While yesterday was the Threadripper 3990X Windows 10 vs. Linux benchmarks, with recently picking up the $450 Lenovo IdeaPad 3 15 with Ryzen 5 5500U, prior to wiping the Windows 10 preload I ran some benchmarks to see how that default Microsoft Windows 10 Home installation compared to a fresh install of Ubuntu 21.04 for maximizing the performance potential of this budget six core / twelve thread laptop.

Earlier this month were benchmarks looking at Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu 21.04 on an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X desktop to which Ubuntu came out roughly 8% faster than the Microsoft OS on average. But what about the difference for HEDT systems? Given the more radical performance difference we have seen in the past with Windows vs. Linux for Threadripper systems, here are some recently conducted benchmarks on that front with the 64-core Threadripper 3990X.

Earlier this month in our initial benchmarking of DragonFlyBSD 6.0 we found DragonFlyBSD 6.0 performing much better than DragonFlyBSD 5.8, but how does that put its performance up against FreeBSD 13.0 and Ubuntu Linux for reference? Here are such benchmarks in our latest benchmarking of DragonFlyBSD 6.0, FreeBSD 13.0 (with both GCC and Clang), and Ubuntu Linux.

Earlier this week when posting Ubuntu 20.04 LTS / 20.10 / 21.04 benchmarks on the new Intel Xeon Platinum 8380 "Ice Lake" server processors, one of the first questions that came up was about how well these new 10nm server CPUs perform with Intel's own Clear Linux distribution. While Clear Linux releases have become much less frequent and far less to communicate these days on new improvements/optimizations among other ongoing shifts with that Intel open-source project, it is still performing very strongly with 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable hardware. CentOS in these tests also had a strong showing with the increasing performance focus on that front.

While there is more to consider when choosing a Linux distribution than just the out-of-the-box performance, for those curious about the performance of recent Ubuntu releases for running with Intel's new 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable "Ice Lake" processors, here are some benchmarks showing how the performance has improved from Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS to Ubuntu 20.10 and now the recent Ubuntu 21.04 Linux release.

This week DragonFlyBSD 6.0 was released and while I have just begun in my benchmarks of this new DragonFlyBSD release, the numbers so far are quite compelling for this BSD compared to its prior release.

Last month when carrying out tests of Windows 10 vs. Linux on the Intel Core i9 11900K "Rocket Lake" processor we were very surprised to see Windows 10 frankly performing so well compared to Ubuntu and picking up more wins than usual. That unexpectedly strong showing for Windows 10 might be due to Intel's P-State behavior with Rocket Lake or other power management tuning or there the lack of on Linux at this time. But it led me to wondering if the latest Windows 10 updates spelled out anything different on the AMD Ryzen side... So here are some benchmarks of the latest Microsoft Windows 10 against Ubuntu 21.04 on the same AMD Ryzen 9 5900X system.

As we have been showing in a few articles already, Ubuntu 21.04 is in good shape performance-wise and generally coming ahead of Ubuntu 20.10 and 20.04 LTS. We've seen that on a number of systems in the lab, but how does this better performance out of Ubuntu 21.04 compare to say Intel's Clear Linux? Here are some benchmarks.

Tomorrow's release of Ubuntu 21.04 is exciting on the desktop for Wayland by default in supported configurations and many other package updates and enhancements. But even for being a non-LTS release if you are interested in running Ubuntu Server there are some performance improvements to enjoy with newer platforms. Here is a look at the AMD EPYC 7003 "Milan" performance across Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, 20.10, and 21.04 with an AMD EPYC 7763 Supermicro server.

For those wondering how the Windows vs. Linux performance compares with Intel's new Rocket Lake processors for both the CPU performance and some initial cross-platform exposure for the Xe Graphics, here are some preliminary benchmarks with the Core i9 11900K.

