What's the fastest Linux distribution?

[lucasbytegenius]

Hey guys,
Just wondering what the fastest Linux distribution is in your opinion. There's a ton out there, and a broad answer would be that they're all very fast - but I'm looking for something that boots very very quickly and runs smoothly.

Suggestions?

[Victor Leigh]

I think Puppy Linux is a contender. At least I know it's one of the smallest distros.

[lucasbytegenius]

I think Puppy Linux is a contender. At least I know it's one of the smallest distros.
Yes, I agree. Puppy Linux is really fast :)
I also think CrunchBang is pretty fast, as well as ChromeOS.

[KenJackson]

Fastest in what way?

Every distro I've used allows the user to select a desktop environment, which affects apparent speed
more than the distro. KDE and Gnome are very full featured, but they'll slow you down more than
LXDE or Xfce.

Few people can tolerate twm or dwm for long, but they would probably give even faster speeds.

[lucasbytegenius]

Well, I mean faster all around. Fast bootup, fast desktop evironment, etc. And out of the box too.

[carbon333]

The speed is comparable among different distributions. Don't let anyone fool you that Gentoo wil be the fastest because you compile it on your own. That is just a waste of time!

[lucasbytegenius]

The speed is comparable among different distributions. Don't let anyone fool you that Gentoo wil be the fastest because you compile it on your own. That is just a waste of time!

I wouldn't ever try to use Gentoo because I'm not that type of guy who wants total control over everything. I also don't know how to do all that stuff.

[pane-free]

This question has been asked many times. In most cases, it boils down to personal preference with how a specific distro interacts with both the user's hardware and the user himself. DE or lack thereof, as KenJackson stated, affects speed greatly.

IME, quickest and easiest to use 'buntu-based distro is peppermint; Slackware-based would include Salix-lxde-13.37 base install; antiX-M11 and #! are comparably fast Debian-based distributions; Unity (although I have not tried it lately) boots really fast and is Mandriva-derived.
Puppy, TinyCore, sliTaz and the like are in a class by themselves -- a very useful class of linux.

Out-of-the-box with at least one gig RAM and a modern processor -- peppermint.

My 2¢ worth!

[Victor Leigh]

Fastest in what way?

Every distro I've used allows the user to select a desktop environment, which affects apparent speed
more than the distro. KDE and Gnome are very full featured, but they'll slow you down more than
LXDE or Xfce.

Few people can tolerate twm or dwm for long, but they would probably give even faster speeds.

Not sure about twm or dwm since I haven't tried them. What I have used with Puppy Linux is JVM and I can say from personal experience that JVM is perfectly usable. For the long term, too.

[carbon333]

If you want to be back in 90' then twm is for you ;)

[TheMugenFox]

Well Puppy Linux is by far the fastest out of all Linux distros out there. Another one that I think is very fast is Chrome OS. For a new os, it is surprisingly fast and very quick when it comes to booting up.

[bryce12]

My vote goes with Puppy Linux as well. I have tried various OS versions and so far Puppy has been the fastest.

@TheMugenFox, is the Chrome OS available in UNIX flavor? I thought it was a replacement for Windows but I might be wrong.

[Remp]

Hmm.. I thought about this too! Puppylinux is pretty fast, although I've only tried it on my friends laptop. I've use CrunchBang too for months, and it was pretty good... not the most lightweight distro, because its based on Ubuntu, but I really liked it's minimal user interface, and it was pretty fast too! God... I miss those nights when I spent hours just customizing my desktop's look to be more minimal :)

[jasserlin]

For an embedded project that I am now working on, I will need the best performance on a very small system. I am hoping to target the Raspberry Pi but as it is not yet available, I am curious what is the smallest system on which people have run PuppyLinux? I recognize that if the distribution is fast it should be faster on smaller hardware but that is not always the case in my experience. Does anyone have experience with smaller systems and fast distros on these?

[Sinister_Diagram]

I would give a big vote for Puppy Linux if I were to choose from so-called Veteran choices. It's meant to be light weight and that is exactly what it does. However, I came across a new Linux distro by the name of Bodhi and I have found it to be incredibly fast. It is quite new, currently released version is 1.4.0, but I believe this distribution has a lot of potential. Keep in mind, there are bugs and it has "maturing" to do, so to speak.

