6-Way Ubuntu 14.10 Linux Desktop Benchmarks
With QGears2, the Qt4-based test using the X RENDER back-end, Unity 7.3.1 and GNOME Shell 3.12.2 were the fastest desktops... These results came as bit of a surprise, especially given the difference of Unity / GNOME Shell over the other desktops.
The results are rather strange for GNOME Shell and Unity while the test appeared to successfully run fine on each of the six desktops.
The GtkPerf results, as usual, are a bit scattered about with the different desktop environments... At least there's no odd situation like with Unity and the GNOME Shell. The fastest desktop for many of these 2D micro-benchmarks was just using bare Openbox.