9-Way H2'2021 Linux OS Performance Comparison On Intel Xeon Scalable Ice Lake

Clear Linux's PHP performance was well ahead of the rest thanks to leveraging feedback-driven optimizations into their PHP build.

That's the straight-forward look at the autumn 2021 Linux distributions on this Intel Xeon Platinum 8380 2P server.

In total there were 110 tests ran across all of these Linux distributions tested. All 110 results in full can be seen via this OpenBenchmarking.org result file. Seeing the most first place finishes on this Intel Xeon Scalable server was Clear Linux with it coming in first about 43% of the time. In second place was CentOS Stream with first place finishes just 15% of the time followed by AlmaLinux 8.4 with first place finishes 12.7% of the time. The current Ubuntu 20.04 LTS release saw first place finishes just 4% of the time, showing how much potential there is for next spring's Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and the amount of progress and improvements seen by Linux distributions in recent months.

If taking the geometric mean of all the benchmark results, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS came in last place. So if you are using Ubuntu 20.04 LTS right now for it's long-term support state, it's exciting to think about the software improvements you will likely be able to enjoy with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and the other open-source software progress in recent times. Leading the race was Clear Linux 35100 for delivering the fastest out-of-the-box Linux performance. CentOS Stream and AlmaLinux were strong performers as well and basically tied for second place then followed by Arch Linux being slightly faster than the rest.

So for those curious how the latest autumn 2021 Linux distributions are competing with Intel Xeon Scalable server hardware, hopefully today's tests provided some insight over the current out-of-the-box Linux speeds for Ice Lake. Tests of these autumn H2'2021 Linux distributions on other hardware platforms are forthcoming on Phoronix.