Clear Linux Defined Linux Performance These Past Few Years

With our various ending-2019 and end-of-2010s articles, the standout on the Linux performance front has certainly been Intel's Clear Linux in consistently delivering the leading Linux x86_64 performance throughout all of our testing on many different tests and hardware platforms. Here's a look back at some of the Clear Linux highlights.

While Clear Linux has just been around for a few years, thanks to being led by Intel's talented open-source folks it's quickly been able to become the fastest when it comes to Linux x86_64 performance and delivering a lot of interesting features in a pseudo rolling-release manner. In reliving the most exciting Clear Linux moments of 2010s in gauging from Phoronix readers with the most popular Clear Linux news (not counting our reviews/benchmark featured articles), the highlights come down to:

The Speed Of Ubuntu 16.10 Currently Versus Ubuntu 16.04, Clear Linux
Being mid-way through Ubuntu 16.10's development cycle, here are some fresh benchmarks showing how its performance has changed (if at all) compared to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS as well as compared to Intel's high-performance Clear Linux distribution as a reference point.

Intel's Clear Linux Is Working On Steam Support
For those planning to do Linux gaming with Intel graphics hardware, you might soon have a new choice with the performance-oriented Clear Linux distribution out of Intel's Open-Source Technology Center.

How Intel's Clear Linux Team Cut The Kernel Boot Time From 3 Seconds To 300 ms
Intel engineer Feng Tang spoke at this week's Linux Plumbers Conference in Lisbon, Portugal on how the Clear Linux team managed to boot their kernel faster. They started out with around a three second kernel boot time but cut it down to just 300 ms.

Benchmarking The Python Optimizations Of Clear Linux Against Ubuntu, Intel Python
Stemming from Clear Linux detailing how they optimize Python's performance using various techniques, there's been reader interest in seeing just how their Python build stacks up. Here's a look at the Clear Linux Python performance compared to a few other configurations as well as Ubuntu Linux.

100+ Benchmarks Between Clear Linux vs. Arch-Based Manjaro Linux - Summer 2019 Tests
For those wondering how Intel's performance-optimized Clear Linux is comparing to the Arch-based Manjaro Linux distribution, here are a number of benchmarks on the same Intel Core i7 8700K in seeing how these rolling-release distros are competing for summer 2019.

Clear Linux vs. Ubuntu On An Intel Pentium CPU
When we are usually running our cross-distribution/OS Linux comparisons, we are generally using Intel Xeon or Core i5/i7 CPUs and whatever else is the latest and greatest hardware, since that's what excites us the most. But a Phoronix Premium member recently inquired whether Intel's performance-oriented Clear Linux distribution would also be of benefit on lower-end hardware. So for some benchmarking fun this weekend, here are some Ubuntu 16.10 vs. Clear Linux results on an older Pentium system.

Other Linux Distributions Begin Analyzing Clear Linux's Performance Optimizations
Fedora developers appear to be among those analyzing Intel's Clear Linux distribution for the performance optimizations made.

Clear Linux Shedding More Light On Their "Magic" Performance Work
If you have been a Phoronix reader for any decent amount of time, you have likely seen how well Intel's Clear Linux distribution continues to run in our performance comparisons against other distributions. The developers behind this Linux distribution have begun a new blog series on "behind the magic" for some of the areas they are making use of for maximizing the out-of-the-box Linux performance.

Here's How To Setup Clear Linux For Intel Steam Linux Gaming
A few weeks back we learned of Intel's Clear Linux distribution working towards Steam support. While Clear Linux is a performance-oriented workstation/server/cloud distribution, repeatedly in our tests it performs among the top Linux distributions even when it comes to Intel OpenGL Linux gaming, so being able to game with it isn't a far stretch with Steam support -- there is also Vulkan support now too.

Ubuntu 16.04 vs. vs. Clear Linux vs. openSUSE vs. Scientific Linux 7
Here are some extra Linux distribution benchmarks for your viewing pleasure this weekend.

Clear Linux Further Enhances Its Desktop Installer, Launches Help Forums
Not only does Intel's Clear Linux distribution offer stellar out of the box performance, but they seem to be making it increasingly user/desktop friendly at this stage. There's been new GUI installer work as well as the launching of their own support forums.

