4 Distro install/performance comparison
Michael Heiming
Tried installing 4 distro, on an old box (for the fun):
(PII-350 - 196 MB RAM - 2 x 6 GB IDE HD - DVD/CDROM - Intel NIC -
ISA sound-card)
Distro used:
Fedora Core 3 - Mandrake 10.1 - Suse 9.1 - Debian 3.1
The results:
Installer blew away after some time, install impossible (removing
most hardware didn't helped), couldn't be bothered to invest more
time to get those running and it would have contradicted the
test:
- Fedora Core 3 & Mandrake 10.1
Install worked (all hw plugged in):
- Suse 9.1 & Debian 3.1
So installation left me with 2 systems to report.
Ease of installation:
- Suse installed without problems, took ages
- The new Debian installer worked fine & pretty fast, with a
minor fiddling after the base system installed like a charm,
to get X + KDE installed through apt. Apt didn't thought that
X server is an obvious dependency to get KDE up and running.;(
So the Debian installer required a little more fiddling but
no rocket science.
Running:
- Suse worked but dog slow with KDE3 on the box.
- Big surprise, Debian with KDE 3.2 & openoffice & firefox
performance like a champ on this older system.
Conclusion (so far):
- For a usable KDE system on older hw, use *Debian*.;)
- Due to apt-cache Debian installer outperforms yum/etc easily
unless you have a pretty fast connection to your repositories.
- The Debian installer has made great progress since I tested it
last time, a couple of ages ago.
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Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
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#bofh excuse 155: Dumb terminal
Sybren Stuvel
> - For a usable KDE system on older hw, use *Debian*.;)
> - Due to apt-cache Debian installer outperforms yum/etc easily
> unless you have a pretty fast connection to your repositories.
> - The Debian installer has made great progress since I tested it
> last time, a couple of ages ago.
Nice conclusions! Good to see the Debian installer is up to par again.
I think it was one of the major drawbacks of Debian.
Sybren
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Michael Heiming
> Michael Heiming enlightened us with:
>> - For a usable KDE system on older hw, use *Debian*.;)
> Nice conclusions! Good to see the Debian installer is up to par again.
> I think it was one of the major drawbacks of Debian.
Up to par might be a bit overestimated, it dropped me in some
nice ncurses/dialog install. Reminded me pretty much of the
rh/fedora installer. Still it requires some more knowledge about
the system then those kick&droll installer, you see anywhere
these days. But I dislike those anyway.;)
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Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
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#bofh excuse 132: SCSI Chain overterminated
Sybren Stuvel
> kick&droll installer, you see anywhere these days. But I dislike
> those anyway.;)
The best "installer" I saw is the Gentoo installer - it's me ;-)
Well, "the best" for me personally that is ;-)
Dan C
> Installer blew away after some time, install impossible (removing
> most hardware didn't helped), couldn't be bothered to invest more
> time to get those running and it would have contradicted the
> test:
> - Fedora Core 3 & Mandrake 10.1
The installer "blew away"? What does that mean?
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Michael Heiming
> On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 09:40:03 +0100, Michael Heiming wrote:
>> Installer blew away after some time, install impossible (removing
>> most hardware didn't helped), couldn't be bothered to invest more
>> time to get those running and it would have contradicted the
>> test:
>> - Fedora Core 3 & Mandrake 10.1
> The installer "blew away"? What does that mean?
What it says, it couldn't finish the installation and mentioned
it would now reboot the system safely. Due to the fact that I
limited (virtually) the time to finish an install, I did go over
to the next distro after a few retries.
The nfs install might have been the problem, even if another
system installed usable over the network, from the same nfs
server and the same loop-back mounted FC3 dvd.iso from the same
usb hd.
Perhaps, I'll retry with http which is usually more reliable as
nfs network install, albeit setting up http would have been some
keystrokes more, then nfs.;) But for now I'm really amazed with
the Debian (KDE 3.2) performance and the ease off dpkg*.;)
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Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
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#bofh excuse 377: Someone hooked the twisted pair wires into
the answering machine.
ray
You might also look at Vector linux - I understand that it is designed to
work on 'older systems'. You'll also find xfce or even gnome to be
'faster' than kde.
Michael Heiming
> On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 09:40:03 +0100, Michael Heiming wrote:
>> Conclusion (so far):
>>
>> - For a usable KDE system on older hw, use *Debian*.;)
> You might also look at Vector linux - I understand that it is designed to
> work on 'older systems'. You'll also find xfce or even gnome to be
> 'faster' than kde.
Yeah, I know and use sometimes fvwm2, on slower systems or where
logging in seldom, fvwm2 startup is <1 sec, KDE takes ages.
But this wasn't the goal, if there was any, just wanted to see if
the box could run an usable KDE 3 desktop with OO/firefox/etc
and with Debian it seems possible.
Tested aptitude and synaptic, if you have used yumi, the GUI for
yum, synaptic is far ahead.
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Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
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#bofh excuse 174: Backbone adjustment
Davorin Vlahovic
> Michael Heiming enlightened us with:
>> - For a usable KDE system on older hw, use *Debian*.;)
>> - Due to apt-cache Debian installer outperforms yum/etc easily
>> unless you have a pretty fast connection to your repositories.
>> - The Debian installer has made great progress since I tested it
>> last time, a couple of ages ago.
>
> Nice conclusions! Good to see the Debian installer is up to par again.
> I think it was one of the major drawbacks of Debian.
It's not. New debian installer has problems with partition management.
There are conditions when it can't recognize partitions at all.
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Sybren Stuvel
> It's not. New debian installer has problems with partition
> management. There are conditions when it can't recognize partitions
> at all.
Auch, that's bad. That's very bad. It should always be able to
recognise partitions. I mean, how difficult do they get?
Michael Perry
> Davorin Vlahovic enlightened us with:
>> It's not. New debian installer has problems with partition
>> management. There are conditions when it can't recognize partitions
>> at all.
>
> Auch, that's bad. That's very bad. It should always be able to
> recognise partitions. I mean, how difficult do they get?
>
> Sybren
That's interesting actually. My only experience with the sarge installer
of late is doing VMware test installs for some work a colleague and I do.
I have not found a problem with those installs at all. I still use a
pretty old net installer when I do a new debian system but my colleague
will only use the sarge installer.
I did try vectorlinux and it seemed it had a problem around building new
partitions but perhaps it was a fluke of what I wanted. I vaguely
remember it not allowing any new partitions. Is this something that
others remember seeing with the current vectorlinux? The easiest one I
have done in a long time is Mepis; but I managed to seriously break Mepis
by altering the sources.list and it turned into some kind of hideous half
Mepis-half debian thing that had all kinds of mixed up package
dependencies. :-)
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Michael Heiming
>> It's not. New debian installer has problems with partition
>> management. There are conditions when it can't recognize partitions
>> at all.
> Auch, that's bad. That's very bad. It should always be able to
> recognise partitions. I mean, how difficult do they get?
Yeah, there were minor problems with the partitions from the
prior, suse install thought they could be reuse to speed up
things. Went directly to some strange expert modus, deleted all
partitions and setup new, not a big deal perhaps a minute or so.
I'm thinking about putting debian on my laptop if there's time.;)
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Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
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#bofh excuse 79: Look, buddy: Windows 3.1 IS A General
Protection Fault.