Ubuntu 14.04 LTS vs. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Benchmarks

Last week when Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Beta 1 was released I was already running RHEL7 benchmarks looking at the performance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 over RHEL 6.5. In this article for some extra benchmarks to put out over the weekend is a quick comparison of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS in its current development state against Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Beta 1.

Comparing RHEL7 Beta 1 and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, RHEL7 is using a hardened (with back-ports) version of the Linux 3.10 kernel while Ubuntu 14.04 LTS is currently on the Linux 3.12 kernel but is likely moving to the Linux 3.13 kernel before its April release (thus for today's benchmarks the 3.13 Git kernel was used). Both Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and RHEL7 are using the GCC 4.8.2 compiler. Other differences include RHEL7 being on Mesa 9.2 where as Ubuntu 14.04 LTS already received Mesa 10.0. RHEL7 is also using a classic GNOME Shell desktop environment where as Ubuntu is on its own Unity interface with Compiz.

For this second round of testing of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Beta 1, an Intel Core i7 4960X "Ivy Bridge" Extreme Edition system with MSI X79MA-GD45 motherboard, 8GB of RAM, and Radeon HD 4870 graphics was used for testing. The "out of the box" configuration on both Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Beta 1 and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS were used, aside from upgrading Ubuntu to the Linux 3.13 kernel since that's what it will likely be shipping with at release time.

All benchmarking on Ubuntu Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux can be done in a fully automated and reproducible way using the fully open-source Phoronix Test Suite software.