Ubuntu 17.04 Gaming Performance: Budgie vs. GNOME vs. KDE Plasma vs. MATE vs. Unity vs. Xfce

One of the immediate requests that usually comes in with each new Ubuntu release is a comparison of the Linux gaming performance when trying out the different desktop options. From yesterday's Ubuntu 17.04 release, here are Steam Linux gaming tests with Budgie, GNOME Shell, KDE Plasma 5, MATE, Unity 7, and Xfce4 when using an AMD Polaris graphics card on the RadeonSI driver stack.

For those curious about the performance difference of gaming when using the different major Ubuntu desktop options, there are these test results to enjoy this Friday. The results are of more interest this cycle too with Ubuntu's plans of switching from Unity 7 to the GNOME Shell by Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Ubuntu 17.04 was tested out-of-the-box with the Linux 4.10 kernel, X.Org Server 1.19.3, and Mesa 17.0.3.

These Linux gaming tests under the different desktop environments were carried out in a fully-automated manner using the Phoronix Test Suite.