Fedora, Debian, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OpenSolaris Benchmarks

Fedora, Debian, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OpenSolaris Benchmarks

Published on January 25, 2010
Written by Michael Larabel
Page 1 of 8
Discuss This Article

Last week we published the first Debian GNU/kFreeBSD benchmarks that compared the 32-bit and 64-bit performance of this Debian port -- that straps the FreeBSD kernel underneath a Debian GNU user-land -- to Debian GNU/Linux. We have now extended that comparison to put many other operating systems in a direct performance comparison to these Debian GNU/Linux and Debian GNU/kFreeBSD snapshots of 6.0 Squeeze to Fedora 12, FreeBSD 7.2, FreeBSD 8.0, OpenBSD 4.6, and OpenSolaris 2009.06.

With Debian GNU/kFreeBSD using the FreeBSD 7.2 kernel, we threw the full FreeBSD 7.2 operating system into the comparison mix. FreeBSD 8.0 was added in since that is the latest FreeBSD stable release at this time. OpenBSD 4.6 was used as another *BSD comparison while OpenSolaris 2009.06 was used to represent some Sun Solaris numbers. Fedora 12 provides a look at some of the latest Linux packages available more so than the Debian snapshot from 2010-01-14. The 64-bit versions of all operating systems were used during this testing process.

The test system was maintained the same as our earlier Debian GNU/kFreeBSD testing, which was a Lenovo ThinkPad T61 notebook with an Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 processor, 4GB of system memory, a 100GB Hitachi HTS72201 SATA HDD, and a NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M. All operating systems were left in their stock configurations as much as possible, but GNOME was installed (through each operating system's package management system) and running to provide some commonality. These tests are meant to look at the "out of the box" performance for each operating system.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

Fedora 12 was running with the Linux 2.6.31 kernel, GNOME 2.28.1, X Server 1.7.1, GCC 4.4.2, and an EXT4 file-system. Debian GNU/Linux had the Linux 2.6.30 kernel, GNOME 2.28.2, X Server 1.6.5, GCC 4.3.4, and an EXT3 file-system. Debian GNU/kFreeBSD had the FreeBSD 7.2 kernel, GNOME 2.28.2, X Server 1.6.5, GCC 4.3.4, and an UFS file-system. FreeBSD 7.2 uses the FreeBSD 7.2 kernel, GNOME 2.26.0, X Server 1.6.0, GCC 4.2.1, and an UFS file-system. FreeBSD 8.0 has the 8.0 kernel, GNOME 2.26.3, X Server 1.6.1, GCC 4.2.1, and an UFS file-system. OpenBSD 4.6 runs with its 4.6 kernel, GNOME 2.24.3, X Server 1.5.3, GCC 4.2.4, and the FFS file-system. Finally, OpenSolaris 2009.06 is based upon Solaris Nevada 111b with the 5.11 kernel, GNOME 2.24.2, X Server 1.5.3, GCC 4.3.2, and a ZFS file-system.

A subset of the tests we published last week in our Debian GNU/kFreeBSD vs. Debian GNU/Linux benchmarking was used as all of those tests were not compatible with the other *BSD and OpenSolaris operating systems. The tests we wound up running were 7-Zip, Gzip, LZMA, GnuPG, Gcrypt, POV-Ray, C-Ray, John The Ripper, dcraw, Himeno, Threaded I/O Tester, PostMark, Sudokut, MAFFT, and Bullet Physics Engine. As always, all of this testing was managed and carried out through the Phoronix Test Suite.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

Beginning with the compression tests we first ran into 7-Zip. The fastest operating system in this test was FreeBSD 8.0 followed by FreeBSD 7.2 and then the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD build. The FreeBSD kernel just did really well with the 7-Zip compression test. Coming behind the FreeBSD operating systems but ahead of the Fedora and Debian GNU/Linux competition was OpenSolaris 2009.06. The performance between Fedora and Debian GNU/Linux was close, but falling in a distant last was OpenBSD 4.6. FreeBSD 8.0 was 70% faster than OpenBSD 4.6.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

Debian GNU/Linux pulled in front of the FreeBSD operating systems with Gzip compression, but OpenBSD remained the slowest. Debian GNU/Linux, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, Fedora 12, and OpenSolaris 2009.06 all ran close to one another, but the pure *BSD operating systems had lagged behind.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

OpenBSD 4.6 had not worked with our LZMA compression test, but between the six other operating systems, FreeBSD 8.0 was the fastest while OpenSolaris 2009.06 was the slowest.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

