The Most Popular Linux Hardware Reviews / Benchmarks Of The Past Decade
Of the 2,828 published so far from 2010 to date, there is a lot of interesting hardware covered and much more that didn't make the cut for trimming this most-viewed list down to 40. Oddly (funny?) enough, the most popular featured article of this decade wasn't any Linux/open-source topic at all, but rather the 2010 Phoronix meet-up in Chernobyl... Back when there was any travel budget prior to ad-blockers wiping out most of the event coverage.
If you enjoy the daily content on Phoronix and wish to see it continuing to go strong in its 16th year, consider showing your support by joining Phoronix Premium or making a PayPal tip this holiday season but at the very least to not view this web-site with any ad-blocker.
Here's the most popular featured article / hardware review / benchmark list for the 2010s:
Touring Chernobyl In 2010
I just returned to the United States after being in Ukraine the past five days over Easter weekend. The purpose of this trip was to explore the site of the Chernobyl nuclear accident and surrounding areas -- Kyiv, Pripyat, the Red Forest, etc. Contrary to some initial beliefs, it was not an April Fools' Joke. Due to the great interest in Chernobyl among those interested in science and technology whether it be due to the fascination with nuclear power or finding Chernobyl popularized by video games, documentaries, and the like, I have published my collection of these photographs of Chernobyl showing what the area looks like in 2010 -- just days prior to the 24th anniversary of this catastrophic disaster -- along with some of my thoughts and information collected from this journey.
Is Windows 7 Actually Faster Than Ubuntu 10.04?
While Linux has long been talked about as being a faster operating system than Microsoft Windows, in 2010 is this still the case? It seems every time we deliver new benchmarks of the EXT4 file-system it's actually getting slower, recent Linux kernel releases have not been delivering any major performance enhancements for desktop users, the open-source Linux graphics drivers are still no match to the proprietary drivers, and "bloated and huge" is how Linus Torvalds described the Linux kernel last year. This is all while Windows 7 was released last year, which many view as Microsoft's best operating system release to date. Even after using it a fair amount the past few months in preparation for this about-to-be-shared work, it is actually not too bad and is a huge improvement over Windows Vista, but is it really faster than Ubuntu Linux? We have used six uniquely different systems and ran Microsoft Windows 7 Professional x64 and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS x86_64 on each of them with a set of 55 tests (actually, more than 165 if considering that each test is usually run at least three times for accuracy) per installation.
EXT4 File-System Tuning Benchmarks
Following last month's Btrfs file-system tuning benchmarks, in this article are a similar set of tests when stressing the EXT4 file-system with its various performance-related mount options. Here are a number of EXT4 benchmarks from Ubuntu 12.10 with different mount option configurations.
NVIDIA GeForce GT 520
Up for review today is a low-end NVIDIA Fermi graphics card, the GeForce GT 520. The low-end graphics processor it uses, the GF119, was released back in April. The graphics card only has 48 Stream processors and uses DDR3 memory with a 64-bit bus, except the cost on this creation is just around $60 USD.
Raspberry Pi 3 Benchmarks vs. Eight Other ARM Linux Boards
On Friday my Raspberry Pi 3 arrived for benchmarking. For our first benchmarks of this Cortex-A53 64-bit ARM $35 development board is a comparison against eight other ARMv7 and ARMv8 development boards running their official Linux distributions while carrying out a range of benchmarks. Here are those raw performance results along with a performance-per-dollar comparison for additional insight into this low-cost ARM development board.
The ~200 Line Linux Kernel Patch That Does Wonders
In recent weeks and months there has been quite a bit of work towards improving the responsiveness of the Linux desktop with some very significant milestones building up recently and new patches continuing to come. This work is greatly improving the experience of the Linux desktop when the computer is withstanding a great deal of CPU load and memory strain. Fortunately, the exciting improvements are far from over. There is a new patch that has not yet been merged but has undergone a few revisions over the past several weeks and it is quite small -- just over 200 lines of code -- but it does wonders for the Linux desktop.
Mac OS X 10.6.3 vs. Windows 7 vs. Ubuntu 10.04 Benchmarks
Last week we delivered the first of our Windows 7 vs. Ubuntu 10.04 benchmarks to much anticipation, but now we have the results for Apple's Mac OS X 10.6.3 operating system to tack in too. In the first part of that Windows 7 vs. Ubuntu Linux performance examination, we looked closely at the OpenGL gaming performance across six different systems and a whole slew of tests. More articles are on the way looking at the performance and later in the week we already delivered some initial disk benchmarks. However, now it is time to see how Microsoft Windows 7 Professional x64, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, and Apple Mac OS X 10.6.3 compete with one another.
