Whats the fastest distro?

I'm looking for the fastest and lightest distro.

I've spent a few good hours trying to install Gentoo, and I'm definitely not going to quit until it's done; but what other distro can compete with Gentoos speed. I've heard even Arch cannot match it.

 

How do you define "fastest"? About source-based distros... Did you evaluate the cost of compiling?

What I mean is that there is PROBABLY just a very small performance gain in most tasks over, say, Arch (or any other binary-based DIY distro), at a cost of a great deal of time compiling. MAYBE Gentoo is faster once you have your system up and running, but you sure spent many hours building it. And even then, you have to keep the system up to date, which means more compiling...

Now, to answer your question, I would say that any distro that allows you to build the system yourself like debian, arch, slackware, etc. are going to be pretty light and fast.

 

Gentoo is fast, but not that much faster. Unless you have a really fast processor, it isn't worth the added time for a small bump in speed.

Also if you using a ~keyword, chances are you'll have to solve bugs on your own too.

 

Well gentoo might be the one.
What i basically do is that i build my own custom kernel with only things relevant to my HW and other things (networking, netfilters..)and tune up system services. Fast enough for me .

Just yesterday i recompiled new kernel (made rpm package) for my home router/firewall/gateway linux. It runs CentOS 5.4 (now with 2.6.32 kernel), booting in runlevel 3 by default (no X), so even on my old box (athlon 1.7ghz+1gb ram) its pretty smooth .
No gentoo needed ...

 

I don't see the point of a 'fastest' distro. I use Arch because it's the best balance. It's as fast as gentoo (on the human scale), but without all the tedious compiling. Spending a few hours compiling just so you can get 0.5 seconds of extra time isn't worth it. All distros still have to wait for human input, or it'll just idle. I'd rather have stability. Arch has the best balance between stability and ease of use and speed.

 

Building the right options into your Kernel makes the biggest difference performance wise.

I wouldn't recommend running Gentoo a laptop either, it would take to long to constantly re-compile all the software, and puts a lot more stress on laptops that manufacturers never accounted for.

The next best is Arch, which is similar by building from the bottom up, except it ships pre compiled binaries.

 

Gentoo is for wimps, real men use Linux From Scratch.

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

 

As most have pointed out, compiling from source for a specific system, provides only a small amount of performance benefit. It's certainly not why I use Gentoo. (I guess if I were to be precise, I actually use Funtoo)

For me there are two benefits from using Gentoo. The first is the fact that it is a rolling release distro, as are others like Archlinux. I have never even been tempted to distro hop, and I would never dream of having to upgrade my Linux system, just to get either a new version of an application, utility, or driver. Here's some articles/threads on this issue.

Toolbox for IT Article
Ubuntu User Forum Thread
Techenclave Thread

The second is that I have been able to learn a lot about the way Linux works by using Gentoo. Tweaking the system is easy, and as others have pointed out, if you want speed, then you need to configure your system as lean as possible. With Gentoo is very easy to do that. I have used it for years, almost exclusively on laptops, (Apple/PPC and WinTel), and never seen any issues with using it on that platform.

So, I would suggest trying a distro and sticking with it until you know your way around it. Distro hopping introduces issues just for the sake of distro hopping. All distros have their benefits, and they all have their weaknesses. You can check out lots of them at places like Distrowatch.

Good Luck..

 

I found crunchbang to be pretty fast.

 

For a fast disro, you can't beat Arch...No need to compile, but if you want to, it's very simple, and you get to choose EVERYTHING about your system.

 

Any distro is fast when you recompile everything to match your hardware. Gentoo just forces you to do so, but other distros allow you to compile too.

 

Another vote for Crunchbang


running it on my netbook, its pretty fast and uses very little resources,

Actually i found that Chromium used more ram than the OS which is quite amusing

 

You make a good point, but how long does it take to compile something on gentoo. I heard 24 hours for compiling KDE are these exaggerations?

Would that be too much stress on a notebook?

 

I don't know about time, but I can you realitive figures. On a full Gentoo system (~800 packages, X11, WM, etc.) it takes my i7 rig just under 2 hours to do a full recompile. However, it takes about 1 minute for a kernel compile. I'd never bother compiling Gentoo on something slower.

 

Its not like the laptop will "break" if it compiles non-stop for a day or so.
Heck, if it breaks, then you can return it saying its defective

But as has been mentioned, compiling will only result in an incremental performace benifit (I'm not sure that it will be noticeable).
What WILL affect performce is what packages are running,

 

The extra wear WILL hurt your laptop though, laptops aren't designed for maximum load for hours or even days.

 

Gentoo doesn't require you to recompile your entire system on a regular basis. You can also choose when you want to do the really big compiles, like when there are upgrades to gcc or your Desktop Environments, like KDE or Gnome. There's also binaries that are maintained in the portage tree for some things, like OpenOffice, Firefox, and recently Google's Chrome, for those who don't want to specifically compile those large applications. There are even a couple of binary Gentoo distros, Sabayon, and BinToo, which don't require you to compile anything. However, it's true that the standard usage of Gentoo involves compiling everything from source, which does add time to installing and maintaining the system. Having said that, throughout almost 6 years of using Gentoo, on 2 Mac/PPC, and 8 (Win)/Intel, laptops, I've never seen any Gentoo "wear and tear" effect on my machines. I've only ever had 1 HDD fail, (which was probably due to the load cycle count issue anyway), and pretty much nothing else. Admittedly, I've also installed Gentoo on every laptop I've had during that time, so I can't measure what would have happened without it. I certainly can't imagine that the overall lifetime Gentoo compile load, provides more wear and tear on a laptop than most gaming software. As a matter of fact most games will pound on all parts of a laptop, CPU, RAM, HDD, and GPU, and that's before you try to overclock your machine.

I would again point out that for me, the main benefits from using Gentoo, have nothing to do with speed. So I wouldn't suggest trying it, as a "fast distro". To the OP's question, I would again point out that if it's speed that you want out of a Linux installation, the first thing you need to do is learn how Linux works, get some experience installing it, (whatever distro you select), and then get good at installing only those parts you want, resulting in a leaner installation. This can be done with any distro. The leaner you make your Linux install, the faster it will be, and that will provide you with the biggest single speed boost you can achieve. As a matter of fact this subject, (which comes up every now and then, with pretty much the same responses), shouldn't be "What's the fastest distro?". It should really be "What's the fastest Linux X Window Manager, or Desktop Environment?". Simply changing your DE or WM, can really improve system speed, as many here can attest to. There's a bunch of great further reading on different DEs and WMs, at sites like Windows Manager for X.

Good Luck..

 

I found that Faster Hardware really helps in the Speed department...Ubuntu runs like a raped ape on my Precision....

 

Really, ANY distro can be fast depending on what options you choose. Of course, something like Gentoo will have you compiling everything from scratch, just for your particular system so you'll be a little faster than with generic packages. My current favorite, Arch, is also going to be fast because you pretty much install only what you need and its source-based design is efficient. However, any sort of minimal install etc.. is going to be fast.

Unlike Windows, Linux will typically get faster however with subsequent iterations as more optimizations are performed. Even things like compositing, which seem to be resource hogs, are typically done with such optimization that they're really quite efficient. There is also something to be said for the way Unix-like OSes utilize memory.

 

Hurt how ?
AFAIK, laptops ARE designed for 24/7 max load.

 

Really, if you choose the exact same config for Gentoo and say Ubuntu, and you compile everything in the config, you'll get the same speed. What people seems to forget is you can also compile for other distro.