Ubuntu 16.04 vs. 18.04 Performance On Six Systems

Continuing on with our benchmarking of the recently released Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, here are some reference benchmarks on a total of six systems with AMD and Intel hardware while looking to see how the out-of-the-box performance compares to the previous Long Term Support release, Ubuntu 16.04.

In some past articles I've done some things like looking at the Ubuntu 12.04 to 18.04 performance while this article is just comparing the new/old Ubuntu LTS releases on six different systems for looking overall at how the Ubuntu Linux performance has evolved in the past two years.

As a refresher, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with all available stable release updates has the Linux 4.13 kernel, Unity 7.4.5, Mesa 17.2.8, GCC 5.4.0, Python 2.7.12, Python 3.5.2, and is mitigated for Meltdown/Spectre with KPTI, OSB barriers, and full Retpolines.

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS has the Linux 4.15 kernel, GNOME Shell 3.29.1, Mesa 18.0-rc5, GCC 7.3.0, Python 2.7.15rc1, Python 3.6.5, and is mitigated for Meltdown with KPTI while for Spectre V1 it opts for __user pointer sanitization over OSB and for Spectre V2 has full Retpolines.

The six systems were all comprised of different hardware and not intended to compare the performance between the systems but rather a look at how each system does when going from Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus to the Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver. The systems were based around an Intel Core i7 6800K, Core i7 8700K, Core i9 7980XE, dual Xeon Gold 6138, AMD EPYC 7601, and AMD Ryzen 7 2700X.

All of these Ubuntu Linux benchmarks were carried out using the Phoronix Test Suite benchmarking software. Benchmarks compared to the newly-released Fedora 28 and other Linux distributions will be out in the coming days while today is just looking at how the Ubuntu LTS performance has evolved.