Is Arch Linux Really Faster Than Ubuntu?
Often when we are preparing for cross-distribution comparisons or benchmarks of different operating systems (like our recent Mac OS X 10.6 vs. Windows 7 vs. Ubuntu 10.04 benchmarks) we are often asked to include Arch Linux in the mix. This is usually on the basis of including a rolling-release distribution to provide a performance look at a constantly evolving distribution with many of the most recent open-source packages rather than a traditional distribution with packages that may be months older. Many of those requesting Arch be included in our testing mix also claim that Arch performs significantly faster than Ubuntu and our usual test candidates. The main reason we do not deliver many benchmarks of Arch, Gentoo, or other distributions that use a rolling release approach is that they are not very reproducible with their results since their packages are frequently changing and there are more end-user customizations going on compared to most other distributions. However, to test the performance claims of Arch versus others, we have compared the performance of the newest Arch 2010.05 media against Ubuntu Linux.
Initial Benchmarks Of The Performance Impact Resulting From Linux's x86 Security Changes
Over the past day you've likely heard lots of hysteria about a yet-to-be-fully-disclosed vulnerability that appears to affect at least several generations of Intel CPUs and affects not only Linux but also Windows and macOS. The Intel CPU issue comes down to leaking information about the kernel memory to user-space, but the full scope isn't public yet until the bug's embargo, but it's expected to be a doozy in the data center / cloud deployments. Due to the amount of interest in this issue, here are benchmarks of a patched kernel showing the performance impact of the page table isolation patches.
AMD FX-8150 Bulldozer On Ubuntu Linux
Two weeks ago AMD introduced the Bulldozer FX-Series CPUs to much excitement, although many were letdown by the initial results, and it was months after showing the first Linux benchmarks of an AMD Dual-Interlagos pre-production system. In the days that followed I delivered some initial AMD FX-4100 Linux benchmarks when securing remote access to a low-end Bulldozer system running Ubuntu 11.04 (and there were also some Linux benchmarks from independent Phoronix readers), but then last week a Bulldozer kit arrived from AMD. The centerpiece of this kit is an eight-core AMD FX-8150 CPU, which is now being used to conduct a plethora of AMD Bulldozer benchmarks on Linux.
The Most Comprehensive AMD Radeon Linux Graphics Comparison
Last month I alluded to a 40-way graphics card comparison being worked on at Phoronix. This comparison is to extensively compare the performance of the open and closed-source drivers for each graphics card and to comprehensively comment on other areas of the Linux graphics driver support. Not only is the OpenGL performance being evaluated, but the thermal performance, CPU utilization, and power consumption is being looked at too. Being published today to mark the beginning of the Oktoberfest 2011 articles are the ATI/AMD Radeon results. This includes 28 of the 40 graphics cards, with GPUs as old as the Radeon X800XL and as new as the AMD Radeon HD 6950.
12-Core ARM Cluster Benchmarked Against Atom, Ivy Bridge, Fusion
Last week I shared my plans to build a low-cost, 12-core, 30-watt ARMv7 cluster running Ubuntu Linux. The ARM cluster that is built around the PandaBoard ES development boards is now online and producing results... Quite surprising results actually for a low-power Cortex-A9 compute cluster. Results include performance-per-Watt comparisons to Intel Atom and Ivy Bridge processors along with AMD's Fusion APU.
Ubuntu 15.10: KVM vs. Xen vs. VirtualBox Virtualization Performance
Our latest benchmarks of Ubuntu 15.10 are looking at the performance of this latest Linux distribution release when comparing the performance of guests using KVM, Xen, and VirtualBox virtualization from the same system.
AMD FX-8350 "Vishera" Linux Benchmarks
AMD today is lifting the lid on their Piledriver-based 2012 FX "Vishera" processors. Just weeks after the "Bulldozer 2" Trinity APUs were launched, the new high-end AMD FX CPUs are being rolled out. Being benchmarked at Phoronix today under Linux is the new AMD FX-8350 processor.
