what do you mean by 'fast'?

[fuscia]

being no more than a humble end user, i'm continually reminded that there's more to the iceberg than meets the eye. when i'm hoping for fast, i'm looking for: boots fast, apps open fast and apps run faster in whatever environment is being considered (another wm, distro, etc.). is that what you all mean by 'fast', or are you about to make my eyes glaze over?

btw, my measure for 'fast' is whatever i think (objective measures? LOL!). it's amazing how much faster anything seems to run before the novelty wears off.

[kerry_s]

Oohm, Yes? Thats what i would think fast means. :wink:

[_simon_]

Fast is when it boots / loads / opens before I have chance to start muttering "come on!"

[teaker1s]

faster when you look at how much more memory and cpu capacity are left

[happy-and-lost]

Fast is always faster than what you've grown accustomed to. To me, Ubuntu was fast when I started. It now seems slow next to Debian Etch, which seems slow next to DSL.

Remember when 56K internet was "fast"? ;)

[teaker1s]

I remember dial up then trying dsl in a town miles away,I could have killed myself returning home and waiting for pages to load. Now on 8mbit/s it feels quick:guitar:

[3rdalbum]

Traditionally with software development, the saying is:

"Cheap, fast, good. Choose two."

Open-source software is generally very cheap, yet it can be fast and good as well.

[manmower]

By "fast" I mean fast boot, fast package manager, fast application startup, little slowdown while multitasking, and most importantly: responsive UI. Like when dragging a window around I like it to feel as instant as possible with little lag. Button presses should be registered immediately etc. Hence why I can't stand Beryl: with the current radeon driver combined with my 9800 the effects are quite fast, but scrolling and resizing are horribly slow, making it unusable for me.

[RAV TUX]

being no more than a humble end user, i'm continually reminded that there's more to the iceberg than meets the eye. when i'm hoping for fast, i'm looking for: boots fast, apps open fast and apps run faster in whatever environment is being considered (another wm, distro, etc.). is that what you all mean by 'fast', or are you about to make my eyes glaze over?

btw, my measure for 'fast' is whatever i think (objective measures? LOL!). it's amazing how much faster anything seems to run before the novelty wears off.
When I think fast, as a measure of time, I think nano seconds

My OS must be nano seconds fast....so fast I physically can not measure it.

I have found this only with Beryl in Sabayon.

the trick to utilizing the Desktop accelerator: Beryl....is knowing how to customize your settings

So like most things in life, your overall happiness is only limited by your knowledge (or lack of knowledge).

[insane_alien]

My OS must be nano seconds fast....so fast I physically can not measure it.

lol, nanoseconds are well within measurement, look up the femtosecond camera thats pushing the envelope.

[RAV TUX]

lol, nanoseconds are well within measurement, look up the femtosecond camera thats pushing the envelope.Thanks for the 411

[fuscia]

i time boiled eggs by nano seconds.

[Lord Illidan]

When I think fast, as a measure of time, I think nano seconds

My OS must be nano seconds fast....so fast I physically can not measure it.

I have found this only with Beryl in Sabayon.

the trick to utilizing the Desktop accelerator: Beryl....is knowing how to customize your settings

So like most things in life, your overall happiness is only limited by your knowledge (or lack of knowledge).

Nanoseconds?? Gawd...even Windows can go faster :-\"

[Lord Illidan]

i time boiled eggs by nano seconds.
I time the time spent on this forum by nano seconds.

[fuscia]

i just did a full install of sabayon and i think i'm beginning to understand 'fast' a little better. i did the dual boot thing last night and i was swayed by the difference. i feel so cheap now.

[mips]

i just did a full install of sabayon and i think i'm beginning to understand 'fast' a little better. i did the dual boot thing last night and i was swayed by the difference. i feel so cheap now.

Yeah, kinda makes ubuntu look like a snail. The bootup times are a bit slower but I only boot up once a day or every second day so no issue. I still wanna do prelink on sabayon to see if i can get it even faster.

Let us know how it goes for you.

[fuscia]

Yeah, kinda makes ubuntu look like a snail. The bootup times are a bit slower but I only boot up once a day or every second day so no issue. I still wanna do prelink on sabayon to see if i can get it even faster.


prelink never made any difference to me, except for making installing apps slower (i don't think sabayon needs any help in that area). i have heard that a lot of the slow booting is due to hardware recognition. any idea about that?

[mips]

any idea about that?

nope, not a clue. Maybe they have some answers on that in the sabayon forum or their irc channel.

[manmower]

n00bs! I time my boot process in Planck time. :p

No seriously, I'd be interested in a direct comparison of Arch vs. Sabayon, I actually have a hard time believing Sabayon would be faster, considering all the stuff that comes preloaded. Even just base Gentoo vs. base Arch would be close IMHO.

[deadlydeathcone]

It now seems slow next to Debian Etch, which seems slow next to DSL.

Yes! Booting dsl with the TORAM option then clicking on the firefox icon and having it start before you've even let go of the button is pretty cool.

[mips]

n00bs! I time my boot process in Planck time. :p

No seriously, I'd be interested in a direct comparison of Arch vs. Sabayon, I actually have a hard time believing Sabayon would be faster, considering all the stuff that comes preloaded. Even just base Gentoo vs. base Arch would be close IMHO.

So why not install both and give us some feedback. I have never used arch in my life so cannot comment but you are probably right.

