A Five-Way Linux Distribution Comparison In 2010

[Cape]

Well one can see it this way, i.e. a pointless distro war.
On the other hand, we have a great opportunity here to understand what is happening, and this could benefit ALL distros, ALL Linux users.
Two choices. Too bad the correct choice does not seem to interest a lot of people.

You could have been right, if you were posting before gedgon.

[zeb_]

You could have been right, if you were posting before gedgon.

At the time I posted this Gedgon's post had not appeared on the site yet. I guess the figures delayed his post, depsite the timestamp.

Secondly, Gegdon did a terrific work that confirms my initial tests.

Thirdly, I still maintain what I said: Gegdon just does belong to the few people interested in this issue, instead of the idiotic flamewar.

[fanATic]

TBH Ubuntu is bloated piece of crap. Yes, I'm using Arch+Gnome, and it's great to see vanilla Gnome, compared to Ubuntu Gnome OSX wannabe. I didn't expect that Nautilus in Ubuntu can be so sluggish and laggy when scrolling files, also opening documents from Nautilus to Writer is slow as hell.

No matter what this comparision and results says, when using Arch, it feels snappier system compared to Ubuntu and it is snappier.

Let's see, base memory usage on clean install and initial boot up in Virtualbox:

Arch+Gnome: ~155MB

Ubuntu: ~220MB

[linuxforall]

And yet in benchmakrs, Arch never ever manages to surpass this bloated crappy distro called Ubuntu.

[zeb_]

And yet in benchmakrs, Arch never ever manages to surpass this bloated crappy distro called Ubuntu.

And yet, nobody has been able to reproduce the results of the article.
And yet, many questions about the test conditions have been left unanswered.
And yet, all the test flaws pointed out here have been ignored.

[linuxforall]

Yep and there is nothing conclusive proven by anyone, cursing the most popular distro out there which is singlehandedly responsible for popularity of desktop linux today won't get Arch fanboyz nowhere really. You can curse Ubuntu, call it bloated but it works and works good for myriads of users who install and use it on daily basis. Its well supported like no other distro and backed up quite good. If Arch was the way of installing distro for average Joe, desktop linux would be dead and buried by now.

Btw, all those who call Ubuntu bloated take heed, its meant to work outta box, no configure this, compile that but then if you are anal, be my guest as it allows all that as well. Also there are countless ways to install lighter version of Ubuntu as well as lxde versions that can go toe to toe with these so called anal favorite distros.

[zeb_]

Yep and there is nothing conclusive proven by anyone, cursing the most popular distro out there which is singlehandedly responsible for popularity of desktop linux today won't get Arch fanboyz nowhere really.

Well, if you carefully read my previous posts (which you probably did not), you would see that I NEVER bashed Ubuntu or any distro, and that on the contrary always asked for more investigating of the Arch "issue" because it could benefit ALL Linux users, not only one distro. But I know it is easier to dismiss all criticism by calling people asking questions by calling them "fanboys".

If Arch was the way of installing distro for average Joe, desktop linux would be dead and buried by now.

As far as I remember nobody said Arch was easy to install, and that is completely out of the scope of this debate or the original article. And you call people fanboys? Pot... kettle...

[linuxforall]

TBH Ubuntu is bloated piece of crap. Yes, I'm using Arch+Gnome, and it's great to see vanilla Gnome, compared to Ubuntu Gnome OSX wannabe. I didn't expect that Nautilus in Ubuntu can be so sluggish and laggy when scrolling files, also opening documents from Nautilus to Writer is slow as hell.

No matter what this comparision and results says, when using Arch, it feels snappier system compared to Ubuntu and it is snappier.

Let's see, base memory usage on clean install and initial boot up in Virtualbox:

Arch+Gnome: ~155MB

Ubuntu: ~220MB

@zeb,

My reply was for this post, not for yours and yes, I have read all. When you call one of the most successful distros out there bloated piece of crap, it speaks of nothing but blatant fanboyism and yes, Arch is NOT FASTER THAN UBUNTU, but if you like to have the satisfaction of thinking it is, there is absolutely no cure for PLACEBO.

[zeb_]

@zeb,

My reply was for this post, not for yours and yes, I have read all. When you call one of the most successful distros out there bloated piece of crap, it speaks of nothing but blatant fanboyism and yes, Arch is NOT FASTER THAN UBUNTU, but if you like to have the satisfaction of thinking it is, there is absolutely no cure for PLACEBO.

There is no cure for placebo, but there are some for bad faith.

To start off, I do find inappropriate to call Ubuntu a "bloated piece of crap" because that's unsubstanciated. OK, that is said.

However, you're just tilting at windmills when you point out that Arch is not faster than Ubuntu or any other distro. You'll notice that the tests I did (and those of Gegdon) show that Archlinux is NOT faster than Ubuntu, but NOT slower either, significantly. The impression of lightness some people have experienced is simply caused by the lower number of default daemons running in background, but you can do that with many distros.

[linuxforall]

Arch or Gentoo can never ever be slower, in fact the right comparison would be a Ubuntu light distro versus Arch but the tests done here and elsewhere have come to the conclusion that optimized distros with today's multi core high ram PCs don't really benefit much, one of the reasons I don't bother compiling my own kernel. Also another worthy contender in these tests would be sidux which is blazingly fast.