Surprising Power Consumption Of Ubuntu 11.04 vs. Windows 7
After recently tracking down the major Linux kernel power regression that's present for a vast number of mobile users in Fedora 15, Ubuntu 11.04, and other recent Linux distributions shipping the 2.6.38+ kernel, the sights were turned to see how the power management of Ubuntu 11.04 compares to that of Windows 7 Professional Service Pack 1. In this article are the power consumption results of Ubuntu 11.04 compared directly to Windows 7 Professional 1 on several different systems with distinct notebook and desktop / workstation configurations.
Further Analyzing The Intel CPU "x86 PTI Issue" On More Systems
2018 has been off to a busy start with all the testing around the Linux x86 PTI (Page Table Isolation) patches for this "Intel CPU bug" that potentially dates back to the Pentium days but has yet to be fully disclosed. Here is the latest.
Ubuntu 11.10: Xen vs. KVM vs. VirtualBox
While last week I showed how Ubuntu's performance has evolved as a KVM guest from Ubuntu 8.04 through Ubuntu 11.10, in today's article is a Linux virtualization showdown between VirtualBox, Xen, and KVM while using Ubuntu 11.10 on the Linux 3.0 kernel.
The Wayland Situation: Facts About X vs. Wayland
With the continued speculation and FUD about the future of Wayland at a time when Canonical is investing heavily into their own Mir Display Server alternative, Eric Griffith with input from Daniel Stone have written an article for Phoronix where they lay out all the facts. The "Wayland Situation" is explained with first going over the failings of X, the fixings of Wayland, common misconceptions about X and Wayland, and then a few other advantages to Wayland. For anyone interested in X/Wayland or the Linux desktop at a technical level, it's an article certainly worth reading!
AMD Fusion E-350 Linux Performance
By now you have likely seen the AMD Fusion E-350 APU showcased on a number of Windows web-sites, but how is this AMD Accelerated Processor working in the Linux world? At Phoronix today are the first in-depth Ubuntu Linux benchmarks being published from this promising, low-power solution designed to compete with Intel's Atom.
Valve's Gabe Newell Talks Linux Steam Client, Source Engine
For those that have doubted the exclusive Phoronix claims for quite a while now that the Steam client and Source Engine are in fact being ported to Linux, the doubts can be nearly laid to rest. Even I began to wonder how long it would take before the clients for their popular games would be publicly released under Linux. However, after confirming the information perhaps a bit too soon, their level of Linux interest is much more clear after spending a day at their offices. A meeting topped off the day with Gabe Newell regarding Linux where he sounded more like a Linux saint than an ex-Microsoft employee. Valve does have some great plans for Linux beyond just shipping the client versions of Steam and their popular games on the Source Engine.
Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu Linux Gaming Performance With NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060/1080
It's been a while since last testing Windows 10 vs. Linux on different, newer Linux game ports with a variety of GPUs, but that changed this week. As mentioned this weekend, I've been working on a large, fresh Windows vs. Linux gaming performance comparison. The results available today are for NVIDIA with testing a GeForce GTX 1060 and GTX 1080 on Windows 10 Pro x64 and Ubuntu 16.10 x86_64 with the latest drivers and using a variety of newer Direct3D 11/12 / OpenGL / Vulkan games.
Five Years Of Linux Kernel Benchmarks: 2.6.12 Through 2.6.37
While we have conducted studies related to the Linux kernel performance in the past such as benchmarking up to twelve kernel releases, going out the door this morning are the results from the largest-ever Linux kernel comparison conducted at Phoronix, and very likely the largest ever of its kind regardless of source. Every major Linux kernel release from Linux 2.6.12, which was released in mid-2005, up through the latest Linux 2.6.37 development code was tested. This represents the past five years of the Linux kernel and shows how the performance has evolved over the past 25 stable kernel releases and the most recent 2.6.37 development kernel.
Benchmarking ZFS On FreeBSD vs. EXT4 & Btrfs On Linux
ZFS is often looked upon as an advanced, superior file-system and one of the strong points of the Solaris/OpenSolaris platform while most feel that only recently has Linux been able to catch-up on the file-system front with EXT4 and the still-experimental Btrfs. ZFS is copy-on-write, self-healing with 256-bit checksums, supports compression, online pool growth, scales much better than the UFS file-system commonly used on BSD operating systems, supports snapshots, supports deduplication, and the list goes on for the features of this file-system developed by Sun Microsystems. In this article we are seeing how well the performance of the ZFS file-system under PC-BSD/FreeBSD 8.1 stacks up to UFS (including UFS+J and UFS+S) and on the Linux side with EXT4 and Btrfs.