OpenBSD 4.6 was again left out with GnuPG, but with this file encryption benchmark Sun's OpenSolaris 2009.06 shined and was faster.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

The Gcrypt library benchmark with the CAMELLIA256-ECB cipher was rather interesting. The Linux and OpenSolaris results are actually there, but the FreeBSD and OpenBSD results are enormously slower. The best performance was with Debian GNU/kFreeBSD with a time of 2796ms for this cipher test while Fedora 12 was in second with a time of 3487ms followed closely by OpenSolaris 2009.06 at 3750ms and then Debian GNU/Linux at 4410ms. While the FreeBSD kernel within a GNU user-land and glibc was the fastest, something within the FreeBSD and OpenBSD operating system is causing Gcrypt to run at a snail's pace, which is worth further investigation.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

Fedora 12 came out in front while Debian GNU/kFreeBSD took a last place finish with Debian GNU/Linux coming in second to the last.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

OpenSolaris really had issues in competing with the Linux and *BSD operating systems with C-Ray, where it was multiple times slower than FreeBSD 8.0, the winner of this test. OpenBSD lagged behind FreeBSD and the Linux operating systems that all performed close to each other except for Fedora 12 struggling a bit.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

Debian GNU/Linux scored a win with its traditional DES performance in John The Ripper, OpenSolaris 2009.06 lost.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

Debian GNU/Linux continued its lead with John The Ripper's MD5 performance.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

Debian GNU/Linux won once again with John The Ripper.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

Fedora 12 and Debian GNU/Linux were much faster than the *BSD and OpenSolaris operating systems with the dcraw test of converting RAW image files to PPM.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

Debian GNU/Linux returned to first place with the Himeno Poisson Pressure Solver. FreeBSD 7.2 and OpenSolaris 2009.06 struggled.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

Fedora 12 with its EXT4 file-system beat the other operating systems running EXT3, UFS, FFS, and ZFS, but OpenBSD 4.6 did run quite close to Fedora with its four threads of 64MB writes.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

Fedora 12 continued its disk performance lead when upping the thread count to 32, but Debian GNU/Linux and OpenSolaris ran closer to this Red Hat Linux distribution.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

Switching from sequential writes to random writes, OpenSolaris 2009.06 with ZFS came out the fastest but Debian GNU/Linux and Fedora were less than 1MB slower. FFS on OpenBSD 4.6 was slammed hard on this test while the UFS-based FreeBSD competition was more about three times faster.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

Fedora 12 shined with PostMark as well, where it was more than three times faster than the second-place OS, Debian GNU/Linux, followed closely by OpenSolaris. The *BSDs really struggle with PostMark where OpenBSD 4.6 ended up running at only 49 transactions per second and FreeBSD 7.2/8.0 both were about 56 TPS.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

For Sudokut, the Sudoku solving benchmark, Debian GNU/Linux was the fastest followed immediately by Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, OpenSolaris, FreeBSD 8.0, and then Fedora 12. Results for FreeBSD 7.2 and OpenBSD 4.6 were not available.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

MAFFT had not run with OpenBSD and OpenSolaris, but the competition was fierce in this computational biology benchmark between Fedora 12 and the two Debian distributions.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

Linux shined over FreeBSD with the "3000 Fall" test in the Bullet Physics Engine.

<!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->

Linux continued to beat FreeBSD in Bullet with the Convex Trimesh test.

There is a lot to gather from these benchmark results that directly compare the "out of the box" performance on Fedora, Debian GNU/Linux, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and OpenSolaris. If looking solely at the number of first place wins for each operating system, Fedora 12 and Debian GNU/Linux (2010-01-14) were tied with each having seven wins. Behind the Linux distributions, OpenSolaris 2009.06 and FreeBSD 8.0 were tied with each having two wins. Debian GNU/kFreeBSD and FreeBSD 7.2 each had one win. OpenBSD 4.6 had not won in any of our 20 operating system benchmarks. However, in this article we are just looking at some areas of the 64-bit OS performance and depending upon the system's configuration, tweaking, compiler changes, and other optimizations these results could certainly shake out quite differently. There are also features in some operating systems that make them more favorable than others depending upon your individual needs.

Discuss this article in our forums or IRC channel or email the author. You can also follow our content on social networks like Facebook, Identi.ca, and Twitter. Subscribe to Phoronix Premium to view our content without advertisements, view entire articles on a single page, and other benefits.