Qt/GTK Speed On Unity/KDE/Xfce/LXDE/GNOME/Razor

Posted by Michael Larabel on February 28, 2013

Shared earlier today were OpenGL game benchmarks under different Linux desktops. Now to complement those earlier results are 2D performance tests under Unity, KDE, GNOME Shell, Xfce, LXDE, and Razor-qt.

From the same Intel HD 4000 "Ivy Bridge" system after completing the OpenGL tests this morning, some 2D performance tests were carried out. Past testing has revealed the 2D performance also fluctuates a great deal depending upon the desktop environment / window manager.

The desktop configuration, per the same configuration as this morning's Intel OpenGL Linux testing:

- Unity 6.6.0 with Compiz.
- KDE 4.10.00 with KWin while opting for the option of disabling desktop effects on full-screen windows.
- GNOME Shell 3.6.3.1 with Mutter.
- Xfce 4.10 without compositing.
- LXDE 0.5.12.
- The Razor-qt desktop with OpenBox 3.5.0.

The 2D tests today were also done using the Intel SNA back-end given the results earlier this week: SNA Delivers Huge Gains Over UXA For Intel "Gen5" and SNA Sandy Bridge Is Quick To Beat UXA Too.

Just like the other quick end-of-month tests, the results in full plus all of the other system hardware/software information is available on this OpenBenchmarking.org page: 1302281-FO-INTEL2DSN69. Reproducing these same tests on your own software/hardware is as easy as running phoronix-test-suite benchmark 1302281-FO-INTEL2DSN69 thanks to our automated open-source testing framework.

For the Qt4-based testing, running Xfce 4.10 led to the greatest performance. Also holding their ground fairly well against Xfce were Unity with Compiz and LXDE while KDE, LXDE, and Razor-Qt were further back.

The GTK2 results were much more mixed across the different desktops / window managers.

See more at OpenBenchmarking.org.

Discuss this article in our forums, IRC channel, or email the author. You can also follow our content via RSS and on social networks like Facebook, Identi.ca, and Twitter (@Phoronix and @MichaelLarabel). Subscribe to Phoronix Premium to view our content without advertisements, view entire articles on a single page, and experience other benefits.
Latest Hardware Reviews
  1. Sumo Lounge Emperor
  2. Gallium3D Continues Improving OpenGL For Older Radeon GPUs
  3. 15-Way Open vs. Closed Source NVIDIA/AMD Linux GPU Comparison
  4. Nouveau vs. NVIDIA Linux Comparison Shows Shortcomings
Latest Software Articles
  1. GCC 4.8.0 vs. LLVM Clang 3.3 Compiler Performance
  2. Intel Linux OpenGL Driver Leading Over Apple OS X
  3. The Cost Of Ubuntu Disk Encryption
  4. Btrfs vs. EXT4 vs. XFS vs. F2FS On Linux 3.10
Latest Linux News
  1. A New X.Org-Free Wayland LiveCD Released
  2. Unity 8, Mir Made Progress This Week On Features
  3. LLVM Clang 3.3 RC2 Is Ready For Testing
  4. AMD RadeonSI Gallium3D Begins Simple CL Demos
  5. Intel Shows Off GNOME3-Based Tizen Shell
  6. Linux Desktop Security Could Be A Whole Lot Better
  7. KDE 4.11 Will Be The Last Major KDE4 Workspaces Feature Release
  8. New NVIDIA Linux Driver Supports The GeForce GTX 780
  9. Chrome 28 To Offer More Speed Improvements
  10. Digia Announces "Boot To Qt" Project
  11. X.Org Libraries Hit By Round Of Security Issues
Latest Forum Talk
  1. Intel Shows Off GNOME3-Based Tizen Shell
  2. Is there anyway to improve the performance of the...
  3. KDE 4.11 Will Be The Last Major KDE4 Workspaces...
  4. Steam: No used games...
  5. A New X.Org-Free Wayland LiveCD Released
  6. New Intel X.Org Driver Supports All Of Haswell
  1. Computers
  2. Display Drivers
  3. Graphics Cards
  4. Motherboards
  5. Peripherals
  6. Processors
  7. Software
  8. Operating Systems
  9. All Articles
  1. Linux Benchmarking
  2. OpenBenchmarking.org
  3. Phoronix Test Suite