Now I know that Gentoo and Ubuntu or totally different distros. I use Gentoo as I am a programmer and I like the power and flexibility. I also prefer to run things as fast as possible (who doesn't?) so I like the ability to compile everything for a specific chip with -O3 and to not build things in binaries that I never use.
That being said, Gentoo can also get time consuming. Decent updates can require recompiling virtually everything and that takes quite a bit of time. Anyway, I have heard some users say that the Gentoo speed benefits aren't as great as one would think. The machine I'm currently using as my primary desktop is a 2.4Ghz Celeron with 512mb RAM. Not a powerhouse by anybody's definition but it's pretty speedy with Gentoo. In fact, Open Office runs as fast on this machine as I've every seen it run. (It also takes a lot of time to compile).
Anyway, to get to the point, a friend of mine currently needed a new computer and I installed Ubuntu on it for him to save him the whole Windows virus/spyware mess. I was impressed by the polish of the distro. It was a little slow (Open Office in particular was practically unusable), but this was also on a 1Gz box with only 256 or so of RAM, so it shouldn't be expected to be too snappy.
Are there any former Gentoo users who can comment on the performance differences going to Ubuntu? I like the idea of something that just works and requries a good bit less time than Gentoo does. The reason I posted this in the Dapper forum is because I'm considering installing Dapper. I have been using Gnome 2.14 and I'm hooked on it and would prefer to stay with it over going back to 2.12. Thanks for any help.
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