Running the Enlightenment, or E17, desktop plays the largest role in why this distribution is so fast. It will run on just about any system and I even ran it on an old laptop with 256 ram - was surprised that it ran so fast and I would say it was close to Puppy performance there! However, boot up time is not the only fast part of this operating system. Desktop response time, using various programs, browsing, and just about anything else that you can think of, was incredibly responsive. I would recommend any user that has the slightest bit of Linux knowledge to give this little system a go. I do not run in as a main OS simply because it is going to be changing rapidly over time and I do need something that is considered more stable over long periods of time. I constantly keep updated on the progress as I am eager to see where this little distribution will go over the years.

[icebirdro]

I've never tried one of those very small distros but from what I've heard they're pretty fast and approximately the same as Chrome OS. The ones that I know about: DSL (Damn Small Linux), Crunchbag, Puppy Linux, antix.

You should try all of them and see which one you like or which one runs faster.

P.S. You can also try a benchmark like UnixBench (http://www.tux.org/pub/tux/benchmarks/System/unixbench/) and see which distro is the fastest.

[paolochicha]

Puppy Linux is not the fastest-booting distribution in this crowd, but it’s one of the fastest. And what’s unique about this distribution is that it will boot faster than your standard OS, even when it’s booting from the Live CD. Of course, some may claim, “It’s not a full-blown OS”. But it is. Although many view Puppy more as a rescue distribution, it’s a full-blown distribution that offers nearly every tool you need to do what you need to do.

[Stefano Messicano]

SliTaz 4.0 is a fast and minimalistic Linux distribution, but at the same time Slitaz is a complete system that can be run even on older hardware, and with little performance: you think that the system in live CD, which is loaded entirely into RAM, takes up only 180MB memory. If you have a PC in the basement that has a little more RAM, do not be no problem: you can create SliTaz LiveCD can boot with less than 64 MB of RAM, due to packets SliTaz-loram.

[DaReaper]

That's fascinating, I never actually knew that PuppyLinux was the fastest Linux Distro, infact i just google to find out that it's the fastest fully functional OS. Chrome OS is fast, but it's a Joke... i've seen how fast it boots to finally end up showing the Chrome browser. I think every app on the Chrome OS needs an internet connection.

Maybe PuppyLinux is fast cause it has few packages and is lite in terms of size too. I've known that it could be installed into a USB drive and carried around.

[pane-free]

SliTaz and Unity (http://unity-linux.org/http://unity-linux.org/ ) with TinyCore right up there alongside Puppy, in this order, IMHO (but there may be something new out there even quicker to boot).

[Shamal Randeniya]

:D

[Famous]

Easiest Linux=Ubuntu, and derivatives (also rans...Mandriva...)
Best hardware support=Ubuntu
Most stable=Debian
Most useful in emergencies=PuppyLinux
Best performance=VectorLinux and Gentoo
Best commercial Support=Redhat and derivatives

[keylogger]

i like OpenSUSE its configuration and visuality is really great. so i would say OpenSUSE because its really fast.

[enhu]

Puppy Linux is by far the fastest I've tried. Maybe because its meant to run in old computers with just minimum of 128 RAM. The faster is runs when you install it via frugal.

[ebildude123]

Damn Small Linux could very well be one of the fastest Linux distributions since it's only 50 MB in size and it's requirements are extremely low.
You can find it at damnsmalllinux.org :)

[emma11]

yeah its really fast and i have used this.

[lucasbytegenius]

Seems like most people are voting for PuppyLinux. Thanks for the replies :)

[Smokey]

I've found MINT and Xubuntu XFCE to be pretty damn fast. :D Especially on older computers with low memory/processing power. :)

[lucasbytegenius]

I've found MINT and Xubuntu XFCE to be pretty damn fast. :D Especially on older computers with low memory/processing power. :)

Tried both of those. Xubuntu was buggy for me. Mint LXDE was awesome though.

[Akendo]

Take Gentoo, use only basic compile option. The real speed comes from a kernel with lots of build-in modules. That way you have the Code optimize for your Hardware and only that on your system what you need.

The True is: You can do this to every Linux. You just have to know what to do.

so far
Akendo

[lucasbytegenius]

I see the benefits of compiling Linux yourself but I and lots of other people simply don't possess the knowledge or the time to do that. I prefer distros that come with everything, such as Ubuntu.

