Success (or lack of it) with a given distro...
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| Author | Content |
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| caitlyn Dec 05, 2009 4:35 PM EDT |
Success (or lack of it) with a given distro is very much dependent on the hardware you are using. For me Karmic Koala has been the most problem free Ubuntu since Edgy Eft (7.04) and is an absolute pleasure to use. You have different hardware and, as Toshiba laptops are well known for being a bit persnickety I'm not at all surprised that you had very different results. On older hardware like you have I still think one of the user friendly Slackware variants are best. They just seem to run faster and they eliminate some overhead you just don't need. |
| hkwint Dec 05, 2009 5:30 PM EDT |
Also, manually tweaking / editing XFree86.conf and now Xorg.conf solved my boot problems with about 60% of the Linux distro's (and OpenBSD) I ever tried. IMHO, hardware detection (which uses HAL AFAIK, and hal is going to be made obsolete pretty soon by DeviceKit) just isn't there yet. |
| tracyanne Dec 05, 2009 5:48 PM EDT |
Karmic works almost perfectly on my 64bit Dreambook, I have an occassional issue with the nvidia drivers, I think, It won't always switch between a 1920x1050 monitor and a 1680x1050 monitor that I have set up as a second monitor. The 1920x1050 monito is at work and the 1680x1050 is at home. Sometime it fails to switch, and the 1680x1050 monitor complains, and sometime it locks and I have to reset X, and sometime neither the onboard monitor or the external monitor display anything, and I'm forced to reset, sometimes that means a reboot. Other than that Karmic works fine. Karmic works perfectly on all my netbooks (I have 4 2 dreambooks 1 with wireless broadband 1 without, and two machines I had to replace windows onan msi and a BENQ). My older laptop, which I gave to my partner, her even older machine, which also works perfectly) went to a 7 year old son of a friend of ours, has some sound issues, Pulse doesn't seem to work very well with Skype. |
| Steven_Rosenber Dec 05, 2009 7:20 PM EDT |
For the Toshiba laptop in question, I have xorg.conf tweaked perfectly in Debian Lenny (with settings that should work for Slackware). I had a perfect one in Ubuntu Hardy, didn't need one in Ubuntu Karmic until that final Xorg update that sent the entire thing to hell. |
| caitlyn Dec 05, 2009 9:46 PM EDT |
@Steven: Couldn't you log in to the CLI and roll back the last upgrade with aptitude? Would that solve your problem? |
| zenarcher Dec 06, 2009 8:52 AM EDT |
Karmic has been working just fine for me, as well. I have it running on six systems here....5 of them are 64 bit desktop boxes and one 32 bit Mini 9 netbook. My desktop systems are all custom built boxes. I've also installed Karmic on another six or seven desktop systems, all of different manufacturers and hardware from quite old to fairly new. I use Kubuntu on all of them and really can't complain about anything. Incidentally, mine are all running wireless, as well as my HP multi-function printer running wireless off my network. |
| jhansonxi Dec 06, 2009 2:50 PM EDT |
With Karmic, my Toshiba M35X-S1114 with an 855GM chipset can't hibernate. I suspect the video drivers as they have been broken in the last two releases. It's modem won't disconnect the line when Gnome PPP disconnects it. I'm not sure if it is the fault of Gnome PPP, Wvdial, or sl-modem-daemon. I tried to set up an Intel system with an AGP Radeon 7200 but it would end up with memory corruption and kernel panics whenever 3D was used. I dug out an old Nvidia 5700LE PCI card to get it functional. Then there is the new EXT4 filesystem that is so fast it sometimes forgets to write the data to the drive. Just finished rebuilding a system to switch back to EXT3 after every large file transfer would end up with corruption. I tried Mandriva 2010 on a Panasonic CF-51 Toughbook and spent a lot of time trying to keep the screen from blanking every few minutes. No desktop setting would fix it. This is a bug left over from 2009. I encountered other problems but it's a repressed memory now. Must have been some RPM-related trauma. I hope the next Ubuntu and Mandriva are a lot better. Even with the current problems it would have to be a lot worse for me to even consider Windows again. I'd probably switch to OS X or FreeDOS first. |
| caitlyn Dec 06, 2009 2:58 PM EDT |
Quoting:Must have been some RPM-related trauma. I don't get this. rpm has been stable and rock solid for years. Every time someone complains about how awful rpm is and I ask them to describe the problem it turns out rpm is never the culprit. Regarding Ubuntu and the 855 chipset you might be interested to know that a new update of X.org was pushed out this past week as well as a new kernel. (Yes, the same one that caused Steven grief.) Your issue might just be solved. |
