Clear Linux Squeezed Out More Open-Source Performance In 2020

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Clear Linux Squeezed Out More Open-Source Performance In 2020

Here is a look at how the performance of Intel's Clear Linux compares for the end of 2020 against the end of 2019 and 2018 on the same hardware platform for looking at the Intel performance optimizations made to this open-source Linux distribution. This was another year of Intel engineers making more headway on out-of-the-box Linux performance even though they have been less vocal about the project over the past year.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=29845

[Azrael5]

Is clear linux a dead project?

[f0rmat]

It is really impressive what Intel has been doing...those benchmarks certainly bear that out. Too bad AMD is not doing the same thing. It would be great to see how an Intel based optimized linux runs on Intel system compared against an AMD based optimized linux running on a comparable AMD system. I do not expect it, but it would be a fascinating series of benchmarks - especially if the AMD optimizations included optimizations for AMD graphics (both integrated and discrete).

And then one could compare Intel processors on an AMD optimized linux versus a comparable AMD processor on Intel optimized linux. Michael has already shown that AMD does very well on Clear Linux. It would be very interesting to see how Intel processors would perform on an AMD optimized linux.

And even better, if there were desktop/workstation versions of both, not just server versions.

Oh, well....one can hope.

[vladpetric]

I use Clear Linux and absolutely love it. But perhaps the biggest deal for me is being always and automatically up-to-date. Clear linux gets updated in lockstep, to the latest version. Does this approach have downsides? Sure. But for me this is fantastic.

[ms178]

I've tried it more than once, but the usability problems as desktop distro drove me away quickly. Here is my list: missing codecs and Chromium+VAAPI, Steam problems, no Mesa-git repo, hard to compile a custom Kernel from source as a package and GNOME-centric (although the performance improvements during the last two years made it somewhat tolerable); the bundles are still very big and their download speed was abysmal slow. No, thank you. They would need to put more effort into tackling these issues before giving them another chance, other distros have shown how to tackle these (e.g. they could look at AUR / user repos and improve on that idea).

[N0va]

I've tried it more than once, but the usability problems as desktop distro drove me away quickly. Here is my list: missing codecs and Chromium+VAAPI, Steam problems, no Mesa-git repo, hard to compile a custom Kernel from source as a package and GNOME-centric (although the performance improvements during the last two years made it somewhat tolerable); the bundles are still very big and their download speed was abysmal slow. No, thank you. They would need to put more effort into tackling these issues before giving them another chance, other distros have shown how to tackle these (e.g. they could look at AUR / user repos and improve on that idea).

Yeah, my problem with clear linux is just the lack of packages that are available to use too. ffmpeg for video playback was an odd one not to have in the repos. While I get intel wants Mesa to be the one-stop shop, the nvidia proprietary drivers are still sorely missed. It can use flatpak, so most popular gui applications are fine. There are a few user repos which help bridge the gap, but I still feel it has a bit to go before it becomes the obvious choice for anyone looking for x86_64 performance.

[sn99]

Clear for now does not consider Amd based system to be desktop and uses server configuration on them. I have to run

sudo clr_power -d --desktop

at every startup, I have submitted a pull request though.

Also the kernel is build using 'march=westmere and mtune=haswell' it will be nice to see a alternative for Amd with 'znver' flag. Also '/usr/share/defaults/etc/profile' only uses '-mtune=skylake' and it cannot be changed (will repair itself because of hash mismatch).

What I don't like is that they promise not to break other hardware which are not Intel and it is nice but at same time they do not seem to care about it either.

Is clear linux a died project?

Difficult to say, the developers are no longer as active as they were 1-2 months ago but they might just be holiday hungover. Only the next 2-3 months will tell.

[tildearrow]

Typo:

For some test cases it's due to GCC 10 bringing optimizatiosn

[indepe]

Comparing 26.16 to 23.99 seems to be a 9.2% improvement (not 2.5%).

[Michael]

Comparing 26.16 to 23.99 seems to be a 9.2% improvement (not 2.5%).

That's for 2 year comparison, this comment in regards to 2020 progress.