Since the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 at the start of May we've been running various benchmarks of this latest enterprise Linux platform. Our tests to date have been with Intel Xeon hardware where it's been performing well and a nice speed-up over RHEL 7 with modern Xeon Scalable CPUs. Similarly, AMD EPYC is also much faster with RHEL 8.0 thanks to the much newer Linux kernel, compiler, and other software updates.

Continuing on from the initial Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 benchmarks last week, now having had more time with this fresh enterprise Linux distribution, here are additional benchmarks on two Intel Xeon servers when benchmarking RHEL 8.0, RHEL 7.6, Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS, and Clear Linux. RHEL 8.0 is certainly delivering much better out-of-the-box performance than its aging predecessor but how can it compete with Ubuntu LTS and Clear Linux?

Since yesterday's release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 we have been busy firing up benchmarks of RHEL8 on multiple workstations and servers. Over the next week or two will be some interesting benchmark results on multiple systems compared to multiple operating systems while for some preliminary RHEL8 performance data are benchmarks of the new Red Hat Linux distribution from the dual Intel Xeon Platinum 8280 "Cascade Lake" Gigabyte server compared to CentOS 7.6 (RHEL 7.6), Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS, Ubuntu 19.04, Fedora Server 29, Fedora Server 30, openSUSE Leap 15, and Clear Linux 29250.

Yesterday we began with our preliminary performance benchmarks of Fedora 30. From those results Intel Core i9 and AMD Threadripper systems and what we're seeing on other systems in the labs, Fedora 30 indeed is coming out generally slightly faster than Fedora 29 when looking at the performance overall. In some cases the performance is much better thanks to GCC 9 and other upgrades, but overall it's a small, modest performance improvement. While that's better than seeing Fedora 30 running slower than its predecessor, there still is more potential to squeeze out of the system.

As the first of our benchmarks for Fedora 30 that is set to be released on Tuesday, here are some benchmarks comparing Fedora 29, Fedora 29 with current updates, and Fedora 30 on Intel Core i9 7980XE and AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX HEDT platforms. Fedora 30 benchmarks on other systems are coming as well.

Continuing on with our benchmarks this month of the new Intel Xeon Cascade Lake processors in the form of the Xeon Platinum 8280 processors, here are some preliminary figures showing not only how various Linux distributions are comparing to Microsoft Windows Server 2019 but also FreeBSD 12.

Over the past week we've been delivering several benchmarks of the new Intel Xeon Scalable "Cascade Lake" processors under Linux with the Platinum 8280 processors. The Linux support and performance is hitting expectations, but what about on the BSDs? I spent some time this week trying out the dual Intel Xeon Platinum 8280 processors within the Gigabyte S451-3R0 Storage Server. The FreeBSD 12.0 support has been in great shape and in this article are some comparison benchmarks between various Linux distributions and FreeBSD for those curious.

With Ubuntu 19.04 due for release next week, here is a look at how the AMD Radeon Linux gaming performance is looking out-of-the-box on the Ubuntu 19.04 "Disco Dingo" compared to the current Ubuntu 18.10 release.

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.

With now having WebDriver/Seleneium integration in PTS for carrying out browser benchmarks, we've been having fun running a variety of web browser benchmarks in different configurations. The latest is looking at the Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome web browser performance across eight Linux distribution releases (or nine if counting Fedora Workstation on both X.Org and Wayland) for looking at how the web browsing performance compares.

With the Ubuntu 19.04 "Disco Dingo" release less than one month away, we are getting ready for rolling out more tests of this next six-month installment to Ubuntu Linux. For those curious about the direction of Ubuntu 19.04's performance, here are some very preliminary data points using the latest daily state of Ubuntu 19.04 right ahead of the beta period. Tests were done on a high-end Intel Core i9 9900K desktop as well as a Dell XPS Developer Edition notebook when comparing Ubuntu 19.04 to Ubuntu 18.10 and also tossing in Clear Linux as a performance reference point.

While nearly all Linux distributions have been mitigated against the Spectre and Meltdown CPU vulnerabilities for over one year, the performance ahead associated with these speculative execution vulnerabilities can vary. This is especially more so with the enterprise Linux distributions that are generally shipping on older kernel branches prior to where the initial kernel support was mainlined. With recent kernel releases we've also seen varying optimizations and other changes around the Spectre/Meltdown/L1TF mitigations. So for those wondering about the varying impact, here are some side-by-side benchmarks.

With openSUSE Leap 15.1 reaching beta this week I decided to take it for a quick spin of this Linux distribution derived from the same sources as SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP1. Here are some quick benchmarks compared to Leap 15.0 as well as the latest rolling-release openSUSE Tumbleweed.

While I am a big fan of Intel's Clear Linux distribution for its raw performance on x86_64 hardware that for most workloads goes unsurpassed by any other Linux platform out-of-the-box, there has been a lot of Phoronix readers wondering how well it could function as a standard desktop Linux distribution. With upgrading my main production system earlier this month, I decided to try out Clear Linux and now with 200+ hours into using it as the OS on my main production system, I figured it'd be good to share my initial thoughts.

While we frequently compare the performance of many x86_64 Linux distributions, we haven't done one under IBM POWER9 since getting our hands on the Raptor Computing Systems' Talos II back in November. It's been very interesting to benchmark this libre hardware that's high performance with having 44 cores / 176 threads at 3.80GHz. But how much more performance can be tapped by using other Linux distributions? Here's a look with some of the current POWER9 Linux distribution options.

FreeBSD 12.0, Windows Server 2019, and five Linux distributions were tested for comparing the Gigabit and 10GbE networking performance as part of our latest benchmarks. Additionally, the performance was looked at for the Mellanox 10GbE adapter when also using the company's Linux tuning script compared to the out-of-the-box performance on the enterprise Linux distribution releases.

