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Clear Linux Beats CentOS, openSUSE, and Ubuntu in (Enterprise) Benchmark Tests (phoronix.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Recently completed Linux distro benchmarks by Phoronix show Intel's Clear Linux is the most powerful on x86 hardware. A six-way, enterprise-focused Linux distro comparison show Clear Linux being the fastest with a Core i9 and Xeon systems, easily beating CentOS, openSUSE, and Ubuntu in a majority of the tests.

When doing an 11-way Linux distro boot test they also found Clear Linux easily booted the fastest followed by the Clear-inspired Solus distribution. Clear Linux does work on AMD hardware and works on Intel CPUs back to Sandy Bridge but leverages its speed from optimized compiler settings, specially built libraries capable of AVX instructions on supported systems, a specially tuned kernel configuration, and other optimizations/patches.

Debian 9.2 and Fedora 27 "ended up being dropped from this article due to data overload," the article concludes, "and those distributions really not offering anything really different in terms of the performance."

10 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. I'm so glad I stayed up for this by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Linux distro produced by Intel, tuned by Intel for latest Intel hardware, works fastest of any distro on latest Intel hardware. Shocking!

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  2. This is not surprising by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A hardware company that optimises software to run on its chipsets. No voodoo here. Whilst I dislike Intel for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the recent Minix debacle, this is nothing to ponder over.

    I'll stick with FreeBSD and Red Hat/CentOS.

  3. Boots faster ... by drnb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Boots faster ... ok, how often do we reboot linux ? :-)

    1. Re:Boots faster ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Every time systemd crashes.

    2. Re:Boots faster ... by Cyberax · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Every time I start a new VM on Amazon EC2. Since you're paying by a second now, boot time matters if you're launching hundreds of instances.

    3. Re:Boots faster ... by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But SystemD probably saved you a good 3 minutes over the past 3 years!

      He's given that three minutes back - and more - if he's ever needed to check the binary logs SystemD generates.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    4. Re:Boots faster ... by shaitand · · Score: 4, Informative

      My problem with systemd is that the only itch it legitimately scratched was parallel startup and we've had that option with alternatives that more or less just replace init since the early 00's. Nothing about that problem required a massive overreaching full binary system that is completely counter both to the concept of Unix (small utilities with narrow and well defined specific functions) and Linux (every aspect of the system is text and can be treated as text). As far as I can tell a handful of people in love with Unix(TM) OS who had sour grapes about the fact that their preferred systems are far less popular used this itch as an excuse to shove their crappy one-size-fits-all binary crap down the throats of Linux users just so they can feel more at home.

  4. Compare it against Gentoo by knorthern+knight · · Score: 4, Interesting

    > but leverages its speed from optimized compiler settings, specially
    > built libraries capable of AVX instructions on supported systems,
    > a specially tuned kernel configuration, and other optimizations/patches.

    I see your "Clear Linux" and raise you Gentoo with

    CFLAGS="-O2 -march=native -mfpmath=sse -fopenmp -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe -fno-unwind-tables -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables"
    CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}

    and also appropriate CPU_FLAGS_X86 for the CPU, as well as the same kernel tuning used for Clear Linux. I dare Phoronix to try that. It should be a much closer horse race.

    --

    I'm not repeating myself
    I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
  5. Re:Why? by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Who give a toss about the speed?

    What we need is a Linux distro that values stability and does not keep pissing around with UIs (and APIs) with no warning.

    Ok, I will go back to my BSD cave right now!

    --
    Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
  6. So it boots real fast... by whitroth · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Who, other than someone running it on a laptop, gives a flying fart how fast it boots?

    I've got an older (580 G5) that takes SEVENTY SECONDS before the POST logo appears. I've got HBS (honkin' big servers) that take minutes before it gets to the grub boot. And the servers, we're working on a once-a-month maintenance window, to reboot to new kernels, etc.

    Show me how it outperforms other distros running, say, a very large R job, or modeling protein folding. Then I'll be interested....