Benchmarking 9 Linux Distributions On A $50 Processor

Your choice of Linux distribution on a budget PC can mean the difference of ~14% performance overall. Here are benchmarks of Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, EndeavourOS, Manjaro Linux, openSUSE Tumbleweed, Fedora Workstation, and Clear Linux on a $50 processor as we roll into 2020 with the newest Linux distribution releases.

For some holiday benchmarking fun I was testing out various Linux distributions on the AMD Athlon 3000G, the recent $50 processor that features two cores / four threads, 3.5GHz clock speed, and Vega 3 graphics while having a 35 Watt TDP. Of many Linux distributions tried, the only modern Linux distribution where I ran into troubles was with Debian 10.2 stable. Even with the proprietary microcode loaded, the Vega 3 graphics weren't working with the default driver stack shipped by Debian 10.2. But aside from that it was a smooth experience on all other major distributions, including Debian Testing.

The nine Linux distributions benchmarked for this $50 processor comparison included CentOS Stream, Clear Linux 31990, Debian Testing, EndeavourOS, Fedora Workstation 31, Manjaro Linux 18.1.5, Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS, Ubuntu 19.10, and openSUSE Tumbleweed.

The system used for all the benchmarking featured the AMD Athlon 3000G with ASUS PRIME B350M-E motherboard, 8GB of RAM, and Samsung 970 EVO 250GB NVMe SSD storage.

All nine Linux distribution releases were tested in their default / out-of-the-box configuration with a wide range of benchmarks using the Phoronix Test Suite.