Linux Magazine recently did benchmarks of Gentoo Linux and Ubuntu Linux alongside one another, but practically everyone on the Gentoo forums agrees that the comparison is flawed:
In the past, Phoronix has done benchmarks of alpha releases of distributions (e.g. Ubuntu 10.04), but has had a long standing omission of benchmarks involving Gentoo Linux, despite Gentoo Linux being a mainstream distribution that has a great deal to offer to the Linux community in ways that other distributions cannot.
Would Phoronix be so kind as to do its standard benchmarks in as well as benchmarks similar to those done by Linux Magazine with Gentoo users' concerns addressed in a Gentoo Linux versus Ubuntu Linux comparison? Phoronix does excellent Linux benchmarks and it would be wonderful to see a meaningful comparison between the two distributions. It also would be wonderful to see Phoronix rectify its long standing omission of Gentoo Linux in its benchmarks.
Before anyone mentions Sabayon Linux, benchmarks of Sabayon Linux do not count as benchmarks of Gentoo Linux, in particular because installing Sabayon Linux ignores all of the customization that is done on a typical Gentoo Linux System. While running Gentoo Linux does not automatically translate into higher performance, that customization often yields higher performance, which is something that is Sabayon Linux does not have.
In case Phoronix is willing to do benchmarks of Gentoo Linux, here are some instructions:
In the past, Phoronix has done benchmarks of alpha releases of distributions (e.g. Ubuntu 10.04), but has had a long standing omission of benchmarks involving Gentoo Linux, despite Gentoo Linux being a mainstream distribution that has a great deal to offer to the Linux community in ways that other distributions cannot.
Would Phoronix be so kind as to do its standard benchmarks in as well as benchmarks similar to those done by Linux Magazine with Gentoo users' concerns addressed in a Gentoo Linux versus Ubuntu Linux comparison? Phoronix does excellent Linux benchmarks and it would be wonderful to see a meaningful comparison between the two distributions. It also would be wonderful to see Phoronix rectify its long standing omission of Gentoo Linux in its benchmarks.
Before anyone mentions Sabayon Linux, benchmarks of Sabayon Linux do not count as benchmarks of Gentoo Linux, in particular because installing Sabayon Linux ignores all of the customization that is done on a typical Gentoo Linux System. While running Gentoo Linux does not automatically translate into higher performance, that customization often yields higher performance, which is something that is Sabayon Linux does not have.
In case Phoronix is willing to do benchmarks of Gentoo Linux, here are some instructions:
Code:
The typical Gentoo user runs Gentoo Linux with packages from Gentoo's testing tree (software that is stable upstream, but has not had the formality of being declared stable by Gentoo's package maintainers), so a proper comparison between Gentoo Linux and Ubuntu Linux would involve using packages from Gentoo's testing tree (for x86_64, this would involve running 'echo "ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=\"~amd64\"" >> /etc/make.conf') and then masking any major software newer than the software that Ubuntu Linux uses. That would involving doing 'echo ">=sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-2.6.32" >> /etc/portage/package.mask', among similar commands for X, GCC, etcetera when comparing Gentoo Linux to Ubuntu Linux 9.10, such that all of the major software versions are identical. A list can be found at wikipedia: [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ubuntu_releases#Version_history_of_common_programs[/url] The sys-kernel/gentoo-sources, sys-devel/gcc, x11-base/xorg-server and x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers are likely the only software on the system that would require this treatment. The kernel should be compiled for the system's architecture, based off a .config from [url]www.kernel-seeds.org[/url]. This should accurately simulate the level of kernel customization that is done by the typical Gentoo user, as the owner of that site has taken most of the things Gentoo users do, did them by default for us and published instructions regarding the things that tend to vary from system to system. Lastly, the recommendations for Gentoo involve having all software on the system compiled with "CFLAGS=\"-O2 -march=native -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer\"" and "CXXFLAGS=\"${CFLAGS}\"" in /etc/make.conf, although you could vary this if you want to try testing different optimization levels in your benchmarks, like Linux Magazine did.
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