Is Mandrake 7.2 slower than RedHat 6.2?

[rattus]

Actually, what I really want to know is whether there's a good reason for 'Drake 7.2 to be running apparently slower than RH 6.2 on the same hardware.

<story> Once upon a time, there was a young (well, it's a story, I can pretend I'm young, can't I?) man who finally got sick of Windows, deleted the damn thing and installed RedHat 6.2. And all was well, and after much info and man, the thing was hummin'.

Then, school holidays loomed. The six-year-old (who was coping extremely well with Linux, ta very much) was desperately trying to get his windows CD's working within Linux, and although he's a smart kid, I'm pretty sure that configuring WINE is a little beyond him - so we install Windows 95 OSR2 to make his (and the wifes <g> ) holiday a little more pleasant.

The holidays are almost finished. I'm certainly fed-up with windows. Let's go back to Linux.

Got us some Mandrkae 7.2 disks - Pentium optimised, so should be faster than RH, right? But it seems to run slower, lot of disk thrashing (=>lack of physical ram?), just all-round not as much fun as it should be. Bugger.</story>

So, here's the question: Should Mandrake 7.2 be faster out-of-the-box than RH 6.2? Please note, I am not asking for a fix for this problem. I'm asking whether it's a distro thing I should have expected (like I know that an "upgrade" to Win98 from Win95 would slow my 'puter down), or whether I _do_ need to get stuck in to the config and find uot exactly what is going on.

FYI, my RedHat install was custom, with a lot of the 'double-ups' and stuff I didn't use removed (how many text editors do I actually need? APACHE? etc.), and I spent _some_ time configuring X through the text files.

For Drake I've done a 'recommended' install with the 'recommended' packages (because I've only got a little HD space).

Is this why Drake seems slower? Too much unused stuff loading? Or do I need to delve into the wonderful world of text-based config again?

BTW, yes I know I haven't given you the details of my setup - because it hasn't changed between the two situations, so I'm pretty sure that it's not a hardware issue.

My apologies for the length of this question.

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[i8degrees]

Hmm, I have always wondered this as well. I think that because Mandrake loads up so much stuff at startup, it has so much more in memory... Maybe if you install nothing but what you need, there won't be as many startup items and thus more memory to run things. I haven't been using Linux as my workstation lately so all of this is just thought up.

[Mr.Sparkle]

Run the top command in the consol(sp)? and see whats eating your resources up.. And if you don't need it, then shut it down..

[Ripley]

This won't answer your question but its input none the less.

[personal opinion]

I have used both Mandrake 6.1 and 7.2 (been playing around with 7.2 for the last two weeks) and have tried all sorts of installs. I have two spare (?) partitions that I can install in atm and have been readily comparing different package combinations from a small 250mb, up to 1.5GB+, with different managers, file systems, etc, etc...

I have come to one conclusion. There is nothing fast about Mandrake Linux.

I hope that Slackware will be an improvement (when the disks get here). As far as I am concerned, where Mandrake is concerned, Windows 98 ****s all over it for speed, reliability, and conservative use of system resources.

[Ripley ducks to avoid half chewed flying herring carcases]

Getting rid of KDE 2 and using Gnome instead was the biggest help.

LFS with Kernel 2.4.0, XFree86 4.0.2 and simple Blackbox is the fastest and most stable that I have seen so far.

[/personal opinion]

[rattus]

Thank you, sir. While it doens't answer my question, it _does_ concur with my experience.

FWIW, I found RedHat much easier to customise in terms of install - Drake seemed to make it hard to pick and choose what I wanted (and when I tried to ditch Netscape, it insisted on ditching _all_ the HTML docs, although I'd use gnome-help-browser or konqueror or lynx as a preference to Communicator, anyway)


Originally posted by Ripley:
This won't answer your question but its input none the less.

<snip for bandwidth>
Getting rid of KDE 2 and using Gnome instead was the biggest help.

LFS with Kernel 2.4.0, XFree86 4.0.2 and simple Blackbox is the fastest and most stable that I have seen so far.

[/personal opinion]



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[rattus]

Originally posted by i8degrees:
Hmm, I have always wondered this as well. I think that because Mandrake loads up so much stuff at startup, it has so much more in memory... Maybe if you install nothing but what you need, there won't be as many startup items and thus more memory to run things. I haven't been using Linux as my workstation lately so all of this is just thought up.

And this is the crux of my problem at this stage. My thoughts run parallel to yours (dump unneeded s**t), but Drake seems to make this difficult.

