Is Ubuntu bloated?

Just for the sake of comparison, I installed gnome on my arch install and did a comparison. I optimized all daemons and modules to as slim as possible for the test.

Note: I use .xinitrc to boot my desired desktop so no login manager to slow things down.

Results:

KDE: Did 5 boot tests. The average time of boot was 18 seconds (as posted)

Gnome: Same 5 tests was able to boot with a average of 13 seconds

Gnome is faster in booting! The desktop feels the same as KDE in responsiveness.

Now, my openbox kills both with a boot time of 8 seconds (It boots insanely fast, there even is a slight drive lag as X starts because it loads so dang fast).

My personal test does not prove much besides my own theory to myself. Feel free to run your own tests but KDE is a bit slower booting then gnome. KDE even needs to show the pretty startup screen where gnome don't.

 

True Master Thomas.....KDE being kludgy is really a thing of the past (in relation to Gnome)

 

that could also explain why Gnome is faster...KDE has more "eye candy" per-say to load compared to Gnome. along with certain applications...more start-up items in kde perhaps? also depends on your hardware...
I used to use Gnome all the time. I have been using KDE for the last month though, and i can attest to it being slower in that aspect, (as i have not tested it thoroughly), but not enough of an impact to where it matters. though..everyone is going to have a different opinion on this...

 

You got that right.

And for those who use any of the *buntu distributions are going to have a slight advantage to boot time because they don't use the BSD init system where most distributions still use the BSD init system, that improves boot to a degree.

 

My experience is that the speed of KDE 4 highly depends on ones graphics hardware (and of course the driver). If you have a pretty strong graphics card it can be very fast, but if you have something with very limited or no acceleration capabilities (e.g. older integrated Intel graphics) it becomes very slow.

 

Interesting, I havent used KDE in a while (around 5 years) but before that I was under the impression that KDE was faster than Gnome as gnome had more eye candy.

 

KDE is much faster for gnome, to me.

Also, I did a post on Gnome 3 on my blog if anyone wants to read it here.

 

I get faster desktop response these days with KDE also, but I always have fairly high end HW, but it should still be relative to a point, I guess.

 

Hey debguy, noticed the kernel you're using. If you swap that kernel for the latest liquorix kernel, your suspend/hibernate and internal microphone will start working.

 

Frankly I don't care for any of these features. But thanks anyway!
What might be interesting for me is the scheduler patch that is said to increase the responsiveness [1]. I guess Liquorix already has that implemented. On the other hand I tried the userspace alternative some time ago but didn't notice any difference in my case [2].

[1] Gmane Loom
[2] Gmane Loom

 

If you wanted to tinker, you could start messing with init scripts to find out whats going on. The init scripts control every aspect of your computer. I would be willing to bet that you could find something that would fix these issues.

I have also used Debian in the past and have very good luck compiling my own kernel. You may be able to compile a new kernel which may have better drivers as well as better system optimization in general.

 

True! But if I really wanted to do that I'd use Arch, not Debian.
Honestly I'm pretty lazy. I want a system that runs fine out of the box, and Debian gives me that. I have no problems with tinkering, I simply prefer not to do it if everything I need works up to a point that I'm fine with.

 

Suspend/hibernate on a laptop? yeah, who wants their laptop to power down if they leave it for a while anyway....

 

My computers simply are usually on or off. I either work with it or I turn it off completely. If I leave just for some minutes or even an hour I still want it to work because I'm a massive torrent seeder of Linux ISOs.

 

Maybe the most important site for people looking for software in Debian:
Debian -- Packages

...and its Ubuntu counterpart:
Ubuntu -- Ubuntu Packages Search

 

yeah, j/k....but it bugged me as a matter of principle....with the stock squeeze kernel I had mine set to shutdown if I left the house and forgot. But, I DO use mic with Skype, and that "latest" liquorix kernel fixed it....prior ones did NOT.

Just a heads up.

 

Thomas, are you using Blogilo in Gnome? i am but it pulled in a ton of QT/KDE libraries....not that I care, I like to replace everything with them....hehe

just curious.

 

I haven't used Gnome in awhile. I use KDE exclusively.

 

ah....I've seen you post some gnome screenies....good for you....what distro? I'm just 'stuck' with gnome right now.

 

Chakra and OpenSuSE.