7-Way Linux Desktop Gaming Comparison On Ubuntu 14.10

With Ubuntu 14.10 bringing various updates to the packaged desktop environments along with updated open-source graphics drivers, here's our per-cycle usual tests of the popular Linux desktops while looking at their impact on the Linux gaming performance.

The desktops that were tested and found within the Ubuntu Utopic archive included Xfce 4.10, Unity 7.3.1, GNOME Shell 3.12.2, KDE 4.14.0, LXDE 0.6.2, Cinnamon 2.2.16, and Enlightenment E17. The graphics stack currently packaged for Ubuntu 14.10 is the Linux 3.16 kernel, Mesa 10.2.6, and xf86-video-intel 2.99.914. For this article just Intel Haswell HD Graphics 4400 were used as the platform for this desktop comparison given the popularity and reliability of Intel's open-source Linux GPU driver.

As usual, each of the desktop environments were tested with their out-of-the-box settings as packaged in Ubuntu 14.10. The games tested range from Counter-Strke: Source and Team Fortress 2 to Xonotic and OpenArena. All benchmarks were done by the Phoronix Test Suite with the CompuLab Intense-PC2.