With less than one month out from the official release of Microsoft Windows 11, I was curious to run some fresh benchmarks of the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview build against Windows 10 21H1 to see how the performance is looking. Of course, also to see how Windows 11 is shaping up against Ubuntu 21.10 also due for release in October.

While there is still two months to go until the Ubuntu 21.10 "Impish Indri" release, since the feature freeze has now begun I've started some early testing of this next Ubuntu release. So far things are looking good as a nice upgrade over Ubuntu 21.04 and prior. Here is the first round of Ubuntu 21.04 vs. 21.10 development tests using an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X with Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics.

This past weekend marked the release of Debian 11 "Bullseye" as the newest version of this major Linux distribution that is also the basis for many others. Given the popularity of Debian stable on servers, our first round of Debian 11.0 benchmarking is looking at the performance relative to Debian 10.10 on latest-generation Intel Xeon "Ice Lake" and AMD EPYC "Milan" hardware.

Last month after Microsoft began publishing their Windows Insider Preview builds of Windows 11, I ran some early Windows 11 benchmarks against Linux using an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X. Linux led in those benchmarks on the AMD Zen 3 desktop while for those wondering if that still holds true for Intel hardware, here are benchmarks of a Core i9 11900K "Rocket Lake" desktop with Windows 10 21H1, Windows 11 in its latest preview build as of testing, and then compared to Arch Linux / Clear Linux / Ubuntu.

Following last month's look at the ASUS ROG Strix G15 AMD Advantage laptop with Ryzen 9 5900HX processor and some of the initial hurdles seen on Ubuntu, readers were curious about how well other Linux distributions fared compatibility wise or if offering better performance elsewhere. Here are some tests across Arch Linux, Clear Linux, Fedora Workstation, and Ubuntu 21.04 for reference.

While the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX performance is great on Linux once overcoming any laptop support quirks like with the ASUS ROG Strix G15 "AMD Advantage" laptop running into keyboard and WiFi issues on Linux depending upon the kernel version, how does the performance compare to Microsoft Windows 10? Here are some benchmarks of that ROG Strix G15 AMD laptop under Windows 10 as shipped by ASUS against Ubuntu 21.04 when upgraded to the Linux 5.13 stable kernel.

This past week were the initial Linux benchmarks of the Ryzen 9 5900HX with the ASUS ROG Strix G15 laptop. Ubuntu was used as the default test platform as usual given its popularity and arguably the most relevant Linux distribution to use given that it's the most common Linux distribution at the moment for preloads on laptops by multiple vendors. In any case, as usual many users were quick to say "but Arch Linux!" as if it was going to make a dramatic difference in my findings. Well, here are some Ubuntu 21.04 versus Arch Linux benchmarks on that AMD Advantage laptop.

With the recent release of System76's Pop!_OS 21.04 if you are thinking about upgrading to this release from Pop!_OS 20.04 LTS or choosing between the two, here are some benchmarks from the AMD Ryzen Threadripper powered System76 Thelio Major.

With having hands on with a Dell XPS 13 9310 (Dell 0DXP1F) with the Core i7 1185G7 Tiger Lake processor (compared to prior Linux tests with the i7-1165G7), here is a fresh look at the performance of Microsoft Windows 10 Pro as shipped by Dell with all available stable updates versus a clean install of Ubuntu 21.04 Linux.

For those making use of Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) for enjoying Linux application support within Windows, here are some early benchmarks of the inaugural Windows Insider Preview build of Windows 11 with WSL2 against Windows 10 and then Ubuntu Linux bare metal on the same hardware.

With Microsoft making public this week their early Windows Insider Preview builds of Windows 11, curiosity got the best of me to give it a whirl in looking at the performance of the early Windows 11 preview build compared to Ubuntu Linux.

After looking recently at the FreeBSD 13.0 and DragonFlyBSD 6.0 performance on AMD EPYC 7003 "Milan" using a Tyan Transport CX GC68-B8036-LE server, the next round of benchmarking from this server with AMD EPYC 7543 32-core processor was looking at its support (all tested 2021 Linux distributions were running fine on this latest-generation AMD server) and performance across 11 current Linux distribution releases from Arch, CentOS, Clear Linux, Debian, Fedora, Rocky Linux, Ubuntu, and openSUSE.

For those wondering how well the likes of FreeBSD 13.0 and DragonFlyBSD 6.0 performance on AMD's EPYC 7003 "Milan" processors launched earlier this year, here are some initial benchmarks of those BSDs alongside a few Linux distributions. With recently having a Tyan 1U server in the lab with EPYC 7543 32-core processor, I've been running a number of BSD benchmarks on it given these recent BSD releases have been running well on this 1P server.

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.