The distro makes all the difference
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| caitlyn Aug 07, 2009 12:01 AM EDT |
I have written about this before -- the way the distro is put together can make a huge difference. You could run Vector Linux with all of the apps you mention and the GNOME desktop from the repository and it would run just fine in 512MB of RAM. Xubuntu with Xfce isn't happy with 512MB at all. Slackware and Zenwalk would be almost as good as Vector. The difference probably won't even be noticeable most of the time. Debris Linux, another lightweight Ubuntu variant with a GNOME desktop also runs fine in 512MB of RAM. With CentOS I found 1GB still gave me a sluggish system. Pardus is better than Ubuntu but nowhere near as good as the Slackware variants. I could go on and on and on... |
| Steven_Rosenber Aug 07, 2009 12:27 AM EDT |
I agree on the distro being a critical piece of this particular puzzle. At this particular moment in time, spending $20 on a RAM stick for some added performance was the easy thing to do. I'm testing Debian Lenny, and it runs better in 512 MB than Ubuntu does in 768 MB (both with GNOME and on identical hardware except for the RAM). ... |
| caitlyn Aug 07, 2009 12:30 AM EDT |
Why am I not surprised about Debian? |
| Sander_Marechal Aug 07, 2009 3:29 AM EDT |
I run Debian Lenny regularly with 256 MB of RAM or so, complete with Gnome desktop. It works fine. A tad on the slow side but still very usable. Even OpenOffice will work, though AbiWord/Gnumeric works much better under these conditions. I suspect you could get Ubuntu up to the same performance with some tweaking. Start by removing Mono (one less software stack, interpreter and slew of libraries to keep in memory). Kill off any services/daemons you don't need and remove Tracker (or it's equivalent). If it's not a laptop, kill the network manager and configure your network the traditional way (System->Network or /etc/network/interfaces). |
| krisum Aug 07, 2009 4:29 AM EDT |
Crunchbang will be a nice one for 512M or less, and it still retains many useful things (including network-manager) from standard ubuntu. |
| pmpatrick Aug 07, 2009 10:40 AM EDT |
I agree with caitlyn. Debian may have many admirable characteristics but speed has never been one of them. Similarly, RH has always had a reputation for being somewhat sluggish. And slackware has always had the reputation of being one of the fastest, most responsive distros. And that's consistently been the case since I've been running linux which goes back to 1999. The same holds true of the later derivatives of these distros. Ubuntu has that debian slowness and all the slack derivatives like Vector, Arch, Wolvix and Zenwalk still fly. Mandriva is probably an exception as it flies in comparison to RH/Centos but Mandriva's code based has departed significantly from its RH forbearer. You really can notice the differences when you run on older hardware with limited ram. |
| jdixon Aug 07, 2009 11:30 AM EDT |
> Debian may have many admirable characteristics but speed has never been one of them. Actually, from what I've both heard from others and seen myself, a clean install of Debian is almost as fast as Slackware. It's only after a few months/years of use and adding/removing packages that it begins to slow down. A full install, with both Gnome/KDE, may not be, but I haven't tried that myself. |
| bigg Aug 07, 2009 11:41 AM EDT |
I agree jdixon. I ran Debian for quite a while, and don't really see any difference in terms of speed since moving to Slackware. |
| techiem2 Aug 07, 2009 12:15 PM EDT |
Yes, from what I've seen a pure Debian install tends to have quite good performance.
It has become my distro of choice for lower end machines I don't feel like install Gentoo on. :P
My Mom's machine is currently a Celeron 1.8 (ok, not exactly all that slow) with 384MB RAM running Debian Lenny with XFCE. |
| Sander_Marechal Aug 07, 2009 12:53 PM EDT |
Quoting:It's only after a few months/years of use and adding/removing packages that it begins to slow down. That should be less of a problem if you start out with Lenny or later. In lenny, both aptitude and apt-get will automatically remove unused dependencies, giving you a leaner and faster system. By the way, I came across another nice ting for Debian: localepurge. It's a bit of a hack and not for the faint of heart, but it keeps your system lean by automatically stripping packages the locales that you don't use. See: http://packages.debian.org/lenny/localepurge |
| Steven_Rosenber Aug 07, 2009 6:31 PM EDT |
Debian is fast, even with GNOME. That I can also confirm. When I stacked up Debian, Slackware, Ubuntu and Wolvix together a year or so ago, with Xfce and GNOME, Slackware 12.0 and Debian Etch (both with Xfce) were the fastest. But one wasn't particularly faster than the other. Despite the speed advantages, as well as my current longish-term evaluation of Debian Lenny with GNOME, I'm still on Ubuntu 8.04 because I've got it set up the way I want, everything works, I pretty much have all the apps I want, it likes Intel video, and it's been extremely stable. Sure, it's a bit slower and uses a bit more memory than Debian proper, and as said above, I can work on turning off some of the extra services (I haven't found myself using Tomboy, I have a hard time even figuring out what Gnome Do does, and what little audio I am playing is doing fine in Rhythmbox, so I haven't even tried Banshee ... so I probably could dump Mono). One cool thing about Debian: The Xfce installation is particularly small. |
| caitlyn Aug 07, 2009 9:59 PM EDT |
@pmpatrick: I said that pure Debian was fast, not slow. I said Ubuntu out of the box was slow. Ubuntu can be fast. Look at Debris Linux for an example. i can do a minimal Ubuntu install with debootstrap and add only lightweight packages on top of X. It runs just fine in 64MB of RAM. It's the way the default Ubuntu desktop is built that makes it slow. |
| Steven_Rosenber Aug 08, 2009 12:10 AM EDT |
Debris Linux looks like a really good project http://debrislinux.org/index.php |
| phsolide Aug 08, 2009 10:54 AM EDT |
Got any ideas about *why* the distro is important? I mean, I've used Slackware since 9.0 days, and before that I ran SuSE (up to 8.0), but I've fiddled with other things, I had a CentOS install, DeLi, Knoppix, etc. Is it the kernel config they use, or is it something else? Since Slackware is compiled for 486s, you wouldn't think it was compiler optimizations. |
| caitlyn Aug 08, 2009 1:33 PM EDT |
@phsolide: Actually, Slackware is compiled for i486 as a minimum architecture. It is optimized for i686. Kernel optimizations and compiler flags do make a difference. So do the number or services started by default and the amount of additional functionality that adds overhead. Many users don't bother or know to check for and disable unnecessary services. Having auditing turned on (a default on Red Hat and derivatives) really can slow things down. Slackware and most of its derivatives don't use PAM. (Zenwalk is a notatable exception.) That reduces the amount of steps in any authentication process significantly. The same is true of SELinux, which is missing from Slackware and all of the derivatives I've tried. Those additional layers of security are important in the enterprise, particularly on servers. They are not at all important on the home desktop. There are a number of kernel settings and fielsystem settings that can be tweaked. How you set them depends on the likely use for the OS. Those can also make a difference. Leaving out certain functionality from the kernel can also reduce overhead. It's actually a long list of complex factors. |
| caitlyn Aug 08, 2009 1:34 PM EDT |
@Steven_Rosenberg: I wrote an overview of Debris Linux for DistroWatch back in June. See: http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090601 Since then newer betas have been released. Version 1.8.3 is remarkably close to ready for prime time and is very, very usable. It's also very fast. |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!