Following last week's release of the Fedora 34 beta I've begun trying out this latest Fedora Linux build on a variety of test systems. Here are some preliminary figures of Fedora 34 against Fedora 33 stock and updated configurations when running on an AMD Ryzen 5000 series system with Radeon graphics.

With Intel set to announce 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable "Ice Lake" CPUs next week, it's a good time for looking back to see how the Linux performance has evolved since the introduction of 2nd Gen Xeon Scalable "Cascade Lake" processors back in 2019. In this article is a look at the Xeon Platinum 8280 performance back at launch under both Ubuntu and Clear Linux compared to the current state of both distributions on the same hardware. There are also additional tests with those latest Linux images seeing how Ubuntu 21.04 is shaping up against Intel's own performance-optimized Clear Linux.

Given the beta phase of openSUSE Leap 15.3 having started earlier this month, here are some preliminary benchmarks looking at the performance for openSUSE Leap 15.3 with the initial beta snapshot against Leap 15.2 with all stable release updates against the rolling-release openSUSE Tumbleweed.

Given the recent release of Arch Linux based EndeavourOS and a Phoronix Premium supporter recently pointing out SalientOS as another interesting Arch-based Linux distribution, here are benchmarks showing how these easy/quick to deploy Arch based operating systems with sane defaults compare to that of Ubuntu, Fedora Workstation, and Intel's own Clear Linux. This round of February 2021 Linux benchmarking was carried out on an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X desktop stemming from premium member feedback.

Last week when conducting preliminary benchmarks of the new FreeBSD 13 operating system beta we found broad and significant performance improvements on Intel hardware but how is this popular BSD operating system performing for AMD EPYC? Here are some initial performance tests looking at FreeBSD 12.2 stable to FreeBSD 13 beta on an AMD EPYC 7F52 server.

With this spring marking two years already since Intel introduced the 2nd Gen Xeon Scalable "Cascade Lake" processors plus with Ice Lake Xeon processors being on the horizon, here is a look at how the flagship Xeon Platinum 8280 2P performance has evolved atop open-source Linux during that duration. The benchmarks today are looking at the performance of Ubuntu 19.04 for that of roughly the shape the Linux performance/optimizations were at launch and then the performance today if moving to the in-development Ubuntu 21.04 and also shifting to the latest Linux 5.11 kernel and GCC 11 code compiler.

The official release of FreeBSD 13.0 is coming up in March, while already from our preliminary tests of the newly minted FreeBSD 13.0 BETA1, the benchmark results are extremely tantalizing compared to FreeBSD 12.2... Ultimately the performance should be much more competitive now compared to Linux (at least on Intel x86_64) and other operating systems with the big FreeBSD 13 release.

For those wondering how the likes of the XanMod and Liquorix kernel spins are competing these days with the mainline Linux kernel, here are some fresh benchmarks looking at these popular derivatives of the Linux kernel. XanMod in particular atop Ubuntu can easily help squeeze extra performance out of the system as shown by these benchmarks on an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X desktop.

Earlier this week we looked at the performance of Intel's Clear Linux over the past year but how does that compare to the likes of say Fedora and Ubuntu? This article is looking at the performance of Fedora Workstation, Ubuntu, and Clear Linux on the same hardware over the past year.

Here is a look at how the performance of Intel's Clear Linux compares for the end of 2020 against the end of 2019 and 2018 on the same hardware platform for looking at the Intel performance optimizations made to this open-source Linux distribution. This was another year of Intel engineers making more headway on out-of-the-box Linux performance even though they have been less vocal about the project over the past year.

While Intel has Clear Linux as an aggressively optimized Linux distribution catering towards their hardware, there isn't a direct equivalent for optimally showcasing the performance potential of current AMD platforms. Clear Linux often offers leading performance on Zen CPUs but that is obviously not by design but just an artifact of a lot in common between the latest Intel and AMD microarchitecture features. One of the few distributions (or only notable one) offering specific AMD Zen optimized builds has been OpenMandriva. With the OpenMandriva Lx 4.2 release candidate shipping this week, I ran some fresh benchmarks looking at how OpenMandriva Lx 4.2 RC1 compares between its generic x86_64 image and that of the Zen optimized build as well as in turn how that performance compares to Clear Linux and Ubuntu 20.10.

