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