Guest pantoffel Posted September 24, 2003 Report Share Posted September 24, 2003 Hi I installed mandrake but the first thing I noticed compared to other linux distrobutions is that , mandrake is much faster! What makes it so fast? I mean gnome 2.4 starts much faster, I would like to know the following things *to*. What kernel patches does mandrake apply to 9.1? What CFLAGS does it use? What patched did you guys apply agains gnome 2.4 ( if any) What makes mandrake so fast(er) then eg debian / gentoo / slackware. (It's hard to believe that it's only the i586 optimalisation) :wink: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tuxiscool Posted September 24, 2003 Report Share Posted September 24, 2003 I also noticed the same thing when i switched to mandrake from Red Hat for the first time (Red Hat 7.2 to Mandrake 8.1). I know that there are many patches that mandrakesoft put into their kernels but i am not sure which ones sorry. The main reason though, as you said, is because of the i586 optimisations (i'm quite sure that's the case anyway). EDIT: well now i'm just confused, you said that Gentoo was slower than Mandrake???, that shouldn't be right, does anyone else know anything about this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted September 24, 2003 Report Share Posted September 24, 2003 Well, you read the disclaimer, were not OFFICIAL mandrake .... as in the company but you'll probably get some decent answers heck. I did and stayed!! Im not sure the compile is THAT good. Unless you install pre-emptive multitaking patch and recompile it isn't that although you can use the mutlimedia kernel which does... Its single proc and LOMEM only unless it detects in install you have more then it installs the enterprise kernel.... this is even less tuned for speed! However some (perhaps dodgy testing) tested Gentoo against Mandrake and Debian and Debian/Mandrake were apparently faster ??? Go figure ??? If you set up your sources (use easy urpmi: do a search in the box) you'll be able to download the kernel sources for different compiles with the .configure in the directory... Should be the best way to chweck it out cos you sound like you know what your doing!!! Welcome anyway ... and please come back!!! Heck,,, just hang around while you install the easy urpmi stuff and then get the sources!!! I got go cos Im half way through a Deb install on my laptop. CybrJackle-DOlsen ... you out there guys ??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest pantoffel Posted September 24, 2003 Report Share Posted September 24, 2003 I don't know what kernel patches mandrake uses yet. But I have heard mandrake uses Prelinking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted September 24, 2003 Report Share Posted September 24, 2003 By all accounts... Debian is pretty nippy too. Ill tell you later hopefully :D And that i386. I doubt much of Gnome startup really benefits ??? Perhaps its a better dis support.... What filesystem did you use and what were you using... Strickes mer thats the most intensive part of a Gnome startup and maybe networking ???? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted September 24, 2003 Report Share Posted September 24, 2003 I'll take a stab at it. Some say small kernel=fast....well, try again. Some say using preempt, low-latency, and performance patches=fast....well, try again. Some say gentoo, some Debian, some Slack, some ML. How is it that gentoo can be faster than ML on one machine and ML is faster on another? You ask the question of the century and it can be argued til the cows come home. Personally, I think it's code/scripts/kernel checking, ever looking, carefully watching/app errors etc.....The more nonsense/printouts/error messages you cut out the quicker processes can move on to doing their job. Startup ML, do what you normally do and every minute Ctrl>Alt>F1. Do the exact same in Debian. Which is putting out more errors/messages? There you have it, IMO...I think.....maybe?.....I d/k. :lol: I do know I've probably compiled as many kernels as cybrjackle has installed distros :lol: I once got an mdk kernel to 587kb. Was it faster? A lttle bit, but it definately was more stable....Hmmmm errors, checks, logging....less of it=faster? I don't compile the kernel anymore....waste of time, unless you need a patch for something, which in ML is rare. The obvious is hardware. What's in the kernel and what instruction does the kernel have for dealing with errors, checks, logging, and especially with the info it simply doesn't print out because it, by default, is told not to (debug)? Diff hardware is devel by diff dev and the code is diff as to how and what the kernel does with diff hardware. The linux kernel stinks at threading but this is soon to change and is being worked on (I think....last I heard....is that good wording? [threading]). Thus the variation between machines, IMO...maybe?....I d/k? :wink: If you belive any of the above....I got some ocean front property in AZ I'll sell ya :wink: Patches? ML uses a lot :wink: ....sorry, that's all I know. Oh, and welcome to the board! :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnnyv Posted September 24, 2003 Report Share Posted September 24, 2003 It is really simple. Mandrake is faster because it's the only distro that uses vaseline :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zero0w Posted September 25, 2003 Report Share Posted September 25, 2003 I believe Mandrake has done something to modify KDE/Gnome, but I am not sure the kernel is in anyway faster than other distro. