[ale] Which Distro should I use?

[Michael D. Hirsch]

On Thursday 30 January 2003 09:13 am, ChangingLINKS.com wrote:
> 1. Is Gentoo "faster?"

Yes.  All packages get compiled for your specific hardware with as much 
speed optimization as possible.  You will see more speed-ups on a p4 than 
on a 486.  RH is compiled for a 486, so it doesn't take advantage of many 
possible optimizations.

OTOH, it takes a damn long time to install.

> Someone on this list mentioned that Gentoo may be noticably "faster"
> than RedHat. I have a need for more speed, and I am not wanting to
> research why RedHat 8.0 is crashing on the two boxes that I have it on.
> I have heard positive things about Gentoo, and I like the apt-get
> functionality that I added to RedHat (which is allegedly more like how
> Gentoo manages things). Also, while I am at it. Microsoft had some sort
> of 3rd party software that would help you get it to run faster (by
> telling you what's running and giving tips on what you can remove).
>
> 2. Is there something like that for Linux?

"ps -aux" works pretty well.  RedHat, KDE and others have some reasonable 
UIs for checking out what you are running at each runlevel.  Assuming that 
you are booting into X, "ls /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/S*" will also tell you.

>  I want to try to streamline my box to try to get more speed.
>
> 3. I am stuck with the hardware that I have (just bought another AMD
> computer - by the way be greatful that you guys live where hardware is
> cheap. Stuff is 30-50% more here.) but I can add more RAM.
>
> Will doubling the RAM make a noticable difference?

Depends on how much you have.  I found that 128MB can be kinda small when 
running KDE and a big java app, but if you already have 512MB probably 
not.

Michael
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