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X Linux Benchmarks
The day many of you have been waiting for is finally here: AMD Zen (Ryzen) processors are shipping! Thanks to AMD coming around at the last minute, I received a Ryzen 7 1800X yesterday evening and have been putting it through its paces. Here is my walkthrough of the Linux experience for the AMD Ryzen and new motherboard and a number of the initial Linux benchmarks for this high-end Zen CPU while much more coverage is coming in the hours and days ahead.
Vulkan 1.0 Released: What You Need To Know About This Cross-Platform, High-Performance Graphics API
Today's the day! It's Vulkan day! After the better part of two years of hard work, Vulkan 1.0 is ready to meet the world! Today The Khronos Group is announcing the release of Vulkan 1.0 with an embargo that just expired. This hard-launch today is met by the public release of the first conformant driver. The first Vulkan-powered game is also in public beta as of today, but the Linux situation as of today isn't entirely exciting for end-users/gamers as most vendors are still baking their Linux support with Windows generally taking priority. However, even ignoring operating system differences, you need to make sure your expectations are realistic before trying to fire up a Vulkan game while giving developers time to learn and design for this new graphics API.
Intel Haswell Linux Virtualization: KVM vs. Xen vs. VirtualBox
The latest chapter to our lengthy Intel Haswell on Linux saga is virtualization benchmarks. From Fedora 19 with the very latest software components for Linux virtualization, the performance of KVM, Xen, and VirtualBox were benchmarked from the Intel Core i7 4770K "Haswell" CPU.
AMD Radeon RX 480 On Linux
After weeks of anticipation, AMD's high-end Radeon RX 480 "Polaris" graphics card is officially launching today! This graphics card starts at just $199 USD (or $239 USD for the 8GB version) and has day-one Linux support! There's available open-source driver support as well as an AMDGPU-PRO update that's expected today for those wanting to make use of this newer hybrid Linux driver stack. I've been testing the Radeon RX 480 under Linux the past week under both driver stacks and have my initial results to share this morning.
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X + Ryzen 9 3900X Offer Incredible Linux Performance But With A Big Caveat
After weeks of anticipation, we can now share how the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X and Ryzen 9 3900X performance is under Linux. These first Zen 2 processors do indeed deliver a significant improvement over Zen/Zen+ processors and also battle Intel's latest 14nm CPUs but for Linux users there is one big, unfortunate issue right now.
The Performance Impact Of Linux Disk Encryption On Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
For any Linux laptop users or those concerned about their data's safety on production systems, I highly recommend utilizing disk encryption for safeguarding the data. However, what's the performance impact like these days? In this article with the current development snapshot of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on a modern Intel ultrabook we're looking at the impact (including CPU utilization) of using an eCryptfs-based home directory encryption and LUKS-based full-disk encryption on Ubuntu Linux.
Fedora vs. openSUSE vs. Manjaro vs. Debian vs. Ubuntu vs. Mint Linux Benchmarks
Honoring the latest round of Phoronix Premium reader requests is a fresh six-way Linux distribution comparison. Tested were Manjaro 15.09 and Linux Mint 17.2 and then the latest development versions of Fedora 23, openSUSE 42.1 Leap, Debian Stretch Testing, and Ubuntu 15.10.
OS X 10.8 vs. Ubuntu Linux: A Battle With No Clear Winner
Since Apple released OX X 10.8 "Mountain Lion" last month, there have been tests going on at Phoronix of this latest Apple operating system not only on the Retina MacBook Pro, but other Mac hardware as well. In this article is a comparison of OS X 10.8 versus Ubuntu Linux -- when trying out both Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and the latest Ubuntu 12.10 development version.
Intel HD 4000 Ivy Bridge Graphics On Linux
Now having looked at the processor performance of the brand new Intel Core i7 3770K "Ivy Bridge" CPU, up now is our first look at the Intel HD 4000 "Gen7" graphics performance for the Ivy Bridge processors under Linux. Building upon what's turned into a huge success for Intel with their Sandy Bridge graphics with admirable performance and stable open-source Linux drivers, Ivy Bridge volleys Intel's Linux graphics capabilities into a whole new realm for those concerned about open-source graphics drivers.
