fastest linux distro?

Just wonderin what the experts opinions are on which distro (and version of that distro) is fastest (relatively new versions only tho)... I've heard that yoper is meant to be the fastest but i'm not sure. Any good links to benchmarks etc??
cheers,
Josh D.

 

Basically the fastest will be the one without the cruft that normal distributions come with. In this case, you really just need to do a minimal install yourself.

 

Basically, any distro that requires you to build it from the ground up is really fast. Arch and Gentoo are both fast, with Gentoo edging Arch out. However, Gentoo deals entirely with source compilation, which requires a lot of time.

 

Gentoo is definitely the fastest. You should definitely check it out. The time spent compiling source is minimal after the initial installation. You can just run upgrades once a week at night, so you won't even notice them.

 

Yeah. Gentoo is the fastest, but I'm not too inclined to have everything from source. pacman for Arch is a very good package installer. It's rolling release is very good as well.

I guess Arch is Gentoo but without needing to compile everything.

Then again, it's really hard to notice the differences if you configure your system right. Differences might be in the seconds or milliseconds.

 

I put my vote on Arch.

I agree that Gentoo has an edge in runtime, but if you're someone who likes to try out different packages and programs like me, you may be best served with a binary package distribution system like Arch has. Arch's pacman is, in my opinion, the best package manager out there.

As zephyrus17 pointed out, the difference in runtime speed between Arch and Gentoo may hardly be noticeable if both are configured adequately. The difference between Arch and a heavyweight distro like Fedora, however, is quite something.

 

I too think that you, as a 'regular' user, can't differentiate beween arch and gentoo concerning speed.
I am using arch myself, reasons haven been named already~

 

LFS

Really though... Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, Crux, Sourcemage, Lunar... there are a lot out there that are very light and will essentially feel the same speed.

Debian is quite quick, but does make some compromises as far as having extra daemons running by default.

Zenwalk and Vector give you a fairly well configured graphical environment on top of a Slackware base, with a dependency resolving frontend for the package manager. Thus, they have a lot of Slackware's benefits in speed, but they do make some assumptions on what you want running, so it will probably end up being a little slower.

 

There's only SO fast a computer can run until it's hindered by hardware and stuff. If you want the fastest computer, then you should just do text based. But, that's bad for normal usability. So you install a windows manager or desktop environment, and that'll cut into the speed again. You've got to find a balance between usage comfort and convenience, and speed.

And no matter how fast the speed is, it'll still have to wait for your input. Even if you run a supercomputer, it'll still depend on the speed of transfer of your internet provider, etc. If your computer is fairly modern and has enough hardware power, then it's not going to be *that* much of a difference between running Arch or Gentoo, or Arch or Ubuntu, etc.

 

What if you're doing massive number crunching? (Specifically running N-body simulations for several days worth of time) Will there be a noticeable decrease in the time it takes to compute each step? Thanks!

 

Well, I don't think so, actually. Honestly, I'll agree that a distro like Ubuntu takes longer to boot up that Arch/Gentoo, but after that, if you leave the computer in idle, and run the number crunching with no other processes running, they'lll be about the same. Granted that you have the adequate hardware capabilites. Even if there's a difference, and considering that you're running the crunching for period of a few days, the difference might not be over a few minutes, which is marginal considering the total duration.

There's a BIG difference between 32bit and 64bit speeds, though. So you best use the 64bit option of whatever OS you use.

 

Thanks! I was planning on installing a 64-bit version, but the compatibilities threw me off (I need pandora to work ). But if I make a partition just for number crunching it would be worth it.

How much of a difference would it be (a rough percentile)?

 

You're better off asking an emu, because I have no idea of the numbers.. But all I know is that it makes better use of the multiple cores. So there can be no drawbacks, only advantages.