

Next: In Conclusion ...