ARM Cortex-A15 vs. NVIDIA Tegra 3 vs. Intel x86
Last week I shared some early benchmarks of the Samsung Chromebook while running Ubuntu Linux. The Samsung Chromebook is very interesting since it's one of the few readily available computers on the market employing an ARM Cortex-A15 processor rather than Cortex-A9 or other models. The Cortex-A15 found in the Samsung Exynos 5 Dual SoC proved to be very powerful and this Chromebook was quite a good deal with it being trivial to load Ubuntu Linux (and other distributions) while costing only $250 USD for this ARM-based laptop. In the past week I have carried out additional ARM Cortex-A15 benchmarks, including a comparison of its performance the the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core ARM "Cardhu" tablet and several Intel Atom/Core x86 systems.
Sapphire Radeon HD 6770
Continuing to ensure that Linux benchmarks on the latest AMD Radeon HD graphics processors are available, the kind people at Sapphire have sent over another Radeon HD 6000 series graphics card. After previously reviewing the Sapphire Radeon HD 6570 and Sapphire Radeon HD 6870, up now is the Sapphire Radeon HD 6770. The Radeon HD 6770 (and HD 6750) up until recently was just offered to OEM builders, but now Sapphire has begun selling various products with these graphics processors, which end up being re-branded Radeon HD 5770/5750 "Juniper" graphics processors.
FreeBSD: A Faster Platform For Linux Gaming Than Linux?
FreeBSD provides a Linux binary compatibility layer that allows 32-bit Linux binaries to be natively executed on this BSD operating system. Linux binary compatibility on FreeBSD allows Linux-only applications to be executed in a near seamless manner on this alternative platform, even for games. New tests have revealed that the modern FreeBSD operating system (via PC-BSD 8.2) can actually outperform Linux when it comes to running OpenGL Linux game binaries.
Ubuntu 11.04: i686 vs. i686 PAE vs. x86_64
At the end of 2009 I published benchmarks comparing Ubuntu's 32-bit, 32-bit PAE, and 64-bit Linux kernels. Those tests were carried out to show the performance impact of using 32-bit with PAE (Physical Address Extension) support, which on the plus side allows up to 64GB of system memory to be addressable from 32-bit machines, but is still significantly slower than a 64-bit kernel and user-space. In this article the tests have been carried out on modern hardware and with the latest Ubuntu 11.04 packages to see how the three kernel variants are performing in 2011.
The Performance Impact Of MDS / Zombieload Plus The Overall Cost Now Of Spectre/Meltdown/L1TF/MDS
The past few days I've begun exploring the performance implications of the new Microarchitectural Data Sampling "MDS" vulnerabilities now known more commonly as Zombieload. As I shared in some initial results, there is a real performance hit to these mitigations. In this article are more MDS/Zombieload mitigation benchmarks on multiple systems as well as comparing the overall performance impact of the Meltdown/Spectre/Foreshadow/Zombieload mitigations on various Intel CPUs and also AMD CPUs where relevant.
Intel Core i7 3770K Ivy Bridge Linux Performance
Intel is finally announcing the first Ivy Bridge processors this morning. I have been extensively testing out the Intel Core i7 3770K, the current high-end Ivy Bridge processor, for the past few weeks under Ubuntu Linux. I have been extremely pleased with the Intel Core i7 Ivy Bridge processor under Linux with its phenomenal performance, power efficiency, and new features. This article is the first of many looking at the Linux performance of the new Intel Ivy Bridge processors.
AMD FX-4100 Bulldozer
As mentioned over the weekend, a Phoronix reader that was excited about AMD's Bulldozer products had went out and immediately purchased an FX-4100 processor. This user graciously let me SSH into the system as soon as Ubuntu Linux was installed so that benchmarks from the AMD FX-4100 could be conducted. Here is a look at the AMD FX-4100 Bulldozer on Linux compared to Llano Fusion hardware and Intel Sandy Bridge processors.
AMD A10-7850K vs. Intel/AMD CPU/APU Comparison
Two days ago AMD launched their "Kaveri" APUs to mixed reactions. On launch-day we provided a Linux overview of the AMD A10-7850K APU and followed that with an Ubuntu Linux vs. Windows 8.1 performance comparison for this top-end Kaveri APU. Yesterday was then the AMD Kaveri APU compared to discrete AMD/NVIDIA GPUs and now today we've finally had the time to finish the tests most people have been looking forward to: the A10-7850K comparison against various other AMD and Intel CPU/APUs. These Linux tests cover a range of both processor and graphics testing from Ubuntu 14.04 across a wide selection of Intel and AMD hardware.
1 Comment
