Intel axes Clear Linux, the fastest distribution on the market — company ends development and support, effective immediately
It is clearly dead.

As part of its global restructuring plan, Intel has been cutting not only engineers, technicians, and managers, but also its software unit. This week, Intel officially ended its Clear Linux project, a high-performance Linux distribution designed for x86-64 systems, according to Phoronix. The company announced that it will no longer maintain or update the OS, marking the end of a decade-long effort to optimize Linux performance aggressively.
"After years of innovation and community collaboration, we are ending support for Clear Linux OS," a statement by a Clear Linux official reads. "Effective immediately, Intel will no longer provide security patches, updates, or maintenance for Clear Linux OS, and the Clear Linux OS GitHub repository will be archived in read-only mode. So, if you are currently using Clear Linux OS, we strongly recommend planning your migration to another actively maintained Linux distribution as soon as possible to ensure ongoing security and stability."
Clear Linux stood out for its aggressive out-of-box performance tuning and consistently strong results not just on Intel hardware, but also on AMD platforms, as noted by Phoronix. First, it was built using the latest toolchains that support all the latest CPU technologies. Secondly, it was compiled with aggressive GCC or Clang flags tailored to the latest CPUs, thereby adopting all the optimizations for such processors, making it particularly useful for performance-hungry workloads. Thirdly, Clear Linux applied profile-guided (PGO) and link-time optimizations (LTO) system-wide — including the kernel, libraries, and user utilities — enabling it to streamline execution paths based on real workloads and reduce binary size and overhead.
In addition, Clear Linux featured aggressive out-of-box kernel tuning, prioritized maximum CPU frequency, and featured performance enhancements for CPU multi-threading, memory, I/O, and power consumption. Also, Clear Linux was among the first operating systems to adopt the latest technologies that Intel had to offer, such as AVX2, AVX-512, or Optane, out of the box. Last but not least, it featured tools like clr-boot-manager for fast kernel updates, which improved the user experience.
The shutdown is part of Intel's global cost-reduction strategy, which has already impacted most of the teams within the company. Though the end of Clear Linux had been rumored in recent years, the company only now made the decision public. Of course, Intel will remain deeply engaged in the Linux ecosystem and will continue contributing to upstream projects and other major distributions. Other distributions, such as CachyOS, are already adopting some of the technologies and methods pioneered by Clear Linux.
"Rest assured that Intel remains deeply invested in the Linux ecosystem, actively supporting and contributing to various open-source projects and Linux distributions to enable and optimize for Intel hardware," the statement reads. "A heartfelt thank you to every developer, user, and contributor who helped shape Clear Linux OS over the last 10 years. Your feedback and contributions have been invaluable."
Phoronix notes that this announcement follows a week of significant changes within Intel's open-source software teams. A well-known Linux engineer exited the company, and at least one primary upstream driver lost its maintainer. Other team members working on Linux and open-source technologies were also affected by recent job cuts. Given such significant changes, it remains to be seen whether Intel will be as efficient as before in driving Linux performance improvements in the future.
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Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
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Firestone Wow this is sad. I never used it but I had several colleagues who were strong enthusiasts of Clear Linux for a long time and I always enjoyed hearing about the new innovations it was bringing.Reply -
bit_user It consistently set the standard for other distros to measure up against. I'm sure it also fed a significant number of performance patches to upstream projects. Some of the other distros were probably copying bits and pieces of Clear Linux' config, to bolster their own performance.Reply
In other words, the Linux ecosystem will be much poorer for its loss. -
bit_user
As I said, it's not like people haven't been borrowing and adapting changes from it, in other distros. So, the benefit of forking it seems somewhat limited to me.das_stig said:Fork it and use it as the basic for the official Sovereign Linux if it's that good?
The value of Clear Linux is really one of having a focused & skilled team that's dedicated to continual performance analysis and tuning, especially for the latest server processors that many Linux developers don't have ready access to. It's the resources and expertise behind the project that was its main value. -
thestryker It's pretty clear that Tan doesn't care what gets cut to meet his goals. The part I find very frustrating is that a lot of the seemingly extraneous parts of Intel are why they got where they are. Having a good product is only part of the equation being able to support said product better than the competition is how you keep/expand business.Reply
While Clear itself isn't mandatory for Intel contributing to Linux it's been a good way to get optimizations into that entire ecosystem. It's also obvious that Intel is letting software engineers go which likely will have an effect on overall Linux support/contribution. -
jg.millirem thestryker said:It's pretty clear that Tan doesn't care what gets cut to meet his goals. The part I find very frustrating is that a lot of the seemingly extraneous parts of Intel are why they got where they are. Having a good product is only part of the equation being able to support said product better than the competition is how you keep/expand business.
While Clear itself isn't mandatory for Intel contributing to Linux it's been a good way to get optimizations into that entire ecosystem. It's also obvious that Intel is letting software engineers go which likely will have an effect on overall Linux support/contribution.
An important mark of a good organization is not just how well it achieves its own bottom line, but how it contributes to the ecosystem, to society. Intel is retreating into itself with recent leaders, because share price. What a broken system. -
bit_user
"recent leaders"? When did Gelsinger do something like this?jg.millirem said:Intel is retreating into itself with recent leaders, because share price. What a broken system. -
FoxtrotMichael-1 I already knew Tan was going to be a disaster as soon as he was made CEO. I took it as a sell signal and sold my entire position in Intel at a small profit (and I do mean small). I entered the position with the full faith that Gelsinger could turn the ship around and make Intel competitive again while making them a second real option to TSMC in the foundry space. His exit showed that the board, and not any particular CEO, should really be blamed for the downfall of this historic US innovator.Reply -
bit_user
Since you were trying to make a long-term investment, it was probably wise to get out when you did.FoxtrotMichael-1 said:I already knew Tan was going to be a disaster as soon as he was made CEO. I took it as a sell signal and sold my entire position in Intel at a small profit (and I do mean small).
However, I think there's a chance the savings from Tan's cuts will benefit the share price before the cumulative impacts really start to drag the company down. By then, we'll have to look at what the Taiwan situation looks like and whether it seems like Intel is on track to have any viable node beyond 14A. If not, that's when I'd get out. If so, it might still be worth the risk of staying in. But, not because he will Make Intel Great Again. Rather, a gamble that Intel is still best-positioned to capitalize on TSMC being cut off. -
waltc3 Interesting. As this article mentions that the OS runs well on AMD CPUs, as well, I wonder if the OS isn't serving Intel CPU sales as originally envisioned. These days, Intel is just trying to keep its head above water. Hardware companies traditionally shy away from OS development, though, as the competition is fierce and the investment substantial. (Says the ex-owner/user of three separate versions of OS/2...;))Reply