Arch Linux, Clear Linux, Fedora Compete On The ASUS ROG Strix G15

[dragonn]

Still laptop vendors should send in their patches way more sooner.

Hahahahahah thats a really good joke.
I didn't see even one official patch from ASUS, everything comes from the community with does an amazing job.
Maybe vendors send patches for some enterprise grade laptop but I never saw anything from ASUS/MSI/Lenovo for the avrage users/gaming laptops.

[Grinch]

There's no magic in Clear Linux which other distros cannot copy.

True.

Arch Linux is currently working on a new repository where they will serve packages compiled with x86-64-v3 as opposed to x86-64 which will enable registers and instructions found in later CPU's.

IIRC the test they did on a range of packages yielded an overall 10% performance increase. I don't think they will switch from -O2 to -O3 though.

[CochainComplex]

Supports or enables by default? Because Fedora runs with SeLinux enabled by default and Michael does not disable it. Speaking of GCC flags, are you sure Arch comes close to this?

-Wall -W -Wextra -Wstrict-prototypes -O2 -flto=auto -ffat-lto-objects -fexceptions -g -grecord-gcc-switches -pipe -Wall -Werror=format-security -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -Wp,-D_GLIBCXX_ASSERTIONS -specs=/usr/lib/rpm/redhat/redhat-hardened-cc1 -fstack-protector-strong -specs=/usr/lib/rpm/redhat/redhat-annobin-cc1 -mtune=generic -fasynchronous-unwind-tables -fstack-clash-protection -fcf-protection -fPIC -DPIC

Clear Linux uses -O3 by default which makes binaries fatter without necessarily making them faster. Its default GCC options (/share/defaults/etc/profile):

-g -O3 -feliminate-unused-debug-types -pipe -Wall -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fexceptions -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=32 -Wformat -Wformat-security -m64 -fasynchronous-unwind-tables -Wp,-D_REENTRANT -ftree-loop-distribute-patterns -Wl,-z -Wl,now -Wl,-z -Wl,relro -fno-semantic-interposition -ffat-lto-objects -fno-trapping-math -Wl,-sort-common -Wl,--enable-new-dtags -mtune=skylake -Wa,-mbranches-within-32B-boundaries

So, it's -O3 -mtune=skylake -fstack-protector vs. Fedora's -O2 -mtune=generic -fstack-protector-strong -fstack-clash-protection -fcf-protection

There's no magic in Clear Linux which other distros cannot copy. I wonder why people continue to praise Clear Linux' performance in every test without taking ten minutes to find out what actually makes it faster.

Your statement is quite correct. But you are missing a small detail. The mentioned flags are default true but clear Linux uses autospec for building their pkgs. So each package has its own specfile *.spec can be found in the individual repo. Which adds or removes several flags. So one could say that each package has its handtuned flagset.
This flagfile does also branch built processes for different CPUs. Eg. Skylake-x avx512 enavled.
Bottom line their is no hidden magic. But there is a lot of work put into it to figure out which flags are the best for individual pkgs. Besides they also add security related flags so it is no performance for security trade.

[caligula]

I'm surprised Clear didn't do a lot better. Those are three of the consistently worst performing distros that you put it up against. You used to get really strong results from Debian, but it seems like you've stopped testing it in these multi-distro competitions.

What makes you think Debian's 4.19.37 kernel would even boot when you installed it on a Ryzen 5000 series system?

[cmaciej]

I use Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 GA401QM with Fedora 34. The guide on asus-linux.org asks for blacklisting kernel packages and install kernel from their copr repo. I think these kernels have patches for enabling specific features of Asus ROG laptops. I wonder if there is any performance difference though.