COMSS.ru reports that Fedora Workstation 45 had the highest geometric-mean score in Phoronix’s Linux benchmark on an AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D2, while CachyOS won about 40% of the 136 individual tests. The aggregate leader and the distribution with the most individual wins are different measures of the same test suite.
Phoronix published the comparison on October 28, 2026. It tested CPU and system workloads on one desktop; the graphics tests were omitted.
In this article
- What the aggregate scores say
- The test system and workload variation
- Why the comparison has no graphics result
What the aggregate scores say
A geometric mean combines results across a set of tests into one aggregate score. COMSS.ru reports these scores, while Phoronix reports the kernel and default GCC versions used in each installation:
| Distribution | Reported geometric-mean score | Linux kernel | Default GCC |
| Fedora Workstation 45 | 225.27 | 7.2 | 16.2 |
| Ubuntu 26.10 | 214.22 | 7.3 | 15 |
| CachyOS | 206.60 | 7.3 | 16.2 |
The aggregate summarizes results across workloads; the test-win count tallies first-place finishes. COMSS.ru reports that CachyOS led about 40% of the 136 tests even though Fedora Workstation 45 ranked first on the geometric mean.
The test system and workload variation
Phoronix ran the distributions on an AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D2 desktop with an ASRock X870E Taichi motherboard, 2 × 16 GB of DDR5-6000 memory and a WD_BLACK SN8100 NVMe SSD. All three installations used Mesa 26.2. Fedora Workstation 45 was a pre-release build in this comparison.
The reported workload leaders varied. COMSS.ru says CachyOS led several compilation tests, Ubuntu 26.10 led most of the listed Python scenarios, and Fedora led some rendering and image-processing tests. Blender results were close, with Fedora and CachyOS leading in different scenes.
The distributions also differed in more than kernel and compiler versions. For the listed database tests, COMSS.ru reports Btrfs on Fedora and CachyOS, and ext4 on Ubuntu. The results therefore compare complete installations, not a controlled change to one kernel or compiler.
Why the comparison has no graphics result
Phoronix reports that loading the AMDGPU driver with a Radeon RX 9070 GRE stopped the display on this particular system under Ubuntu 26.10. The Ubuntu run used nomodeset and fell back to LLVMpipe, and Phoronix omitted graphics tests. The comparison provides no graphics or gaming benchmark results.