| Steven_Rosenber Dec 06, 2009 4:04 PM EDT |
Re: rolling back with Aptitude. I had Karmic in a very happy place until that last Xorg and kernel upgrade. I might roll back to Jaunty, but I see all of this as either a sign or just a convenient opportunity to try something else. Having the LCD start to break on the Ubuntu laptop is another reason to move on. I've got blotches, vertical lines and an unusable corner of screen real-estate. Swapping LCDs is an option. But I should probably just find a new laptop. |
| caitlyn Dec 06, 2009 4:08 PM EDT |
@Steven: You're almost certainly best off with a new machine. So... are you ready to join the netbook revolution? If not you could still get a brand new Dell very inexpensively with Linux preloaded. Maybe it's time to move up to something new. |
| Steven_Rosenber Dec 06, 2009 10:45 PM EDT |
Caitlyn, I need a full-size keyboard. I like the netbook idea, but I like the keyboard to be standard, and I'd prefer at least 1024x768 resolution. |
| jdixon Dec 06, 2009 10:54 PM EDT |
> On older hardware like you have I still think one of the user friendly Slackware variants are best. They just seem to run faster and they eliminate some overhead you just don't need. Just in case anyone is wondering, due to personal bias, I really shouldn't say anything concerning the above comment. I'm sure pretty much everyone here knows my opinion anyway. :) I've installed Ubuntu 9.10 on a machine at work for testing, and it's working well. I agree that for a production machine, I'd use ext3 rather than ext4 though. |
| Steven_Rosenber Dec 07, 2009 2:00 AM EDT |
Regarding my Karmic issues, I'm going to try turning off kernel mode setting again. |
| caitlyn Dec 07, 2009 12:02 PM EDT |
@Steven: Take a look at an HP netbook in the store. They have the largest keyboards I have found on netbooks and touch typing really isn't a problem, at least for me. The resolution is only 1024x576, though. |
| Steven_Rosenber Dec 07, 2009 7:07 PM EDT |
I do like the HP netbooks. My shoulder is definitely tired of what I'm carrying around now, and for the moment I have two laptops with me (and a third on the floor, two Sun Sparcstations on the desk next to me ... and yes, I probably do need help). |
| hkwint Dec 07, 2009 7:27 PM EDT |
OK, so here's a question: Why is Slackware faster? Given Slackware, and after you installed the exact same software as with Ubuntu, is it still faster? Or, in other words, is Slackware faster because of less bloat, different software set (KDE is faster than Gnome but not less bloated), more optimized software (patches / newer versions) or other compile options? Or something else? |
| gus3 Dec 07, 2009 7:51 PM EDT |
Slackware still uses BSD init. Patrtick V. has done some to put intense disk I/O into the background, but hardware configuration and server daemon startups are still serialized, for the most part. However, the stock Slack kernels support SMP by default, so that's a big help. |
| gus3 Dec 07, 2009 8:10 PM EDT |
Hmmmm, maybe I should actually consider the question on the table. :) I've tried both on the same hardware. Slackware's boot is slower, even taking into account the Ubuntu trick of putting up a login screen before everything's up and running. However, after logging in, and starting the services needed by the desktop, I see no difference in desktop responsiveness. One thing that may cause an observable slowdown is Ubuntu's use of AppArmor. Slackware by default uses no non-traditional security mechanisms; it's all user:group and ugo+-rwx. No SELinux, no grsecurity, no AppArmor. Libsafe was available for a while in -extra, but improvements in compilers and kernel design made it redundant. (For reasons unrelated to these, I am no longer using Ubuntu.) |
| jdixon Dec 07, 2009 9:30 PM EDT |
> Given Slackware, and after you installed the exact same software as with Ubuntu, is it still faster? If it's a reasonably fast machine with 512 MB or more of memory, you probably won't notice any significant difference (except for boot times, as noted above). If it's a slower machine less than 512MB of memory, I'm almost positive you'll find Slackware significantly faster, even with the same lower overhead windows manager (comparing Slackware with XFCE to Xubuntu, for example). Others have reported that a minimal Debian install is about the same speed as Slackware, FWIW. |
| caitlyn Dec 07, 2009 10:03 PM EDT |
