Is Arch Linux Really Faster Than Ubuntu?

[mirv]

@mirv

To compile xbmc from source you don't need gentoo at all. I worte a few scripts to compile it in the home - different branches/revisions. That works with every distro where the build-deps are installed - incl. Debian or Ubuntu. Stupid argument...

Never said you did need Gentoo.
Just that it was a bonus that it ran much smoother - due to being compiled from source. Gentoo does that by default, Ubuntu prefers binary packages. So things worked better on Gentoo for me; I'm used to Gentoo and can customise it much easier than Ubuntu.
Or is using what is best for yourself being stupid...?

[b15hop]

@mirv

To compile xbmc from source you don't need gentoo at all. I worte a few scripts to compile it in the home - different branches/revisions. That works with every distro where the build-deps are installed - incl. Debian or Ubuntu. Stupid argument...

That is also true. Doesn't matter what distro, you can install GCC and compile any source code (usually).. What I noticed with Gentoo in fact, was that compiling everything wasn't always necessary. The only two things that gave me speed increases were compiling Xorg and compiling the kernel. I learnt how to do that in Arch and quickly got lazy again.

QUOTE=godofgrunts;129639]Sorry guys, but no self respecting Arch user would allow EXT4 to be her filesystem of choice. Which why us Archers see faster performance in things like apache and such. reiserFS for the small files, XFS for the big stuff.[/QUOTE]

I agree with that statement too. Either that or ext2... Plus ext4 is still a little new in my eyes.

After 6 continual years Gentoo user and countless of benchmarks with PTS and manual ones. I can confirm that in most cases it's the fastest OS in the world. Just use sane GCC flags and your systems shines.

Gentoo probably is faster. But that required me to compile my own kernal as well. I got sick of redoing my kernel all the time. That's my main excuse for not using Gentoo any more. In fact I do remember once having Gentoo run a fair bit faster than arch. But then a few months later I broke the system some how and realised that maintaining the fastest machine meant spending a LOT of time learning the ins and outs. I guess once you have it down to a fine art it isn't too bad. Arch is like the quick easy fix to get some more speed over ubuntu or any other bloat OS.

[b15hop]

Arg, can't edit.

[pingufunkybeat]

To compile xbmc from source you don't need gentoo at all.

Yeah, sure, but I remember compiling KDE 2 betas on Debian testing back in the day, and it created a mess of a system, where half of the system was managed by debs and the other half by automake and I ended up maintaining half of it by hand.

This sort of stuff (bleeding edge software you want to test) is naturally much easier with source-based packages like ports or gentoo's portage.

As an example: I got 4 ebuilds (small text files) almost a year ago which install the latest git radeon driver and mesa. Other than one trivial edit a few months later, that's all I've had to do to have experimental support for my chipset which fit together perfectly with the rest of my system. It updates automatically, no messing needed.

When I read about Ubuntu people trying the same thing, it's always, add this PPA, from edgers, on Karmic, Lucid, Hello Kitty, dragon dinosaur, and is this the right version, or the one from last week, and did they compile in this or that, or do you need yet another repository for experimental this and that, and where do you find it, and so on and so forth. I feel far more lost in that mess than I do with USE flags and ebuild scripts.

So, while Ubuntu certainly has its advantages, in this case gentoo is 10x easier. Source-based distros have some advantages too, especially when you're trying to install things from source.

[deanjo]

Yeah, sure, but I remember compiling KDE 2 betas on Debian testing back in the day, and it created a mess of a system, where half of the system was managed by debs and the other half by automake and I ended up maintaining half of it by hand.

This sort of stuff (bleeding edge software you want to test) is naturally much easier with source-based packages like ports or gentoo's portage.

As an example: I got 4 ebuilds (small text files) almost a year ago which install the latest git radeon driver and mesa. Other than one trivial edit a few months later, that's all I've had to do to have experimental support for my chipset which fit together perfectly with the rest of my system. It updates automatically, no messing needed.

When I read about Ubuntu people trying the same thing, it's always, add this PPA, from edgers, on Karmic, Lucid, Hello Kitty, dragon dinosaur, and is this the right version, or the one from last week, and did they compile in this or that, or do you need yet another repository for experimental this and that, and where do you find it, and so on and so forth. I feel far more lost in that mess than I do with USE flags and ebuild scripts.

So, while Ubuntu certainly has its advantages, in this case gentoo is 10x easier. Source-based distros have some advantages too, especially when you're trying to install things from source.

You can do pretty much the same thing with a build service and have the added benefit of having the build service figure out the deps, building the packages using a cluster of machines and having a package that in the end can be removed easily as well. For me, I'd rather build my custom packages on the build service over having to compile everything locally.

[pingufunkybeat]

Other than automatically distributed building, where is the difference from portage?

It also figures out dependencies, removes cleanly and easily, and all that.

I've never used a build service, but I'd imagine that it would be more complicated to set up than downloading an .ebuild file.

[deanjo]

Other than automatically distributed building, where is the difference from portage?

It also figures out dependencies, removes cleanly and easily, and all that.

I've never used a build service, but I'd imagine that it would be more complicated to set up than downloading an .ebuild file.

The advantage is that I can have nightly built packages ready for me every day in my own repository without so much a hassle building for each machine. It's especially handy where you have more then one type of architecture that you are building for and more then one flavor of linux.

[Ex-Cyber]

http://software.intel.com/en-us/arti...c-for-the-mid/

At the bottom. Read and weep.

That's for a specific application, whose maintainer added -funroll-loops to the Makefile (presumably after benchmarking to determine that it actually improved the performance of that application). It's not part of the "recommended flags" for Atom, nor is it evidence that it's a good idea to use -funroll-loops on everything.

[Apopas]

Gentoo probably is faster. But that required me to compile my own kernal as well. I got sick of redoing my kernel all the time. That's my main excuse for not using Gentoo any more.

Why redoing the kernel all the time? You just keep your .config around and you adjust it to the newer kernel. 10 minutes job. There is even an option to pack it inside your kernel image.

[Apopas]

What makes Gentoo fast and light though, is not the compile optimizations but the USE flags which help you install the things you really need and keep your system tidy and clean.
USE flags is the real power of Gentoo, not the GCC flags.