Benchmarks: Mandriva 2010.1, PCLinuxOS 2010, Ubuntu 10.04, openSUSE 11.3

Benchmarks: Mandriva 2010.1, PCLinuxOS 2010, Ubuntu 10.04, openSUSE 11.3

Published on March 16, 2010
Written by Michael Larabel
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Last week we delivered benchmarks of Fedora 13 Alpha and Ubuntu 10.04 (along with testing the Fedora 11 and 12 too), but today we have a new set of comparative benchmarks that are covering the latest development versions of Ubuntu 10.04, Mandriva 2010.1, PCLinuxOS 2010, and openSUSE 11.3. Here they are.

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On the testing block this week was Mandriva 2010.1 Alpha 3, Ubuntu 10.04 post-Alpha 3 development snapshot from 2010-03-11, PCLinuxOS 2010 Beta, and openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 3. The latest development release of Mandriva 2010.1 is packing the Linux 2.6.33-desktop kernel, GNOME 2.29.91, X.Org Server 1.7.5, xf86-video-radeon 6.12.191, Mesa 7.7, GCC 4.4.3, and an EXT4 file-system. Ubuntu 10.04 is carrying the Linux 2.6.32 kernel, GNOME 2.29.92, X Server 1.7.5, xf86-video-radeon 6.12.191, Mesa 7.7, GCC 4.4.3, and an EXT4 file-system. PCLinuxOS meanwhile is based off the Linux 2.6.32 kernel with the Brain Fuck Scheduler (BFS) and other patches, KDE 4.4.1, X Server 1.6.5, xf86-video-radeon 6.12.4, Mesa 7.5.2, GCC 4.4.1, and an EXT4 file-system. Lastly, Novell's openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 3 is built with the Linux 2.6.33 kernel, KDE 4.4.0, X Server 1.7.5, xf86-video-radeon 6.12.4, Mesa 7.7, a snapshot of GCC 4.5, and an EXT4 file-system.

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As PCLinuxOS is only available in a 32-bit version, we had used the 32-bit version of all Linux distributions tested in this article. This also led us to using an older system, which was a Lenovo ThinkPad T60. The ThinkPad T60 has an Intel Core T2400 processor clocked at 1.83GHz, 1GB of system memory, an 80GB Hitachi HTS541080G9SA00 SATA HDD, and an ATI Radeon Mobility X1400 graphics processor.

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The tests we ran across these four popular Linux distributions were OpenArena, Tremulous, Urban Terror, LAME MP3 encoding, GnuPG, OpenSSL, John The Ripper, x264, PostgreSQL, C-Ray, Dbench, and dcraw. Tests were managed by the Phoronix Test Suite.

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Right from the start this four-way Linux distribution testing began producing interesting results. Mandriva 2010.1 Alpha 3 and PCLinuxOS 2010 Beta were vastly outperforming Ubuntu 10.04 and openSUSE 11.3 with the OpenArena graphics testing from the R500-based Mobility Radeon X1400. This is actually rather interesting as Mandriva is running with the Linux 2.6.33 kernel and Mesa 7.7 while PCLinuxOS is based upon the Linux 2.6.32 kernel (but with some patches like for the BFS scheduler) though it's using the older Mesa 7.5 code-base. Ubuntu and openSUSE are both using Mesa 7.7 and on the Canonical-based OS using the Linux 2.6.32 kernel while Novell's product is riding with the 2.6.33 kernel. PCLinuxOS is based off Mandriva Linux so there may be patches or other work carried by Mandriva that is responsible for this large performance delta.

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This odd performance disparity continued with the Tremulous test on the ThinkPad notebook with ATI R500 graphics where Mandriva and PCLinuxOS produced more than 80% frames per second than Ubuntu and openSUSE. These results were consistently produced.

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The last OpenGL benchmark in this Linux comparison was Urban Terror and again the results are interesting, but different from the OpenArena and Tremulous numbers. Mandriva 2010.1 Alpha 3 was again well ahead of its desktop Linux competition, but this time Ubuntu 10.04 came in second (about 15% behind Mandriva) while PCLinuxOS was nearly 40% slower than Mandriva. openSUSE was the slowest running with an average of just 7 frames per second compared to Mandriva's 20 frames per second.

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While openSUSE 11.3 was struggling in the OpenGL benchmarks that are stressing the open-source Mesa/DRM stack, this Novell-sponsored Linux distribution was the fastest when it came to LAME MP3 encoding. Mandriva, Ubuntu, and PCLinuxOS were all about 10% slower than openSUSE. The reason for this may be that openSUSE 11.3 is set to ship with the newer GCC 4.5 compiler while the other distributions are using the stable GCC 4.4.x series.

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PCLinuxOS took the gold when it came to encrypting a 1GB sample file using GnuPG. Mandriva, Ubuntu, and openSUSE each took 40 seconds to encrypt the file, but PCLinuxOS managed to come in at 34 seconds, potentially due to its use of BFS and other optimizations. To reiterate, all four Linux distributions use the EXT4 file-system by default.

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Mandriva lagged behind the competition a bit, but for the most part the OpenSSL RSA 4096-bit signing performance was the same across the testing spectrum.

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Mandriva Linux 2010.1 Alpha 3 really took a dive when it came to running the Traditional DES test with John The Ripper. In fact, Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, and openSUSE were all more than twice as fast as Mandriva.

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Mandriva would not successfully run with x264 or PostgreSQL, but when it came to the x264 performance the numbers were flat across the board.

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The PostgreSQL performance was also flat between Ubuntu 10.04, PCLinux 2010, and openSUSE 11.3.

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C-Ray was fired up as a ray-tracing benchmark and here Mandriva 2010.1 Alpha 3 was taking significantly longer to run than the rest of the competition. openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 3 produced the best result for C-Ray.

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Between Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, and openSUSE, the PCLinuxOS operating system was the fastest with the Dbench disk test.

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Ending out today's Linux testing was dcraw where PCLinuxOS again did the best followed by openSUSE and then Ubuntu. Results for Mandriva were not available.

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This early development comparison of Ubuntu 10.04, Mandriva 2010.1, PCLinuxOS 2010, and openSUSE 11.3 produced some of the most interesting results as of late in terms of comparing different Linux desktop distributions. When looking solely at the number of wins for the 12 tests, PCLinuxOS 2010 Beta ended up taking the gold in six of the tests while Mandriva, Ubuntu, and openSUSE each took two. In some tests it was fierce competition between the radically different distributions. Intriguing us the most though were the OpenGL tests where Mandriva and the Mandriva-based PCLinuxOS are sharply outperforming Ubuntu and openSUSE at least with a Mobility Radeon X1400 and its open-source R500 driver stack. In other tests, Mandriva had struggled a great deal while PCLinuxOS leveraging the BFS scheduler and other optimizations appears to be of measurable benefit.

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