Clear Linux Has A Goal To Get 3x More Upstream Components In Their Distro
For those concerned that running Clear Linux means less available packages/bundles than the likes of Debian, Arch Linux, and Fedora with their immense collection of packaged software, Clear has a goal this year of increasing their upstream components available on the distribution by three times.

Intel's Clear Linux Ups Their Desktop Offering, Rolling Out New Installer
For those that may have been wanting to try out Clear Linux of Intel's Open-Source Technology Center on desktops/workstation, it's now easier to do thanks to a new "desktop live" image accompanied by a new OS installer to make it more akin to conventional desktop Linux distributions.

Clear Linux Gets Questions Over Steam Integration, Other Plans For This High-Perf Distro
Auke Kok of Intel / Clear Linux carried out the distribution's first ask-me-anything session today where he fielded questions ranging from Steam to under-served software projects.

Clear Linux Is Beginning To Make Strides In The Industry From Alibaba To MontaVista
Of Intel's many open-source projects, taking a central role at this year's Intel Open-Source Technology Summit was Clear Linux. Most Intel open-source efforts mentioned during the event point back to Clear Linux in some capacity and at OSTS2019 we finally heard some of the companies that are beginning to make use of Clear Linux.

How Clear Linux Optimizes Python For Greater Performance
Clear Linux's leading performance isn't limited to just C/C++ applications but also scripting languages like PHP, R, and Python have seen great speed-ups too. In a new blog post, one of Intel's developers outlines some of their performance tweaks to Python for delivering greater performance.

Ubuntu 16.10 Doesn't Change Much With Performance, Clear Linux Still Leads In Most Tests
Given yesterday's Ubuntu 16.10 final beta release ahead of the official "Yakkety Yak" debut in two weeks, I decided to run some benchmarks of Ubuntu 16.10 compared to Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS on the same system plus also throwing in the Intel Clear Linux distribution given it tends to be one of the most performant.

Clear Linux's Latest Performance-Optimizing Effort: Greater PHP Performance
Developers working on Intel's Clear Linux distribution have taken to performance tuning of their stock PHP packages during their migration from PHP5 to PHP7.

Solus Integrates Clear Linux's clr-boot-manager
The desktop-focused, performance-oriented Solus Linux distribution has pulled in another component from Clear Linux: clr-boot-manager. The clr-boot-manager is responsible for solid kernel and boot-loader management.

Ubuntu vs. Fedora vs. openSUSE vs. Clear Linux On Intel Kabylake
After running my initial Intel Kaby Lake Linux tests last week using a Core i5 MSI Cubi 2 with new "KBL" processor, which was done under Ubuntu 16.10, I turned my focus to testing a few other distributions with this newest-generation Intel processor.

DNF Package Manager Is Now Available On Clear Linux
While Clear Linux may be extremely performant as shown in our many benchmarks, its default repository serving "bundles" (their task-based approach to package management) can be a bit light if wanting to use this Intel open-source Linux distribution on the desktop. There has been yum available via a bundle while now next-gen Yum, DNF, is also now available on Clear Linux.

Clear Linux Exploring 'libSuperX11" As Newest Optimization Effort
As another optimization for Intel's Clear Linux distribution, a "libSuperX11" library is being considered that fundamentally changes how the X.Org libraries are handled.

Clear Linux Makes Caffe Deep Learning 10% Faster; Also Discovers XFWM4 Compositor Bug
Intel's Clear Linux distribution hasn't been at rest this summer but they've continued working hard on various performance optimizations and improvements to their distribution.

Maximizing HEVC/VP9/AV1 Video Encoding On Intel Xeon Cascade Lake With SVT + Clear Linux
Continuing on from yesterday's Linux OS comparison/benchmarks on Intel 2nd Gen Xeon Scalable Cascade Lake CPUs, here are some follow-up tests focusing on the video encode performance for this dual Xeon Platinum 8280 server when focusing on Intel's high-performance "Streaming Video Technology" (SVT) encoders for VP9, AV1, and H.265/HEVC.

What Makes GLIBC 2.27 Exciting To The Clear Linux Folks
Released at the beginning of February was Glibc 2.27 and it's comprised of a lot of new features and performance improvements. But what's the best of Glibc 2.27?