The benchmark you linked to somewhat misses the point I'm trying to make. It's specifically comparing the 4.0 branch (4.12-4.20) to 5.0 on the same distribution

The benchmark you linked to somewhat misses the point I'm trying to make. It's specifically comparing the 4.0 branch (4.12-4.20) to 5.0 on the same distribution. The distribution is also a factor in performence. Check out this benchmark comparing CentOS 7 to other distributions on the same hardware: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=5distros-post-spectre&num=2 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=5distros... CentOS 7 is slower in most of the tests compared to a recent version of Ubuntu (17.10 was used in this comparison), which itself is slower than Clear Linux in most tests.