Maybe it's just me<g>

[Mr.Sparkle]

I'm using mdk 7.2 also, and it does sorta start a few things to many on startup. Like kupdate. WTF? if i wanted to update I would launch the programe.. Oh well. Just turn it off. And once you get everything you don't want outa it. It is nice, slim and fast. At least on my duron system..

[TechGuy]

This is a good topic...I just installed 'Drake 7.2 tonight and I'm amazed how slow it is compared to RedHat 7. I don't think it's really all that much slower in execution of the OS stuff but Konquorer browser is SLOW. It was easy to set up and get on my network though. But...I think I'll trash it...and head back to redhat...

[kuber]

I was using RH7 and tried out MDK7.2 for the hell of it and reached the same results-it sucks. I thought it would be far better since it is optimized for pentiums, but IMO it was horrible compared to RH7. Also, both of my installations were very custom bare bones installations-so I don't think choosing a recommended install was the root of your speed problem.



[This message has been edited by kuber (edited 28 January 2001).]

[Big_daddy]

Mandrake is slow, period. It is "robust", not fast. You get one of everything and it is the easiest to install. But it is slow. I'm thinking processor upgrade.

I may try RH7 just to see what happens.

[Tiger]

I've been switching back and forth between MD 6.0 and 7.2 for a month now. 7.2 is condiserably slower than 6.0 and almost impossible to get identical installs. That GUI install on 7.2 just plain sucks.

There's also a big difference between KDE2 and 1.1.x on MD 6.0. I don't know what they did but they need to undo it. They've gone too far in trying to be like Winders.

Slackware 7.1 coming soon, all will be well.


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Badges? We don't need no stinking badges.

[linuxwannabe]

Hey Ripley,
What do you mean by "LFS" anyway?


"LFS with Kernel 2.4.0, XFree86 4.0.2 and simple Blackbox is the fastest and most stable that I have seen so far."

[n2linux]

Good topic ppl. http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif I have tried RedHat 6.2 and Mandrake 7.2...conclusion: Mandrake is bloat. Not to discurage from using it...Mandrake is geared more or less towards real newbies. It is probably closer to Windoze than all other distros (IMO)

As for LFS...it stands for Linux From Scratch. In other words, you make your own distro starting from the kernel and working you way up. Takes time and a lot of knowledge of how linux works.

As for now, I'm waiting for Debian 2.4 or something...or maybe try the new Slack...

[rattus]

Right, further investigation (and three installs later http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/mad.gif ) leads me to this conclusion: Mandrake _is_ more bloated than RedHat, and harder to clean out.
Why does ease of use translate into "upgrade your hardware"?

I think I'll head over to the Mandrake site, see if I can glean some suggestions from there (I'm setting up a machine for a _real_ newbie - in the sense of newbie to 'puters, not just linux - so switching to Deb or Slack isn't really an option - I may not be around to maintain it for ever http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/wink.gif )


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[jakieboy]

Here's a thought on why Mandrake is slower the other distro's.

I know that 'Drake 7.2 doesn't use ANY hdparm optimalisations, the hd is therefore very slow on a clean install.
After I put the hdparm -c1 -d1 /dev/hda line in my /etc/rc.d/rc.local file it was MUCH faster http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif

Don't know for sure if other distro's use hd optimalisations out of the box, but at least this is what sped up my 'Drake box.

See http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/hardware/hdtweak.html also.

That and you can always configure 'Drake to not start up so much in it's runlevels and disable unwanted services as you would in other distro's also, what a good idea.
And YES you don't have to use the graphical tools to configure it either, just as with any other distro you can run from the CLI.

In my humble opinion Mandrake did a good job, the version 7.2 I use is rocksolid over here, no complaints, really.

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Everyone who has seen the windows sourcecode is now dead....from laughing

[Ripley]

Originally posted by n2linux:
As for LFS...it stands for Linux From Scratch. In other words, you make your own distro starting from the kernel and working you way up. Takes time and a lot of knowledge of how linux works.


Actually, LFS might require some time (the most time required is reading TFM 3 times before you begin), but extensive Linux knowledge is not a pre-requisite (although it would no doubt help :-).

Its actually a good way to learn some about Linux. The biggest problem people might come across, is not having some of the software on their existing install, to allow them to do the compiling, etc...

The website can be found here.

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

An alternative "build your own" Linux system can be found here. I haven't tried this one, but it seems to have more information to help people add in some extra's like X windows and KDE (bleh! I'm now a confirmed Gnome user).

http://www.byolinux.org/