16-Way Linux OS Performance Comparison

[phoronix]

Phoronix: 16-Way Linux OS Performance Comparison

Building on our earlier 11-Way Linux/BSD Platform Comparison, starting a new week we're up to a 16-Way Linux operating system comparison. Added in now are results from PCLinuxOS, ROSA, the lightweight antiX distribution, and then the Gentoo-based Sabayon and Calculate Linux Desktop distributions.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=18809

[caryhartline]

PCLinuxOS Gaming

Does anyone know what PCLinuxOS does to make their gaming so much better?

[reznov]

Does anyone know what PCLinuxOS does to make their gaming so much better?

Proprietary Catalyst driver by default while other distributions doesn't have it by default. Nothing too fancy.

So if you install Catalyst Driver on other Distributions, you'll get similar outcome.

[AJenbo]

Some times it helps to read the article:

PCLinuxOS 2013 activates the proprietary Catalyst driver by default, rather than the open-source Radeon Gallium3D stack, which is why that distribution is showing the best OpenGL gaming results.

[kUrb1a]

Nice performance comparison Michael . I really like that LXDE holds up continuously through this tests and I must say whatever Ubuntu does for Unity and Compiz it really shows.I might even try it these days.

[talvik]

Does anyone know what PCLinuxOS does to make their gaming so much better?

RTFA "PCLinuxOS 2013 activates the proprietary Catalyst driver by default, rather than the open-source Radeon Gallium3D stack, which is why that distribution is showing the best OpenGL gaming results."

[GreatEmerald]

The Gentoo-based Calculate Linux Desktop and Sabayon Linux distributions didn't offer any compelling performance advantages over the non-Gentoo distributions, contrary to some Gentoo users believing it's a magical speed demon.

That's not how it works. The speed boost on Gentoo comes from compiling the packages with optimised compiler flags. PTS explicitly compares programs compiled with the same compiler flags, so it's obvious there will be no performance improvement there. The only thing that could mean a performance difference is the libraries that the tests rely upon being compiled with optimal settings (and we don't know if they were).

[ArneBab]

Did you recompile Sabayon with -march=native or did you use the binary packages?

Just asking, because if you did the former, there is no reason at all why Sabayon should have any speed advantage.

[jdhore]

| The Gentoo-based Calculate Linux Desktop and Sabayon Linux distributions didn't offer any compelling performance advantages over the non-Gentoo distributions, contrary to some Gentoo users believing it's a magical speed demon.

I didn't appreciate this comment. Calculate and Sabayon are both BINARY-based distros that are Gentoo-based which means they have no real specific optimizations for hardware or USE flags or anything. For example, the GCC CFLAGS are optimized to work on everything as old as an Athlon 64 system from a decade ago.

If you REALLY want to attempt to make this argument, please test with a proper Gentoo (or Funtoo) installation that *IS* optimized for your hardware.

Also, as a sidenote, people who use Gentoo for the performance gain are generally using it for the wrong reason. Gentoo should be used because it is extremely customizable in terms of package versions and dependencies and USE flags and such, not because of the performance gain (unless you're a bank or similar where you need microsecond precision for transactions and such). For most users, the performance gain of using Gentoo itself is quite negated by the compile times anyway.

[GreatEmerald]

Also, as a sidenote, people who use Gentoo for the performance gain are generally using it for the wrong reason. Gentoo should be used because it is extremely customizable in terms of package versions and dependencies and USE flags and such, not because of the performance gain (unless you're a bank or similar where you need microsecond precision for transactions and such). For most users, the performance gain of using Gentoo itself is quite negated by the compile times anyway.

Not if it's a low-end computer (think Atom or AMD Brazos), where such speed increases are visible, and not if you have a distcc/icecream server set up