Fast and powerful distro?

[Panix]

KDE 4 is an epic fail. Linux users were able to claim, once upon a time, about the sleekness and efficient use compared to bloat especially when comparing to Windows.

Now, especially with KDE 4, it's gone the opposite way. Also, KDE has eliminated many apps or replaced them and they aren't good replacements. KDE devs also don't seem to care about bugs as many remain way after new revisions of KDE. I am concerned about where Gnome is going, too, although with XFCE, at least there are a few alternatives left. I never used to like Gnome but KDE 4 looks like it's self-destructing as far as I'm concerned.

If you want 'light' but some easy, functional desktop stuff (more GUI options), try XFCE w/ your distro?

[Fenrin]

I also used Arch Linux a long time and can recommend it too. A derivat distro of Arch linux is Archbang, which has a preinstalled OpenBox desktop. But I never tried ArchBang, it's pretty young and now I've used Calculate and Fedora.

The XFCE version of Calculate is also leightweight and pretty good, but documentation and forum support/activity is poor compared to Arch Linux. I was curious about a Gentoo based system, that's why I installed Calculate instead of Arch Linux. But Calculate seems a bit less stable and more buggy than Arch Linux, even if Arch Linux is mostly not considered as stable distro

[mrugiero]

If you want 'light' but some easy, functional desktop stuff (more GUI options), try XFCE w/ your distro?

There is also LXDE, it is not "THE" easy desktop, but it is several times lighter than XFCE and easy enough to use without a great knowledge.

[Nevertime]

KDE 4 is an epic fail. Linux users were able to claim, once upon a time, about the sleekness and efficient use compared to bloat especially when comparing to Windows.

Now, especially with KDE 4, it's gone the opposite way. Also, KDE has eliminated many apps or replaced them and they aren't good replacements. KDE devs also don't seem to care about bugs as many remain way after new revisions of KDE. I am concerned about where Gnome is going, too, although with XFCE, at least there are a few alternatives left. I never used to like Gnome but KDE 4 looks like it's self-destructing as far as I'm concerned.

If you want 'light' but some easy, functional desktop stuff (more GUI options), try XFCE w/ your distro?

I keep hereing coments like this on the forum and can't believe the ignorance. In reality there in no way anybody whos used a recent verion of KDE could believe youve also used a recent KDE. I no there's a lot of tribal bullshit about gui but people keep to the facts. KDE is faster than gnome and a very slick gui. If its not for you fine use a diffrent option but don't just bad mouth it with misinformation. KDE devs are doing a stunning job.

[Nevertime]

It's the latest and greatest. Without new solid and Dolphin bugs it's still slow. Another example. Qt/Plasma X11 native backend performance

Do you want test with I/O operations?

Long story short, compare Gnome and KDE on old machine (e.g. '03 laptop). Gnome will be slow, KDE4 unusable.

As i pointed out 4.6 is new and has bugs... no major distro will ship with kde 4.6.0, they'll wait till at least 4.6.1. Plus part of the advantage over gnome comes when your using kde apps rather than gtk.

Do your tests with kde 4.5.5 and on kde run the kde apps that take advantage of kde libs and compare with gnome running equivalent gtk apps.

Your test is clearly totaly flawed and just adds to the arrogant misinformation out there.

[BenderRodriguez]

sorry if this has been posted before, but I still want your current opinions. Well, I have been using Linux for a while (various distros), but not very happy. Now I want to choose a lightweight, fast, minimalist, customizable enough with no specific graphical environment, bleeding edge distro for a new laptop. I want to be able to compile from source to make my own changes. I am not a Linux expert and not even an advanced user. So what do you guys suggest?

Thanks.

Then i would recommend gentoo. You can make software as minimalist as possible choosing what you want from an application leaving out stuff you don't need (USE flags). Gentoo is as customizable as any other distro. Keeping bleeding edge is even easier as it is YOU that decides what parts of the system get the newest or stable versions. Gentoo is completely compiled from source and using their install handbook to install it is easy as pie. And mind that software compiled for your specific hardware will always be faster than the software from main distributions with generic assumptions.

[BenderRodriguez]

Granted some distros may use a very aggresive optimizations then still gentoo leaves them in dust with the power of USE flags for example let's take VLC media player. Most distros compile vlc with everything that it supports etc. while with gentoo you can compile ONLY the stuff you care about. And it applies to most of the software in gentoo where you can tweak what to keep and what to throw out. And while it is possible to compile software in other distros then gentoo makes it a lot easier being a source based distro

[renkin]

Granted some distros may use a very aggresive optimizations then still gentoo leaves them in dust with the power of USE flags for example let's take VLC media player. Most distros compile vlc with everything that it supports etc. while with gentoo you can compile ONLY the stuff you care about. And it applies to most of the software in gentoo where you can tweak what to keep and what to throw out. And while it is possible to compile software in other distros then gentoo makes it a lot easier being a source based distro

Off topic here, but do you happen to know what USE flag enables encoding in VLC? I'm curious about vlmc but needs encoding support in vlc.. Looked in use.local.desc and no encoding USE flag

On topic. I too suggest Gentoo.. It's amazing.

[BenderRodriguez]

Off topic here, but do you happen to know what USE flag enables encoding in VLC? I'm curious about vlmc but needs encoding support in vlc.. Looked in use.local.desc and no encoding USE flag

On topic. I too suggest Gentoo.. It's amazing.

You might want to try the vlc-9999 version (you need to unmask it). Here is a nice website with all the additional "repositories" for layman.

http://gpo.zugaina.org/

[renkin]

You might want to try the vlc-9999 version (you need to unmask it). Here is a nice website with all the additional "repositories" for layman.

http://gpo.zugaina.org/

Ah that never even crossed my mind as the vlmc site said "requires: vlc 1.1.x" which was already available in portage. I'll try some overlays or the live ebuild. thanks!