Intel Tiger Lake Performance Across Five Autumn 2021 Linux Distributions

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Tiger Lake Performance Across Five Autumn 2021 Linux Distributions

Earlier this month were benchmarks looking at how Intel Tiger Lake performance has improved from Ubuntu 21.04 to Ubuntu 21.10, but how does Canonical's latest Linux offering compete with other autumn 2021 distributions? In this article from the Dell XPS Core i7-1165G7 Tiger Lake notebook are benchmarks of Ubuntu 21.10 going up against Arch Linux, Clear Linux, Fedora Workstation 35, and openSUSE Tumbleweed for getting an idea how the performance compares with this latest-generation Intel EVO notebook.

https://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=30597

[perpetually high]

Wow, very impressive. Go Ubuntu!

"And new!!!" (Bruce Buffer voice)

[skeevy420]

It's always nice when your distribution of choice sucks more than a Wet/Dry Vac.

[White Wolf]

Solus would eat both for breakfast ;D

[juxuanu]

You can't compare ArchLinux. You are supposed to customize it. There is no such thing as OOTB experience. This comparison is irrelevant.

[brucethemoose]

You can't compare ArchLinux. You are supposed to customize it. There is no such thing as OOTB experience. This comparison is irrelevant.

Small tweaks to any distro can have a huge performance impact, they are all easily customizable, and Arch has lots of defaults even if it doesn't have a default DE.

That being said, I think its a bit unfair to show performance figures without any power consumption figures on a laptop, especially with different CPU governors being used on different distros. Also the default Arch/Clear governors are rather impractical if for those that actually intend to *use* such a laptop.

[Linuxxx]

Also the default Arch/Clear governors are rather impractical if for those that actually intend to *use* such a laptop.

I can understand that the 'performance' governor is impractical to use on a thin notebook, however care to elaborate what you think is wrong with 'schedutil' on such a device?

After all, the upcoming Steam Deck & SteamOS 3 is going to rely on exactly this CPU governor to power games for millions of newcomers to Linux, and I'd like to think Valve has made the correct choice in one of the most crucial aspects of the overall user experience.

[skeevy420]

I can understand that the 'performance' governor is impractical to use on a thin notebook, however care to elaborate what you think is wrong with 'schedutil' on such a device?

After all, the upcoming Steam Deck & SteamOS 3 is going to rely on exactly this CPU governor to power games for millions of newcomers to Linux, and I'd like to think Valve has made the correct choice in one of the most crucial aspects of the overall user experience.

It has a (bad) reputation as a slower governor, especially from desktop users like myself that don't care as much about power savings and battery life. A lot of that reputation comes from older kernels, older versions of the governor and supporting code, and it probably isn't deserved these days. As soon as I get things squared away I plan on running some tests on my system.

Arch and SUSE both suck here with similar results (near the ends of most benchmarks). One uses schedutil while the other uses the same governor, p_state powersave, as the rest. I don't really think the governor is to blame (especially since Fedora is doing pretty well and using similar package versions as Arch and SUSE).

[linner]

I wonder how Debian compares to Ubuntu or is it just considered to be similar enough? After 15 years I'm done with Ubuntu. Between the Snap fiasco, spyware, removal of the mini.iso, among other things, I just can't take it any more. All the Snap bloat and removal of mini.iso were the last straw.

I'm surprised to see Fedora do so well. I just installed it the other day and man that thing is so bloated and clunky it was too hard to use. The base install is as big or bigger than Windows 10! And it felt really slow with poor UI response.

Arch Linux of course is going to perform poorly because of their hands-off approach to configuration. Not the best idea IMHO. Plus pacman still sucks. Though I continue to use Arch on a few machines because I've spent so much time configuring them that I don't won't to lose it.

[Linuxxx]

It has a (bad) reputation as a slower governor, especially from desktop users like myself that don't care as much about power savings and battery life. A lot of that reputation comes from older kernels, older versions of the governor and supporting code, and it probably isn't deserved these days. As soon as I get things squared away I plan on running some tests on my system.

That part about the bad reputation being unjustified nowadays looks like it might be true, at least I found the following from a quick search:

CPU governor Schedutil now works as well as Performance for the games I've tried

I've been running my Ubuntu 2700x / Vega64 / Kernel 5.4 system on Performance mode for ages because it gave clear gaming benefits. I've been pleasantly surprised today to find that Schedutil now works just as well - but keeps my CPU clocked down when it's not busy.

This is nice. Give it a try fellow Performance CPU Governor people and maybe save some pennies on your electricity bills.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/g534rc/cpu_governor_schedutil_now_works_as_well_as/

Realistically speaking, 'schedutil' only needs to be able to beat Windows' 'balanced' CPU governor to be regarded as the superior option, so that hopefully SteamOS 3 manages to come out on top when directly compared to Windows 11; this should be especially easy to achieve on AMD GPUs, because of RADV.

Hopefully this will be an eye-opener for many...