Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Battles Fedora 17 On Intel Ivy Bridge

First up: our favorite, the OpenGL graphics.

When kicking things off with Nexuiz for the Linux OpenGL gaming tests, Fedora 17 sharply outperformed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS in its stock configuration and is nearly at parity with the Ubuntu 12.10 development snapshot. Meanwhile, the updated Fedora 17 release with the Linux 3.4 kernel on Ivy Bridge further improved the Linux gaming performance. All four tested Linux distributions were using Mesa 8.0, but the differences came down to Intel DRM driver at different stages in the Linux kernel as well as the desktop environments: Unity vs. GNOME Shell. Unity 5.12 brings important OpenGL fixes and there is a desktop performance comparison in the earlier Phoronix article on Ubuntu 12.04.

Fedora 17 stock and in its updated configuration was faster than both Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and the Ubuntu 12.10 development snapshot for the OpenArena tests, likely due to Unity impairing Ubuntu's stock performance.

Fedora was also superior for the Xonotic test at low-quality settings and a tie at the high-quality run.