@Hans: First, Ubuntu starts more daemons and services by default. You need to strip those out to get closer in performance. Second is the security overhead: not just SELinux and AppArmor but even simpler things like PAM are missing in Slackware. Now, if you do a minimal Ubuntu install from the alternate (text based) installer and don't install ANY of the desktop metapackages it is entirely possible to get Ubuntu to run as fast as Slackware. I've had Ubuntu running in as little as 32MB of RAM successfully. Doing so takes work but it can be done. At 512MB RAM the difference between the two out of the box is significant. At 1GB RAM much less so. |
| Steven_Rosenber Dec 08, 2009 1:20 AM EDT |
I'm one of those who found Slackware with Xfce to be fairly equal to Debian with Xfce. But that doesn't mean equal to Xubuntu, which is the Ubuntu desktop with Xfce instead of GNOME. In my same tests I didn't seem much if any speed bump between Ubuntu (GNOME) and Xubuntu (Xfce). If you run top in a terminal, you'll see many fewer services running in a stock Debian or Slackware Xfce system. I agree with Caitlyn that these things are way more important when you have less memory. I also agree with her about Slackware-derived Zenwalk and Vector, both of which seem super-fast in comparison to just about anything else I've tried. ... I should probably burn a Zenwalk live CD and give that a test. I run a 10-year-old laptop with Pentium II at 233 MHz with 144 MB of RAM. It runs better with Puppy Linux on live CD. But performance with Debian and Xfce is more than acceptable. I can't even boot Xubuntu on this machine let alone install and run it. On Friday I was testing my Debian Lenny laptop with the standard GNOME desktop. It compared very favorably to my identical laptop running Ubuntu Karmic (the one that's giving me screensaver trouble at present; and no, turning off KMS didn't help. Instead I'm messing with GNOME settings tonight and will see how that went in the morning). Then I forgot: The Ubuntu laptop has 1 GB of RAM; the Debian one has only 512 MB. And while OpenBSD is no speed demon, especially on multicore processors, for single-core CPUs with low memory, it installs with a very small footprint and uses relatively few services. While I don't begin to understand exactly how Linux uses memory, I can tell you that OpenBSD is quite sparing of it. Running a 768 MB laptop, I don't think I needed swap once in the entire six months I ran OpenBSD 4.4. ... Then as now, it was Xorg that caused everything to go to (insert curse word). In a related manner, I actually had a commenter on the blog tell me that Toshiba laptops are just hunks of (curse word) and that Linux needs to leave them behind in order to make the experience better for users of newer hardware (presumably including himself). Nice. That said, I left all the laptops at the office, and it looks like I might need to work at home (but won't be able to). I didn't want to carry one of those heavy hunks of (you know what) home in the rain today (yes, it rains about once a year in L.A., and this is that once). ... wish I had a netbook now. |
| caitlyn Dec 08, 2009 11:35 AM EDT |
@Steven: I have two 11 year old Toshiba Libretto SS1010s (one has issues), which have Pentium 233MHz MMX processors and 64MB and 96MB RAM respectively. The best/fastest distro I've found for these machines is Vector Linux Light. It's absolutely amazing how usable those systems still are with the right distro. Vector Linux Standard seems to have some performance tweaks that Zenwalk lacks, everything from VL's custom init scripts to some differences in compiler flags when the packages are built does seem to give Vector an edge over anything else when it comes to speed. When comparing Zenwalk to Vector I think you'll find it only becomes noticeable on very, very low spec machines like my old Librettos. (Yes, I know the correct Italian plural is libretti but I'm using a proper name in English.) Also, PII 233? Are you sure? I thought all 233MHz machines would be classic Pentium or Pentium MMX, meaning i586 rather than i686. A lot of distros compile with march set at i686 which means they absolutely will not work in a classic Pentium. Slackware uses march at i486 but mtune at i686, meaning it will even work on AMD K5 and Intel 486 processors provided you have at least 32MB of RAM. Oh, and yeah, netbooks are really nice. Check out the keyboard on the HPs. I know they aren't available preloaded with Linux any longer but the larger keys may be worthwhile enough for you to grit your teeth, hold your nose, and buy a Windows box. |
| hkwint Dec 08, 2009 4:58 PM EDT |