While it was not too long ago that Microsoft Windows Server 2019 began shipping and that we conducted some end-of-year benchmarks between Windows and Linux, with being in the process of running a number of Windows and Linux benchmarks as part of our ongoing 10GbE OS performance testing, I also took the opportunity to run some other benchmarks on Windows Server 2016 and 2019 as well as a set of Linux distributions.

Last week I started running some fresh 10GbE Linux networking performance benchmarks across a few different Linux distributions. That testing has now been extended to cover nine Linux distributions plus FreeBSD 12.0 to compare the out-of-the-box networking performance.

Making the news rounds a few months back was "WLinux", which was the first Linux distribution designed for Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) on Windows 10. But is this pay-to-play Linux distribution any faster than the likes of Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Debian already available from the Microsoft Store? Here are some benchmarks of these different Linux distribution options with WSL.

For those curious how the 10 Gigabit Ethernet performance compares between current Linux distributions, here are some benchmarks we ramp up more 10GbE Linux/BSD/Windows benchmarks. This round of testing was done on two distinctly different servers while testing CentOS, Debian, Clear Linux, and Fedora.

Last month when running FreeBSD 12.0 benchmarks on a 2P EPYC server I wasn't able to run any side-by-side benchmarks with the new DragonFlyBSD 5.4 as this BSD was crashing during the boot process on that board. But fortunately on another AMD EPYC server available, the EPYC 1P TYAN Transport SX TN70A-B8026, DragonFlyBSD 5.4.1 runs fine. So for this first round of BSD benchmarking in 2019 are tests of FreeBSD 11.2, FreeBSD 12.0, DragonFlyBSD 5.4.1, the new TrueOS 18.12, and a few Linux distributions (CentOS 7, Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS, and Clear Linux) on this EPYC 7601 server in a variety of workloads.

Rolled out recently was Bitsum's Coreprio third-party freeware utility designed to offer better Threadripper 2970WX/2990WX performance by its own implementation of AMD Dynamic Local Mode compared to the default Windows scheduler behavior. Here are some benchmarks of Windows 10 against Linux while trying out CorePrio's NUMA Dissociater mode to see how much it helps the performance compared to Ubuntu Linux. Additionally, tests are included of Windows Server 2019 to see if that server edition of Windows is able to offer better performance on this AMD HEDT NUMA platform.

With it quickly approaching two years since the launch of the original AMD Ryzen processors and complementing our other end-of-2018 Linux performance benchmarks, in this article are some fresh benchmarks seeing how the Linux performance at the start of 2017 on the Ryzen 7 1800X compares to the latest Linux performance at the start of 2019.

Last week I posted benchmarks of Windows Server 2019 against various Linux distributions using a Tyan dual socket Intel Xeon server. In this article are some complementary results when adding in the performance of FreeBSD 11.2 against the new FreeBSD 12.0 stable release for this leading BSD operating system. As some fun benchmarks to end out 2018, here are the results of FreeBSD 11.2/12.0 (including an additional run when using GCC rather than Clang) up against Windows Server and several enterprise-ready Linux distributions.

With the Windows Server 2019 vs. Linux benchmarks this week on a dual socket Intel Xeon Scalable server and testing six different Linux distributions and three Windows Server configurations, Intel's open-source Clear Linux was the winner in nearly half of the dozens of benchmarks carried out across these Linux and Windows operating system tests. But the results did yield some areas they could improve upon for better performance and as a result have already landed some more performance optimizations.

A few days back I delivered the first of our Windows Server 2019 benchmarks against Linux (as well as FreeBSD). That initial testing was done with a dual socket AMD EPYC server while in this article the tables have turned with using a dual Intel Xeon Scalable server while benchmarking Microsoft Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2019 with its new Windows Subsystem for Linux, Windows Server 2016, and an assortment of Linux distributions including Fedora Server 29, openSUSE Leap 15, Ubuntu 18.10, CentOS 7.6, Debian 9.6, and Intel's own Clear Linux.

On Christmas Eve marked the long-awaited release of the OpenMandriva Lx 4.0 Alpha and with that new version of the Mandrake/Mandriva-derived operating system came an AMD Zen "Znver1" optimized Linux build. Of course that caught my interest and I was quickly downloading this first Linux distribution with an AMD Ryzen/EPYC optimized binaries to see how it compares to its generic x86_64 operating system installation.

When Microsoft rolled out their Windows 10 October 2018 Update they also released Windows Server 2019. Now over the slower holiday period I am finally getting caught up in benchmarking Windows Server 2019. For this initial benchmark comparison is a look at the Microsoft Windows Server 2019 performance against a handful of Linux distributions as well as FreeBSD 12.0 for seeing how this latest Windows Server performance compares on a dual AMD EPYC 7601 server.

With the end of another year upon us, there has been the start of many year-end benchmark comparisons looking at how various aspects of Linux performance has evolved over 2018. In this comparison though is going back further than that and seeing how five Linux distributions have experienced performance changes over the past nearly three years -- using the CentOS, Clear Linux, Fedora, and openSUSE Linux distribution releases from early 2016 to their latest releases as of right now with their stable updates.

Last month Amazon rolled out their "Graviton" ARM processors in the Elastic Compute Cloud. Those first-generation Graviton ARMv8 processors are based on the ARM Cortex-A72 cores and designed to offer better pricing than traditional x86_64 EC2 instances. However, our initial testing of the Amazon Graviton EC2 "A1" instances didn't reveal significant performance-per-dollar benefits for these new instances. In this second round of Graviton CPU benchmarking we are seeing what is the fastest of five of the leading ARM Linux distributions.