Why not try it and let us know.

[manmower]

I'm not that dedicated that I'm going to mess with my partitioning scheme just to track down these (probably sub-second) differences in performance (not to mention the Sabayon download). I've sort of put an end to my distro switching so I don't exactly have any spare partitions/HDs lying around anymore.

[Rumor]

So why not install both and give us some feedback. I have never used arch in my life so cannot comment but you are probably right.

Why not try it and let us know.

I tried to do just that many months ago, but Sabayon simply would not work for me. Arch works wonderfully, so I stuck with it.

Arch, (booting on Athlon XP3000+ w/ 768 megs RAM / ASUS A7V333 mobo using an old Seagate 40 GB hard drive) from Grub to gdm login screen is under 20 seconds, loading network, nvidia, alsa, cups and a few other services.

Ubuntu Edgy on the same machine, mostly same services from grub to gdm login is closer to 45 seconds.

Sabayon installed from live DVD with gnome desktop booted closer to Ubuntu speed than Arch speed from what I remember, but the gnome desktop was so hopelessly broken for me that I didn't keep it.

[Lord Illidan]

You are making me want Sabayon more and more..

[deanlinkous]

fast....
my distro has to boot reasonably fast (faster than most others), when I click on a icon I want the app open immediately not a "wait for it" animated cursor, no splash screens either....
that is my fast....

[chipmonk010]

I have found the biggest speed differences are with the kernel, if you compile your own kernel that supports ONLY your hardware boot will be much faster and general os speed SEEMS to increase but when ur thinking about speed u inevitably experience it differently.

The kernel that comes with ubuntu has support for all hardware supported by the kernel just about, which adds some bloat and boot time in exchange for the user friendly everything just works thing that ubuntu does so well.

If your looking for extra speed i would compile a barebone kernel before i switched distros. the only real speed benfit from another distro i can invision would be gentoo(compile time optimization for your hardware) or a distro that uses a lightweight window manager by default.

[deanlinkous]

I have never seen that much speed difference from compiling my kernel. I usually use modconf to remove anything that is loaded that I do not need and/or blacklist something.

Ubuntu has some cruft at startup that if removed will gain you a quicker boot time. The bluetooth stuff, the hp stuff, and so forth.

[chipmonk010]

thats true i forgot ubuntu has ALOT more start up stuff then gentoo....im sure that would have more of an effect then the kernel

[manmower]

prelink never made any difference to me, except for making installing apps slower (i don't think sabayon needs any help in that area). i have heard that a lot of the slow booting is due to hardware recognition. any idea about that?

Well if my experience with Arch is any indication, you probably could do the detection just once and then check which modules were loaded. Once you know which modules you absolutely need, you can load them "manually" by editing your init scripts and turn the autodetection off.

[K.Mandla]

i'm looking for: boots fast, apps open fast and apps run faster in whatever environment is being considered (another wm, distro, etc.). is that what you all mean by 'fast', or are you about to make my eyes glaze over?
Yes. Boot fast, load fast, and apps are "snappier." I would add that I like a low memory profile, although that doesn't necessarily correspond.

[K.Mandla]

Well if my experience with Arch is any indication, you probably could do the detection just once and then check which modules were loaded. Once you know which modules you absolutely need, you can load them "manually" by editing your init scripts and turn the autodetection off.
This does work wonders with Arch. I get a lag of about 15 seconds with that darned udev autodetection, but I'm working on getting the modules in place in the right order so I can abandon it.

[fuscia]

knowledge =fast. i just came back to ubuntu after week with sabayon. let's just say, for the sake of argument that sabayon is inherently faster, though, it's only faster if you know how to make it faster. i don't, and i'm not gonna find out. i like to try out lots of different stuff and i'll install and uninstall the same crap, several times a day. kuroo is slower than synaptic, in this regard, as far as i know. the way i have ubuntu set up now, with openbox and none of that 'display manager/"i splash, usplash, we all splash" nonsense, my reboot time is down to 25 seconds vs. 100. i know some of you must be roflyao at me with your own experiences and i can honestly say, i'm almost as happy for you as i am for me.

btw, we need a drinkin' smiley. someone get on that!

[chipmonk010]

knowledge =fast. i just came back to ubuntu after week with sabayon. let's just say, for the sake of argument that sabayon is inherently faster, though, it's only faster if you know how to make it faster. i don't, and i'm not gonna find out. i like to try out lots of different stuff and i'll install and uninstall the same crap, several times a day. kuroo is slower than synaptic, in this regard, as far as i know. the way i have ubuntu set up now, with openbox and none of that 'display manager/"i splash, usplash, we all splash" nonsense, my reboot time is down to 25 seconds vs. 100. i know some of you must be roflyao at me with your own experiences and i can honestly say, i'm almost as happy for you as i am for me.

btw, we need a drinkin' smiley. someone get on that!

I agree. Back in my 'minimalistic period' when i used to run fluxbox + rox, things were much faster/snappier. gnome/kde take up alot of ram and some cpu clocks so its no surpize but desktop env has a much larger effect on speed then compile time optimizations be them in programs or the kernel or whatever.

[mips]

kuroo is slower than synaptic, in this regard, as far as i know.


Yes and that will always be the case seeing you are working with source & not binary files. Same goes for emerge & apt-get aptitude.