Is Arch Linux Really Faster Than Ubuntu?

[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]

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]

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.

[b15hop]

Arg, can't edit.

[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.

[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]

@b15shop

If you don't know that it is possible to let other machine compile code for another in Gentoo then you should ask yourself what have you learned for that whole year if i using gentoo second month already know that and many more. Too much optimization will actually hurt performance and don't tell me crap that i don't gain performance. I am using a netbook and needed source based distro to squeeze every bit out of it to actually normally work and i will tell you, Ubuntu is a cow, a big fat cow, even Ubuntu's Gnome which is supposedly memory usage friendlier was heavier than my KDE on Gentoo. And because all applications are exactly suited for my exact CPU IT IS running faster.

Of course I know that. Why do you think I was talking about cflags in the first place. To compile for another machine, just make the compiler target another architecture. I've even got most of the way through a LFS install a few times... I didn't enjoy linux from scratch because in the end I realise using an OS that needs more work to everything which is just counter productive. So it would be right to say Gentoo is moderately difficult but LFS is truly hard core.

I stick to arch for the same reason you stick to gentoo. Back when I only had 512MB of ram, Arch made my PC feel fast. Ubuntu was just bloated to hell and fvwm + arch meant that I could still watch 720p video with no stutter. Windows XP couldn't even do that.

[Kano]

@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...

[Apopas]

Ah yes, but in my case gentoo wasn't any faster at all. In fact I think even after using gentoo for a whole year, I realised it was slower. It was all in my head that compiling everything == faster. Let someone else worry about compiling the system and optimising it. Then I can just use the OS for what I want.

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.

[mirv]

I don't have any problems maintaining a Gentoo installation; I've been upgrading the same one since 2006 across drives and file systems. On the other hand, I found it more difficult to customise Ubuntu to how I wanted it, and ended up switching to Gentoo on that machine too (and as a bonus, compiled xbmc from source runs much smoother).
This doesn't make Ubuntu worse than Gentoo - it simply means that I find Gentoo easier to use for my purposes.
Ubuntu, Arch, Gentoo, they're all aimed at different crowds.