Today a plethora of Linux distributions and spins are available for desktop usage, each of them with some peculiar features that enable it to gain a sometime big, other times small, user base.
However in the server landscape things are considerably more rigid: the vast majority of the installed base is shared by 3 or 4 “big names”. Two of these “big names” surely are Red Hat and Debian, two Linux distributions with quite different targets – and background philosophy. These differences are often so great that you have little doubt in the choice between the two; however, sometime you are in a position where you simply want to pick the best-performing Linux distribution, regardless of other parameters as cost, management, ect.
So: what is the faster between RHEL 6.1 and Debian 6.0.2? Hopefully this article will respond to this question. Nevertheless, you surely know that comparing two full-blow operating systems is not an easy task: you must account not only for different usage patterns, but for different default settings. So, while I hope to give you some interesting informations, remember that I don't want to elect the always-faster, non-plus-ultra, uber-superior Linux distribution on the planet.
With this thing in mind, we can proceed to examining the two software configurations used to run the benchmarks.