Thanks Caitlyn, I'd qualify the things you are referring to why Ubuntu is slower as 'bloat', though that's personal.Quoting:While I don't begin to understand exactly how Linux uses memory, I can tell you that OpenBSD is quite sparing of it. There has been an interesting article somewhere on LXer as to which program is the best for showing the amount of memory Linux 'really' uses. The answer was, there is none such program - because memory in Linux is rather complex. Only if you patch existing programs with 'hacks' you can get close to the 'real answer'. Quoting:Then as now, it was Xorg that caused everything to go to Which Xorg version? Same happened here with Linux and Xorg 1.6, but I've been able to repair it (don't ask me how, it was really... insert curseword again) |
| Steven_Rosenber Dec 08, 2009 5:18 PM EDT |
Quoting:Also, PII 233? Are you sure? I thought all 233MHz machines would be classic Pentium or Pentium MMX, meaning i586 rather than i686. A lot of distros compile with march set at i686 which means they absolutely will not work in a classic Pentium. Slackware uses march at i486 but mtune at i686, meaning it will even work on AMD K5 and Intel 486 processors provided you have at least 32MB of RAM. Thanks for catching that. I think it's a Pentium Mobile MMX 233MHz. I believe this is the Compaq part: http://www.impactcomputers.com/291758-001.html |
| Steven_Rosenber Dec 08, 2009 5:20 PM EDT |
Quoting:Which Xorg version? Same happened here with Linux and Xorg 1.6, but I've been able to repair it (don't ask me how, it was really... insert curseword again) It's the current Xorg in Ubuntu Karmic, according to the Web pages http://packages.ubuntu.com/karmic/xorg and http://packages.ubuntu.com/karmic/xserver-xorg: Package: xorg (1:7.4+3ubuntu7) |
| hkwint Dec 09, 2009 3:05 AM EDT |
I meant in OpenBSD 4.4 believe, because that's the one who went *poof* IIRC. |
| Steven_Rosenber Dec 09, 2009 6:27 PM EDT |
OpenBSD 4.4 was great for me. I ran it the full six months with no hardware issues. It was 4.5 that totally hosed X. OpenBSD 4.4 http://openbsd.org/44.html had: Xenocara (based on X.Org 7.3 + patches, freetype 2.3.5, fontconfig 2.4.2, Mesa 7.0.3, xterm 234 and more) OpenBSD 4.5 http://openbsd.org/45.html had: Xenocara (based on X.Org 7.4 + patches, freetype 2.3.7, fontconfig 2.4.2, Mesa 7.2, xterm 239 and more) And hey, it's XOrg 7.4 in Ubuntu Karmic ... so that's where the trouble started for this particular Intel-video-equipped (82830 CGC, aka 830m) Toshiba laptop. Now all supported versions of Ubuntu except for Hardy use Xorg 7.4: http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=xorg Lucid has Xorg 7.5, but will that only make things worse? In Debian, http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=xserver-xorg Lenny = Xorg 7.3 Squeeze + Sid = Xorg 7.4 Experimental = Xorg 7.5 |
| caitlyn Dec 09, 2009 6:41 PM EDT |
Quoting:Lucid has Xorg 7.5, but will that only make things worse? You'll never know until you try. Speaking of trying... when will we get you to try a Slackware derivative like Zenwalk or Vector Linux of SalixOS? |
| Steven_Rosenber Dec 09, 2009 7:42 PM EDT |
I really need to give Zenwalk and/or Vector a try. It has been some time since I have. In other news, I burned a live DVD of OpenBSD 4.6 from jggimi http://jggimi.homeip.net/livecd/downloads.html I'm running the GNOME version, and thus far things are looking pretty good, and it's Xorg 7.4. I'll wait for the screensaver to pop in and think again. Yeah, if I could live without Flash 9/10, I could return to OpenBSD (and if I could figure out how to reinstall w/o wiping /home; I have instructions, I just couldn't follow them). (Later) Yep, X runs pretty darn well with Xorg 7.4 in OpenBSD 4.6 with no xorg.conf. I have a little mouse-pointer glitch on the CRT monitor, but on the laptop's own LCD screen, it's perfect. And it comes back from screensaver fine ... and this is GNOME. (And after my OpenBSD 4.5 debacle, it's nice to see the OS working well on this hardware) It means that I do have a snowball's chance with Debian Squeeze (and other things that are not Ubuntu). |
| hkwint Dec 10, 2009 9:00 AM EDT |
OK, WRT to Xorg: Now I'm lost. Xorg 7.4 came with Xorg-server 1.5, and it worked fine for me. That's when I migrated to Xorg-server 1.6 and problems started. More people had those problems. Now I read Xorg 7.5 comes with Xorg-server 1.7. So there's no Xorg version that comes with xorg-server 1.6? So when you use Ubuntu or OpenBSD and upgrade from xorg 7.4 to 7.5 you go directly from server-1.5 to server 1.7 without using 1.6? That sounds odd to me. Nonetheless, I hope 1.7 doesn't bring the problems that 1.6 did. |
| tuxtom Dec 12, 2009 2:11 PM EDT |
I've had nothing but headaches and consistent instability with 64-bit Karmic. After significant research I went back to try my old friend Mepis (8...Lenny-based). I am now in 64-bit heaven...with KDE3.5, to boot!!!!!! |
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