7-Way Linux Distribution Comparison For Summer 2016

Given the recent releases of Fedora 24, Solus 1.2, and other GNU/Linux distribution updates, here is our latest performance testing roundabout of seven popular OS releases on the same Core i5 Skylake system.

Being tested for the article today included Fedora 24, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Clear Linux 8900, Debian Testing, Solus 1.2, Scientific Linux 7.2, and Antergos 16.6-Rolling. This should provide an interesting assortment of Linux operating systems being tested for this article. Testing OpenSUSE Tumbleweed was also attempted, but the latest build was leading to just kernel panics when attempting to boot the installed system.

All seven of the Linux distributions tested were freshly installed this week. All tests happened with an Intel Core i5-6600K running at stock speeds (3.5GHz base, 3.9GHz turbo), MSI Z170A GAMING PRO motherboard, 16GB DDR4-2133MHz memory, and 256GB Transcend SSD.

All of these Linux distribution benchmarks on Fedora, Ubuntu, Clear Linux, Debian, Solus, Scientific Linux, and Antergos were carried out in a fully-automated and reproducible manner using the open-source Phoronix Test Suite benchmarking software.