Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 vs. Its Derivatives

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 vs. Its Derivatives

Does Red Hat Enterprise Linux perform any better (or worse) than the various "Enterprise Linux" distributions that are derived from RHEL? Now that Scientific Linux 6.2 was released, here is a performance comparison of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Oracle Linux, CentOS, and Scientific Linux across three different systems.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=17093

[birdie]

The same kernels, the same GCC compiler, the same compiler flags, I wonder if anyone really expected any differences in their performance.

[crazycheese]

Paying money for software for the sake of features or speeds is wrong in GPL world.
The code is shared between distribution and it is supposed to be shared, so everyone can profit.

This way we do not have 1000 software pieces that perform in various degrees of the bad.

We have 1000 software pieces that perform most equally good, and fit into 1000 own purposes.

The difference when you pay money is support and development in the direction you consider most important.

Because you can NOT sell code - because it is already written, you can ONLY sell human effort - the job to write the code. This is what you pay for at Red Hat. It can not be measured in software benchmarks, but it could be measured in release/patch speed. And this is why I love Red Hat - they do A LOT for your linux distribution. If you support Red Hat, you support FLOSS.

[kraftman]

The same kernels, the same GCC compiler, the same compiler flags, I wonder if anyone really expected any differences in their performance.

Oracle makes some modifications to the Kernel.

[joffe]

The same kernels, the same GCC compiler, the same compiler flags, I wonder if anyone really expected any differences in their performance.

That is what one expects, but without testing one can't be sure. Sometimes errors sneak through to release builds.

[kaipanoi]

Nice color choice for the graphs, guys...

Two teals, a blue and a red. I wasn't going to say anything, but you didn't even assign the red one...

...to Red Hat.

ಠ_ಠ

[DaemonFC]

Factoring into your decisions should be that:

Oracle isn't an authority on anything in their Linux distribution except their kernel which is not RHEL compatible and is optimized for Oracle's software.

Oracle isn't a Linux company, Oracle is a patent troll, Oracle is a Microsoft and Apple partner in taxing Android to death.

Paying money for Oracle Linux won't make Oracle Linux better, it will just deprive Red Hat of funding and make them less able to contribute code to various upstreams.

[liam]

Also, Oracle is being naughty for holding back oracle software certification on RHEL
What RH really needs to do is buy EnterpriseDB so they can offer an enterprise level, and somewhat oracle workalike, DB solution.

[enrico.tagliavini]

It might be intresting to benchmark the CHAOS distribution https://code.google.com/p/chaos-release/ when released. This is a centos derivate focused on HPC, so it might pull in something intresting about the performance. I looked at the kernel config vs the Scientific Linux one. Few differences so it might be just boring to benchmark this too. One of the notable one is the default I/O scheduler. Deadline is the default in Scientific Linux, CFQ in CHAOS.