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted September 25, 2003 Report Share Posted September 25, 2003 just to clarify.....though it may appear I focused on the kernel that is not necessarily the case. I did say code/scriptsapp errors etc..... The more nonsense/printouts/error messages you cut out the quicker processes can move on to doing their job. Startup ML, do what you normally do and every minute Ctrl>Alt>F1. Do the exact same in Debian. Which is putting out more errors/messages? ...and sure ML, just like most distros, make modifications to gnome/kde and other independent apps...which is why they have updates for bugs in these apps. The cleaner the better. :wink: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phunni Posted September 25, 2003 Report Share Posted September 25, 2003 In my personal experience, both gentoo and arch lnux were noticably faster than Mandrake... I would always reccomend MDK to a newbie, but only for it's ease. I was surprised to find a thread here were someone was amazed at how fast it is! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted September 25, 2003 Report Share Posted September 25, 2003 I think you'll get as many opinions on this as there are people. My experience, gentoo ran much slower than mandrake. My pet theory is that the gentoo optimizations help amd processors much more than pentiums( I have a P4). So many things go into the subjective feel of how fast/responsive an OS is that its hard to isolate why you feel that way. The 9.2 rcs that I've tried are noticeably faster than 9.1 IMHO. And gnome 2.4 is really fast; kde, please take notes on this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlc Posted September 25, 2003 Report Share Posted September 25, 2003 I do know I've probably compiled as many kernels as cybrjackle has installed distros :lol: I once got an mdk kernel to 587kb. Was it faster? A lttle bit, but it definately was more stable....Hmmmm errors, checks, logging....less of it=faster? I don't compile the kernel anymore....waste of time, unless you need a patch for something, which in ML is rare. Hey, I think he's makeing a stab at me. :lol: I agree with most of what bvc said, mainly the Arizona plug! But anyway, I have installed just about every distro under the Sun (each one about 100x) Optimiaztions can be very screwy, my Athlon-xp 2000 box for example, I didn't notice any speed change in RH or Gentoo. My Laptop w/ a p3@700 is a differnet story, Gentoo ran circles around RH (RH felt like it was running on a p1@200), ok not that bad, but it was AWEFULLY slow! That was just some of this weeks test. Same Laptop, same week, Slackware-Current as of 9-22-03, I would say same as Gentoo if not better . MDk, better than RH but not sure about Gentoo or Slack. Before I keep on talking aimlessly, you ask what the moral of the stroy is? You never know what your going to get out of a distro with your hardware, just about sums it up. Mainly with the BIG 3 RPM distro's MDK/RH/SuSE, you will find the common word BLOAT! As they are installed and have 4 billion or SO (less) services running, that slows down startup and system run time. Distro's like Slackware/Debian/Gentoo/Arch keep everything down to a minimum and let you do the startup scripts for what extra BLOAT you want to run. Here is the deal with Gentoo speed, it CAN be a very fast distro, BUT if you start throughing in to many CFLAGS & USE varibles, pretty soon that optimized software turns into one big bloated mess, Mozilla becomes 5x faster than MDK's but takes 50x's longer to load, what did you gain? A faster browser that takes a long time to load. That is a made up example, but I think most people will see where I'm going with that, can happen with a lot of software. The reason why some people like Slack/Debian/Gentoo/Arch more than RPM's distro is because there not RPM distro's :wink: Plus there easier to keep up2date w/out every reinstalling to update to a newer version, trying a RPM distro upgrade(most people don't recommend) isn't so good! I have NO problem recommending MDK/RH/SuSE to a new user or an advanced user. You can get your work done in all of them. Some just prefer to use Slack/Debian/Gentoo/Arch because they MAKE you have more control over them. Those 4 I wouldn't really recommend to a noobie, but I would encourage and try and help them if they deciced to go with one of them. Anyway, I think Ive went on and on with a lot of useless info. Have fun! Glad you joined OUR board. 8) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnnyv Posted September 25, 2003 Report Share Posted September 25, 2003 I noticed a definate improvement in performance and stability after rebuilding a lot of the base rpms for athlon-xp, so much so that i will definately do the same for 9.2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphitus Posted September 26, 2003 Report Share Posted September 26, 2003 I think it depends on your hardware a bit. I've run Mandrake 9.1 on this computer, but im actually finding debian faster. I think it's simply because i haven't got all those extras running in background. James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted September 26, 2003 Report Share Posted September 26, 2003 I did write a (typcially) long response to this but somehow it failed to post due to timing out. Then CyberJackle says it all much nicer :D (and shorter) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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