Is Antergos Arch Linux Really Faster Than Ubuntu, Fedora?

[Vim_User]

It should be clear to anyone even slightly experienced with Linux (and OSes in general) that the fastest distributions always will be the source based ones, but only if the person administering the system is proficient in tuning the OS to the hardware and the specific use case/workload.

On a different topic: Seriously, Michael, if you test a distro put its name in your spellchecker. We know already that that quantity is more important for you that quality, but not being able to spell Antergos correctly on the complete first page is a new low for you.

[pmorph]

As for desktop usage, my experience is that the *perceived* performance is close to identical almost in all cases, excluding the systems whose creators made plain&simple *mistakes*
In other words: If your performance sucks, the system is more likely to be broken than "badly tuned".

[xeekei]

At the end of the day, the performance of Antergos Linux was within the same ballpark as Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Fedora 20. The only cases where Antergos was faster was where the rolling-release distribution had quickly pulled in a newer version of Mesa / Linux kernel that benefited some particular graphics tests, etc, but there was no magical performance out of Antergos as many Arch Linux fans would like the Linux community to believe.

I'm sorry, but the very reason we "believe" it is faster, is precisely because it is more up to date. There could of course be performance regressions, but most of the time performance increases with updates.

Nobody claimed any "magical performance" just because it is Arch.

[smitty3268]

I haven't tried Arch myself, but you should also test things like memory usage, startup time, application load times, etc. These factors are more important than computation performance when it comes to how fast and light weight a system feels.

Yeah, i strongly suspect all the people saying Arch is faster are talking about responsiveness issues, not throughput benchmarks like michael tests. That's been something he's been told for years, but he hasn't ever added any better tests.

[akincer]

documentation is also top-notch

It's been at least a year since I last gave Arch a whirl, but I did NOT find this to be the case. At all. I'm not a Linux noob and have run and managed various distros for quite a few years. But my experience in building a highly functional desktop from scratch is non-existent, so that's what I set out to do with Arch and turned to the documentation to assist me in this.

To call that experience frustrating would be too kind. I'm not quite sure what I'd call it, but the one thing I can say is that the documentation for building what I'd call a highly functional desktop was nearly worthless. And I tried browsing the Wiki directly and Googling thirty ways from Sunday. I was not impressed with the results.

Maybe in the last year or two the documentation on this has made leaps and bounds, but if not then I'd call it a dismal failure for what seems like a very ordinary task someone might want to accomplish.

FWIW -- I tried finding documentation on building a highly function desktop using both GNOME and XFCE. IIRC, the XFCE documentation was light years better than the GNOME, but both were absurdly incomplete.

[edoantonioco]

You should make a benchmark including Kaosx, reason? read the FAQ Its just to see how it behaves for games.
And I would like to see if SteamOS is any better now, because there have been some time since the last time it was tested.

[sarmad]

I haven't tried Arch myself, but you should also test things like memory usage, startup time, application load times, etc. These factors are more important than computation performance when it comes to how fast and light weight a system feels.

[dungeon]

I recently tested at Half Life lost coast with my recent NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti Manjaro and gave me 150 fps and Ubuntu gave me 100 fps.

Lets guess, you are using Unity on Manjaro... I know what is it nvidia developer uses Manjaro, because he likes green & black .

But OK maybe default is faster, because of some features, software versions, etc... basicaly there is not much diff other than that, and u can tweak both distros - that means - major difference of all OS & distros is user who use it .

[mitcoes]

I would like phoronix to repeat twice a year this tests

I recently tested at Half Life lost coast with my recent NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti Manjaro and gave me 150 fps and Ubuntu gave me 100 fps.

Of course with same kernels and almost same packages running it is almost the same BUT

As you show, a Fedora not updated is far slower than a normal Antergos always updated

I still have Xubuntu + Manjaro and I prefer Manjaro, and I will switch to any other that i would feel better with and it is not imperceptible magic, perhaps the benchmark tests do not show enough the differences for good or for bad.

[migizi]

At some point we need to stop the pissing matches about which distro is best. No single distro is perfect for everyone. If it was we wouldn't have so many choices. I use Gentoo but I don't go around telling people my system is better because I build everything for my exact hardware. I use it because it's best for me. Ubuntu is good for people who want minimal interaction with maintenance. Arch is good rolling release distro that keeps you on the bleeding edge. Hell my employer uses CentOS. To each their own, use what works best for you or the task at hand. Compilers are getting better every year so the speed difference in a lot of these test won't even be visible to the majority of people.