6-Way Linux Desktop 2D/3D Performance Comparison On Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

Our latest benchmarking of Ubuntu 14.04 is looking at the 2D X11 and 3D OpenGL performance of six different desktop environments when benchmarked on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. The tested desktops included Unity, Xfce, KDE, LXDE, GNOME Shell, and Openbox.

From the ASUS Zenbook Prime UX32VDA with Intel Core i7 3517U "Ivy Bridge" processor sporting Intel HD Graphics 4000, Ubuntu 14.04 with its Linux 3.13 kernel, xf86-video-intel 2.99.910 SNA driver, and Mesa 10.1-rc3 driver stack was tested with the following desktop versions:

- Unity 7.1.2
- Xfce 4.10
- KDE 4.12.3
- LXDE 0.6.1
- GNOME Shell 3.10.4
- Openbox 3.5.2

All of these desktops were fetched from the Ubuntu Trusty Tahr package repository and each desktop was left to use its default settings. Besides swapping out the desktops, no other changes were made when testing the 2D/3D graphics performance for the various desktops.

This benchmarking was done via the Phoronix Test Suite and done in a straightforward manner similar to our past desktop comparisons on older Ubuntu Linux releases. The MATE Desktop is now also packaged for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS but this GNOME2 fork didn't seem to work properly when installed so we'll save our Mint and Cinnamon desktop testing when running our next round of Linux Mint benchmarks.