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.

Over Ubuntu 16.04, the current Ubuntu 16.10 images have GCC 6.1.1 as a big difference for the tests being built from source. Right now Ubuntu 16.10 is still relying upon a Linux 4.4 based kernel while Linux 4.8 will end up being used by the Yakkety Yak in October. Ubuntu 16.10 also has Mesa 12.0.1, but no graphics tests were done for this article since the card running in this system was the GTX 770 with less than ideal Nouveau driver performance.

Intel's CLear Linux meanwhile has the Linux 4.7 kernel, GCC 6.1, and LLVM Clang 3.8.1. A larger Linux/BSD comparison on this same system is currently being worked on.


Clear Linux continues leading over Ubuntu in many benchmarks.

Part of the reason is Clear Linux ships with many optimized compiler flags by default compared to Ubuntu and many other distributions.

GCC 6 seems to help some tests over GCC 5 on Ubuntu 16.04.


There are a few upsets.

In some tests there isn't much of a performance difference.

See more of these benchmark results via this OpenBenchmarking.org result file while staying tuned for a larger Linux/BSD comparison on this system.