FreeBSD 8.0 Benchmarked Against Linux, OpenSolaris

OpenSolaris 2010.02 really ran in front when it came to the OpenSSL RSA 4096-bit performance where it performed more than twice as fast as Ubuntu/Fedora and then three and a half times faster than FreeBSD. FreeBSD struggled in OpenSSL similar to our Mac OS X 10.6 benchmarks where it too lagged behind in this computational test.

With the PostMark disk benchmark, OpenSolaris 2010.02 atop ZFS did the best by a very wide margin, again. OpenSolaris was more than twice as fast as Fedora while Ubuntu 9.10 was nearly twice as fast. FreeBSD (both 7.2 and 8.0) were running at about a fourth the speed of Linux.

Turning away from the disk tests, with Himeno, which is a Poisson pressure solver, Ubuntu 9.10 did the best followed by Fedora 12. OpenSolaris 2010.02 had fallen into last at quite a distance behind FreeBSD.

Lastly, with John The Ripper and measuring the Blowfish performance, Ubuntu 9.10 came out in front followed by Fedora 12. OpenSolaris and the two FreeBSD releases were tied behind that.