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Original post by Vixtro
WTF! My friend has a 300 mhz pentium II with a klamath core that he uses Gentoo on. He said Gentoo is uber fast so don''t say that. Plus, Window 98 is DOS based and way out dated. Vic can use Arch Linux.

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Gentoo is, above all else, versatile. It has the potential to be as fast as any other Linux out there, or faster. However, the difference in speed between source-based and binary distros is usually not great (except with certain applications, see above); some Gentoo zealots exaggerate these benefits, claiming Gentoo substantially faster than anything else; some non-Gentoo zealots, as a reaction, categorically reject any claims that it might possibly have any noticeable benefits. As usual in these matters, both extremes are wrong.

Personally, I''d hesitate to install Gentoo from source on a computer as slow as a PII unless you can compile it on another (faster) computer. It is, of course, possible to install Gentoo from binaries; you miss out on the speed gain (where it applies), but you still get a very versatile distro with the very nice Portage technology.

Of course, I''m not unbiased; I''m a Gentoo user attempting to take a more nuanced view, but I''m still in favour of Gentoo. Make of this post what you will.

The solution to your problem is clear. Don''t use a GUI. All you need is the command line. You''ll save yourself so much time and get so much more done. This road is narrow and rarely travelled these days, but it is the only way to learn the secret of life, which is...oops, spilled my drink, brb.

Yeah when I first start using linux with GUI it seemed kinda slow then I found out about priorities and renice and found out that the X server was running at very low priority. So I reniced it and it made the GUI a lot snappier that''s for sure. As you probably figured from all the post here linux doesn''t come out of the box optimized for GUI. Rember it mainly used for server stuff and has a lot of background processes,etc that you''ll have to get rid of or tweak if you want it to be as fast as what your used to in windows.
If you wait for 2.6 kernel it should be better since I remeber reading somewhere that they tweaked the kernel so that the GUI would be more responsive and realtime stuff will work better with linux.
Sometimes i hear people say "Linux is better because it''s fast etc"... that''s a big big lie, in my opinion.- I''d argue with that since linux is the only OS I ever use that actually makes use of all my memory(I usually got over 1 gig ram on all my machines) and like I said if you know your linux shit and tweak,recomile your kernel you''ll be pushing your hardware to the limits which windows never even gets close to doing.


If God played dice, He''d win.
—Ian Stewart, Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos

like stated above... linux is no premade thing like windows. what (among other stuff) sperates n00bs from pros is the knowledge about how to put your linux together to get what you want (functionality, speed, stability or security).
GenToo (and LFS) are powerfull brutes, also concerning speed, but only if you know damn well what you have to do to achieve this goal. many people take a conventional distro linux and moan about speed or functionality. yeah... that''s linux... it demand work, RTFM and more... you have to know your OS to run it well

I''am using 2.6.x kernel since 2.6.1 and have got senssible perfomance boost in gui apps (especially KDE). I''ve seen somewhere benchmark (can''t remember where), where optimized version of GCC takes 20-30% compiling time advantage over non-optimized.

I personally use LFS 5.0.

Sorry my bad english

-vic- have you tried Vector? I''m using the normal(not SOHO or deluxe) on my AMD 1800+ and it seems like my computer is on speed, so maybe it''ll work on your hardware pretty good(seeing how it''s target is old hardware)

To the guy who told me not to use a GUI: come on... how on earth am i supposed to browse the web not using a GUI?

And there *is* light/fast GUIs. Take applications written with the FOX toolkit for example... they're really fast. Wish there was an entire enviroment based on FOX.

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-vic- have you tried Vector? I'm using the normal(not SOHO or deluxe) on my AMD 1800+ and it seems like my computer is on speed, so maybe it'll work on your hardware pretty good(seeing how it's target is old hardware)

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I haven't, but i'm curious about it. The thing is... the old browsers, for example, don't render pages as good as the new firefox :/

Victor.

[edited by - -vic- on April 10, 2004 9:49:55 PM]

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Original post by -vic-
To the guy who told me not to use a GUI: come on... how on earth am i supposed to browse the web not using a GUI?

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lynx + aalib.

naaahhh...
links rules ^_^

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I''ve got a laptop (PII 366 64MB)

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You''ve stated above that you can''t put cash out for a new system right now, but is it at all possible for you to plunk in a little more ram? Even just pushing it up to 128MB should give you enough so that you not only fit the kernel, X, your wm and a word processor & Mozilla or something, but some overhead to cache a good bit of disk, which really leads to better performance on older systems -- I run 2 xterminals + a local X off of a PIII 450, and get reasonably good speed, even when all the terminals are being used.

KB