Ubuntu 15.04 Is The Easy Path To Better Performance For Ubuntu Users On Intel Broadwell

Unless you manually upgrade your kernel and other system packages from your Ubuntu 14.10 installation, Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet is an important release for users of new Intel Broadwell systems for ensuring your hardware reaches its maximum performance potential.

While Ubuntu 15.04 is still three months out from being released, it already contains a newer version of the Linux kernel and other packages than what ships out-of-the-box on Ubuntu 14.10. Ubuntu 15.04 is still on Mesa 10.3 at the time of writing but it will make it up to at least Mesa 10.4 if not Mesa 10.5 by the time of its April debut. Within Intel Broadwell HD Graphics 5500: Windows 8.1 vs. Linux I delivered various updated Linux configuration benchmarks showing how the Intel Linux graphics is still maturing for Broadwell hardware. Just for reference for those Linux users not comfortable upgrading packages on their own, I ran some performance tests between Ubuntu 14.10 stable and the current daily build of Ubuntu 15.04 to show the current performance differences.

Beyond the graphics, the latest Linux kernel is important for best hardware support, potential CPU performance improvements due to optimizations to the P-State scaling driver, and other general work. Ubuntu 15.04 will miss incorporating GCC 5 into its release so this next version of Ubuntu will still be shipping with GCC 4.9 as its code compiler. When upgrading to the newest GCC code there is always the possibility of performance improvements for recent processors.

Anyhow, for those curious about the performance of Ubuntu 14.10 vs. an Ubuntu 15.04 daily snapshot when running on the new Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon ultrabook with Core i7-5600U sporting HD Graphics 5500, a number of comparative benchmarks can be found on the pages ahead. All of these Intel Linux benchmarks were powered by the Phoronix Test Suite.