New Raspbian Brings Performance Improvements, Updated Packages To Raspberry Pi

[kaidenshi]

I switched to Void Linux on my Pi 3B+ recently and it's much faster than Raspbian, which surprised me since the latter is tweaked by the hardware manufacturer directly.

[starshipeleven]

I switched to Void Linux on my Pi 3B+ recently and it's much faster than Raspbian, which surprised me since the latter is tweaked by the hardware manufacturer directly.

The "hardware manufacturer"'s main goal isn't best performance but ease of use (as the raspi is supposed to be a learning tool for kids). They don't "optimize" anything.

[kaidenshi]

The "hardware manufacturer"'s main goal isn't best performance but ease of use (as the raspi is supposed to be a learning tool for kids). They don't "optimize" anything.

I never said it was a main goal, I said they optimize it, and they do. They have a "fbturbo" xorg driver that performs better than vesa or the regular framebuffer driver, they tweak the boot so it's much faster than it would be stock, and the kernel is also optimized for the Pi family. Or in the foundation's own words:

"Raspbian is a free operating system based on Debian, optimised for the Raspberry Pi hardware." and "Raspbian is a community project under active development, with an emphasis on improving the stability and performance of as many Debian packages as possible."

[starshipeleven]

They have a "fbturbo" xorg driver that performs better than vesa or the regular framebuffer driver,

Comes from Sunxi project (Allwinner hardware), and it's mostly generic (using NEON media extensions on ARM CPUs, hacked out parts of the framebuffer driver that are not needed on an ARM device).

https://www.mankier.com/4/fbturbo

AFAIK they did add some minor hardware acceleration in fbturbo for the raspi though.

they tweak the boot so it's much faster than it would be stock

not hard

and the kernel is also optimized for the Pi family.

It's a hacked up embedded device kernel with code that won't be accepted upstream.

"Raspbian is a free operating system based on Debian, optimised for the Raspberry Pi hardware." and "Raspbian is a community project under active development, with an emphasis on improving the stability and performance of as many Debian packages as possible."

That's what they say, yes.

[kaidenshi]

Comes from Sunxi project (Allwinner hardware), and it's mostly generic (using NEON media extensions on ARM CPUs, hacked out parts of the framebuffer driver that are not needed on an ARM device).

https://www.mankier.com/4/fbturbo

AFAIK they did add some minor hardware acceleration in fbturbo for the raspi though.

Yes, and adding it to Raspbian is an optimization for speed. So you agree, they optimize the graphics driver.

not hard

Correct, some optimizations are easy. So you agree, they optimize boot.

It's a hacked up embedded device kernel with code that won't be accepted upstream.

As is pretty much every ARM specific kernel right now. So you agree, they optimize the kernel.

That's what they say, yes.

And they are a non-profit foundation dedicated to furthering education, so they have no reason to lie. So you agree, they said they optimize it.

They don't "optimize" anything.

You just agreed several times that they do. Why are you arguing with yourself?

[kpedersen]

Raspbian does some optimisations. For example compare it to FreeBSD's Raspberry Pi port. Even a basic "pkg add" with lots of dependency processing takes a much longer time and that is *much* simpler than the apt-get stuff.

So probably just SMP and compiler optimisation flags to take advantage of the specific ARM features?

But yeah, Raspbian isn't just some hobbiest ricer distribution. You can still get stuff done on it without faffing.

Raspbian has done what very few have managed... they have reached a good compromise between functionality and performance

... if only it was open hardware :/