The Current Windows 10 vs. Linux Browser Performance For Google Chrome + Mozilla Firefox
Last week were tests looking at the Firefox/Chrome web browser performance on eight Linux distributions but how does the situation look if adding Microsoft Windows 10 to the equation? Well, this article addresses that question as we looking at how well Chrome and Firefox compare Windows 10 vs. Linux on the same system and using the latest releases of these web browsers.
Normally in our Windows vs. Linux benchmarks we are used to seeing the open-source operating systems smack the Microsoft operating systems heavily, but when it comes to web browser performance, the tables have turned. Mozilla and Google are obviously much more focused on Windows given the larger market-share while time and time again we've seen both browser vendors stave off Linux features around GPU/video acceleration on the basis of driver woes and other issues that have hindered better Linux browsing support. But today's article is the first time in a while looking closely at the Chrome and Firefox performance between Windows 10 Pro x64 and various Linux x86_64 distributions in a variety of popular browser benchmarks.
The same system was used for testing throughout (obviously) and included the Intel Core i9 9900K, ASUS PRIME Z390-A, 2 x 8GB DDR4-3000 memory, Samsung 970 EVO 250GB NVMe SSD, and Radeon RX Vega 56 graphics... As always, the same hardware was used though in the system table any reported differences just come down to how the information is exposed by the operating system. The Linux tests done were the same as last week's article with Clear Linux, Debian Buster, Fedora Workstation 29 (both under Wayland and X.Org), Manjaro Linux, Ubuntu 18.04.2, Ubuntu 18.10, Ubuntu 19.04 daily, openSUSE Tumbleweed, and then the latest Windows 10 Pro state with all available updates. Each browser was tested out-of-the-box / default settings without any extra browser plug-ins.
Firefox 66 was in use on all tested operating systems except for Debian Buster still trailing with Debian 60.5.1 and openSUSE Tumbleweed still having been on Firefox 65. On the Chrome front, every operating system testes was with Chrome 73.0. Browser benchmarks ran via the Phoronix Test Suite included ARES-6, Octane, WebXPRT, Basemark, Jetstream, CanvasMark, MotionMark, and Speedometer.