Written by Michael Larabel in Operating Systems on 15 October 2018.

As the latest of our benchmarks using the newly re-released Microsoft Windows 10 October 2018 Update, here are benchmarks of this latest Windows 10 build against seven different Linux distributions on the same hardware for checking out the current performance of these operating systems.

For this latest Linux OS benchmarking comparison against Windows, the following platforms were tested:

- The Windows 10 April 2018 release as the previous major milestone of Windows 10.

- The newest Windows 10 October 2018 build as the latest Windows 10 build from Microsoft.

- OpenSUSE Tumbleweed as the openSUSE rolling-release distribution that as of testing was on the Linux 4.18.12 kernel, KDE Plasma 5.14, Mesa 18.1.7, and GCC 8.2.1 atop an XFS home file-system with Btrfs root file-system (the default partitioning scheme).

- Ubuntu 18.10 in its near-final form with the Linux 4.18 kernel, GNOME Shell 3.30.1, X.Org Server 1.20.1, Mesa 18.2.1, GCC 8.2.0, and an EXT4 file-system.

- Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS as the current long-term supported flavor of Ubuntu with the Linux 4.15 kernel, GNOME Shell 3.28.2 on X.Org Server 1.19.6, Mesa 18.0.5, GCC 7.3.0, and an EXT4 file-system.

- The Manjaro 18.0 release candidate for this Arch-based distribution. The Manjaro 18.0 stack was providing the Linux 4.14 LTS kernel, Xfce 4.12, X.Org Server 1.20.1, Mesa 18.2.2, GCC 8.2.1, and an EXT4 file-system.

- The near-final Fedora 29 release with the Linux 4.18 kernel, GNOME Shell 3.03.1 with Wayland, Mesa 18.2.2, GCC 8.2.1, and an EXT4 file-system.

- The current stable Debian 9.5 release with the Linux 4.9 kernel, GNOME Shell 3.22.3 with X.Org Server 1.19.2, Mesa 13.0.6, GCC 6.3.0, and an EXT4 file-system.

- Clear Linux 25550 as Intel's rolling-release distribution that is currently shipping with the Linux 4.18 kernel, GNOME Shell 3.30.1 on X.Org Server 1.20.1, GCC 8.2.1, and an EXT4 file-system.

Across the seven tested Linux distributions and two Windows 10 builds, the same system was used for testing. This system consisted of the Intel Core i7 8086K processor, MSI Z370-A motherboard, 16GB DDR4-3000 memory, 120GB Intel 760p NVMe SSD, and an AMD Radeon RX 580 graphics card.

Via the Phoronix Test Suite a range of benchmarks were run. This is quite an exciting time for operating system releases given the new Windows 10 build and the Fedora 29, Manjaro 18.0, and Ubuntu 18.10 releases coming up shortly, among other Linux distributions working on their Q4-2018 updates.