I’ll try to discover how a 2008 edition of Ubuntu Linux will perform against the 2001-born Windows XP fortified with 7 years of bug-fixing and 3 Service Packs.
To sum-up, I’d say that Windows XP SP3 is a very solid performer and it beats the default Ubuntu in anything related to multi-media processing. This only adds to the misery of Linux in this domain as it still struggles with proprietary codecs and lacks a proper HD support
On the other hand, Ubuntu is a big-time winner in multi-tasking which reflects how well it handles system resources. It also out-performs Windows in hard disk performance thanks to its support for EXT3 file system.