Arch really faster than Ubuntu?

[Linuxforall]

Not really.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...h_faster&num=1

While we often hear "Arch is faster than Ubuntu" and similar statements in our forums and via email comments, this really is not the case. At least when both Arch and Ubuntu are put in as much a stock configuration as possible to reflect the "out of the box" experience encountered by most users, the numbers shown on this Intel Core 2 Duo notebook show the performance to be about the same.

[RiceMonster]

The only reason Arch would faster is because a lot of people will have less services and other things running. That, mixed with placebo.

Big deal anyway.

[Linuxforall]

The only reason Arch would faster is because a lot of people will have less services and other things running. That, mixed with placebo.

Big deal anyway.

Agreed with the Placebo part, actually they go through such pains installing Arch that its their belief that its gotta be fast, same with Gentoo which was tested as well sometimes earlier and it really didn't set Ubuntu on fire.

[philinux]

Moved to recurring discussions.

[ophthop]

It is indeed slightly faster, according to what's written in the article and the benchmarks. Still Difference is not wide enough to justify a change.

[andamaru]

Arch is optimized for i686 architectures so it will be faster than Ubuntu(assuming Ubuntu isn't using i686) on newer CPU. Because of the nature of Arch Linux the average user of the distribution is only going to have the services and applications they want running in the background, this will also speed up the distribution.

In conclusion, If you were to go and install Arch Linux it would be faster than Ubuntu is. How much faster or if it will be noticeable is another question.

[Penguin Guy]

Agreed with the Placebo part, actually they go through such pains installing Arch that its their belief that its gotta be fast,

It is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of it by the sense of achievement you get from getting it to work at all.

Although I think the belief that Arch Linux is faster is partly preconception, I think it also has to do with the kind of 'hardcore' system configuration that Arch Linux is all about. Try testing an Arch user's system after the said Arch user has done all their configuration and tweaking stuff - I expect it'll be noticeably faster.

[Linuxforall]

Except for situations where composting manager was involved, its not even slightly faster in any of the tests, nothing conclusive at all. Both distros were used stock, no tweaks were done.

All services can be easily tweaked on Ubuntu as well and then a personal kernel compiled, so just like you can tweak Arch, you can tweak Ubuntu or for that matter any linux distro. The real darkhorse of speed distro is sidux and it would be an interesting test indeed when Ubuntu is pitched against it.

[Dharmachakra]

Hmm... 99% of Phoronix is ********, but this may be part of the 1% that isn't.

[Simian Man]

Linux is Linux is Linux. The upstream sources are largely the same between different distros. So why would one be significantly faster than another? Magic?

Arch is optimized for i686 architectures so it will be faster than Ubuntu(assuming Ubuntu isn't using i686) on newer CPU.

That only holds if you use 32-bit Linux. Anyone who cares that much about performance is likely using 64-bit Linux anyway.

Hmm... 99% of Phoronix is ********, but this may be part of the 1% that isn't.

Agreed.