[mudrock]

I have been using puppy linux but I have been interested in chrome os. I have switched due to the fact of laziness on my part. I need to do more research on it.

[lucasbytegenius]

I have been using puppy linux but I have been interested in chrome os. I have switched due to the fact of laziness on my part. I need to do more research on it.

Chrome OS is pretty nice for a single-purpose OS. I really like it. However, I don't have a netbook to run it on so I use a VM, which isn't very practical.

[flotwig]

That's the thing about Linux. It's 100% customizable, and any self-respecting distribution will allow you to modify components.

For me I've always had success with Fedora on the desktop running GNOME and Debian on the server. I actually run Debian 6 on my server and it runs faster than you'd expect, given the 128mb of RAM I've allocated to it. ;) CentOS is a bloated enterprise distro, it's not very fast. Nor is Ubuntu, it also has a ton of bloat, especially in more recent releases.

[Victor Leigh]

That's the thing about Linux. It's 100% customizable, and any self-respecting distribution will allow you to modify components.

For me I've always had success with Fedora on the desktop running GNOME and Debian on the server. I actually run Debian 6 on my server and it runs faster than you'd expect, given the 128mb of RAM I've allocated to it. ;) CentOS is a bloated enterprise distro, it's not very fast. Nor is Ubuntu, it also has a ton of bloat, especially in more recent releases.

I have just recently switched from Centos to Debian on my own server. Do you have any tips about what to look out for? Especially things to do with security. I am using Webmin.

[flotwig]

I have just recently switched from Centos to Debian on my own server. Do you have any tips about what to look out for? Especially things to do with security. I am using Webmin.
You don't need to do much out of the ordinary. Configure iptables to block failed login attempt IP addresses and don't expose any functionality like SSH or PMA to the end user. Keep your CMSes up to date, use a modern web server, you know. General server tips. If you're looking for a good web server, try nginx. It's pretty sweet and secure.

[lucasbytegenius]

I've heard a lot about nginx. A few things I heard include that when properly configured it's faster than litespeed, which is shocking to me because litespeed is pretty darn fast.

[flotwig]

I've heard a lot about nginx. A few things I heard include that when properly configured it's faster than litespeed, which is shocking to me because litespeed is pretty darn fast.Well, here's a study which says nginx is faster than litespeed:
http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/groups/168/nginx_vs_litespeed_-_magento_benchmark_tests
...and here's one which says litespeed is faster:
http://blog.litespeedtech.com/2010/01/06/benchmark-comparison-on-serving-simple-php-litespeed-vs-apache-vs-nginx/
If you're happy with your current web server, don't feel any need to change. Both nginx and litespeed appear to be equally capable of serving web pages at a high capacity.

[lucasbytegenius]

I wouldn't completely trust results provided by the makers of Litespeed :P But thanks for the articles.

[Victor Leigh]

You don't need to do much out of the ordinary. Configure iptables to block failed login attempt IP addresses and don't expose any functionality like SSH or PMA to the end user. Keep your CMSes up to date, use a modern web server, you know. General server tips. If you're looking for a good web server, try nginx. It's pretty sweet and secure.

Yes, I have been thinking about using nginx. The main question in my mind is whether it will work with Webmin which I am using to manage my server. Would you know?

[lucasbytegenius]

It most likely will, it's a web server so it work well with Webmin. You might want to check that online though.

[flotwig]

Yes, I have been thinking about using nginx. The main question in my mind is whether it will work with Webmin which I am using to manage my server. Would you know?

I haven't been able to get nginx working with Webmin. There's a module but it doesn't really work all that well. Then again, nginx is mostly set-it-and-forget-it - you don't have to touch it after you install it for the most part.

[Victor Leigh]

I haven't been able to get nginx working with Webmin. There's a module but it doesn't really work all that well. Then again, nginx is mostly set-it-and-forget-it - you don't have to touch it after you install it for the most part.

If nginx doesn't work with Webmin, then I will have to learn how to setup and manage a server without Webmin. I do know that Webmin will work with Lighttpd, though. Is the benefit of using nginx worth the effort of learning to manage a server without using Webmin? Or is changing from Apache to Lighttpd good enough?