Following the recent AMD Zen 3 tests on Intel's Clear Linux a user expressed curiosity over the Intel-backed Linux distribution on Tiger Lake hardware given I hadn't done a multi-distribution comparison there yet. Using the Dell XPS 9310 as my lone Tiger Lake notebook I ran some benchmarks of Clear Linux, Ubuntu, Manjaro, and Fedora. For a change, Clear Linux wasn't the distant front-runner.

Earlier this month we were a bit surprised to see Windows 10 performing close to Ubuntu 20.10 on the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X. With prior AMD Ryzen (and Intel Core) desktop CPUs we normally are used to seeing Ubuntu Linux exhibit healthy performance advantages over Windows 10 in most workloads. But with Zen 3 the Windows vs. Linux performance is much closer and thus led us to also running Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu benchmarks on the higher-end Ryzen 9 5950X to reproduce the earlier findings.

As we have shown with prior AMD Ryzen and EPYC processors, the Linux distribution generally offering the fastest out-of-the-box performance is Intel's Clear Linux platform. Given there aren't many other distributions as aggressively optimizing their default package set and engaging in features like AutoFDO, PGO, and various out-of-tree patches in the name of modern Intel x86_64 Linux performance -- and in turn, AMD performance benefits as well -- Clear Linux really shines with modern hardware. Testing of the latest Clear Linux with a Ryzen 9 5900X continues to delivering promising performance compared to the likes of Fedora, openSUSE, Manjaro, Debian, and Ubuntu.

Over the past nearly two months we have been running a lot of Linux benchmarks on the AMD Ryzen 5000 series, but what about the BSD operating systems with these Zen 3 desktop CPUs? Recently I got around to trying out a few of the BSDs on a Ryzen 9 5900X desktop as well as running some FreeBSD 12.2 vs. Ubuntu Linux benchmarks, including with Linux on OpenZFS and Clang.

Last week we looked at the Windows vs. Linux performance on the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X where there was some very friendly competition and much closer results than we are used to seeing for modern, high-end x86_64 processors between the two operating systems. As a follow-up to that testing, here are results of Windows 10 October 2020 Update with Windows Subsystem for Linux (both WSL1 and WSL2) compared to the performance in turn off bare metal Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS and Ubuntu 20.10 on the same system.

For those curious how the AMD Zen 3 performance is looking between Windows and Linux, here are the first round of benchmarks with a Ryzen 9 5900X system.

At the end of last week System76 released Pop!_OS 20.10 as their customized distribution built atop Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla. For those curious here are some benchmarks of System76's Pop!_OS 20.10 versus 20.04 using the Thelio Major with AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X and Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics.

Stemming from our initial Intel Core i7 1165G7 "Tiger Lake" benchmarks on the Dell XPS 13 9310 last week and then also discovering better single-threaded performance on Ubuntu 20.10, one of the pressing questions was whether this is expected performance on Linux or if it's coming up short of Microsoft Windows for this first tier-one notebook to market with Intel Tiger Lake. So following those earlier tests I proceeded to do a Windows 10 Pro with all available updates comparison on Ubuntu 20.10 with the i7-1165G7. For added context, the same software stack and tests were repeated on an AMD Ryzen "Renoir" notebook.

As it's been a while since running a fresh Linux distribution comparison with Intel's Clear Linux platform and given all the autumn distribution updates inbound, here is a fresh look at the rolling-release Clear Linux up against a snapshot of Ubuntu 20.10, Fedora Workstation 33 Beta, openSUSE Tumbleweed 20200929, Arch-based Endeavour OS, and Debian Testing from the start of October.