Which Linux is the fastest?

[Ailmanki]

166 MHz Pentium with 128 MB RAM (DELL Optiplex)

I tried Suse 8.0 didn't worked lol
Suse 8.1 worked, but extreme lame
then sorry Windows 2000, it has played with my harddisk(I had to format afterwards) atomlol of the year
At last Mandrake 9

I didn't installed a Window Manager, it was all from Console, excepts Win2k

Now I would like to know which Linux is the best for using with Mldonkey..


Thanks for help || whatever you want to

[edgey]

I'm assuming you mean which distribution is best as opposed to which kernel version is best, right?

It shouldn't which distribution you install. They all should perform about the same esp on a Pentium 166Mhz. I'm surprised that there is a noticeable difference between Suse 8.0 and 8.1. Oh, well I don't use Suse.

Just keep the machine lean ie - no windows manager, no extra software that you don't need. Cut down on the extra services that's running. For instance, if you're only running it as a mldonkey machine -- heck, I wouldn't bother running telnetd, inetd, etc.

Make sure compile the kernel yourself.

btw, I've formatted my drives with reiserfs and ext3.

[vnc]

Debian is pretty suitable for mldonkey, as its rather easy to make it small and efficient compared to other distros. Debians' apt-get is a very useful tool.

[dsd]

atm i run mandrake9

i recently decided to try another distro.
ive been running gentoo linux (www.gentoo.org) under vmware. i like it a lot, so i will be replacing mandrake this weekend!

gentoo is supposed to be very good for speed, as it compiles everything from source - ends up optimised for your hardware, or something.
also i like the way they have made the compiling of source easy but customisable (great package system)

[bigtitus]

I tried gentoo myself on my mldonkey machine (PII 266 Mhz 512 Mo RAM). The main drawback for me is the huge time needed for compiling the base system ( to be compared to the few minutes needed to net-install a debian from a good ftp after booting from a floppy ).
And be aware that the few speed-up you gain by compiling everything can be wasted by a bad configuration of a device or a too old computer component.
I prefer running my donkey than waiting days for compilation completion .
Anyway, installing a gentoo is a good way to understand how a linux box works.

[dsd]

yeah i agree
one reason i chose gentoo was to learn more about linux.
ive been hearing a lot of good things about debian, think i will try that when i get bored with gentoo

i think on the newer gentoo releases they actually release several 'stages' - you can either compile everything and do it the long way, or you can use the "1 click install" approach where it just copies binarys off a cd.

ive got some time on my hands so im going for a stage 1 compile everything

[pingouin]

gentoo here too. With a 2.6.23-gentoo-r9 kernel and the realtime-lsm module.

Speed and computer is a complicated issue because it is 3 things to take in account (at the kernel level): What you want to do, throughput and speed.

It is a few kernel parameters that will have an impact on the throughput and speed. The most important is the preemption.

Old suse kernel was typically optimized for server work, that implies more throughput but less speed. Recent kernel are more desktop friendly, that implies more speed but less throughput.

You can try with an old suse install to recompile the kernel with desktop preemption and you will see a real boost of performance with X. But if you are running some huge server(s), you will prefer the original kernel without preemption.

mldonkey is a special case. I thing (maybe someone can confirm or infirm this) that the core will run better with a kernel without preemption, but the gui will prefer a kernel with desktop preemption, and that especially if you are sharing/downloading a lot of files.

[jormartr]

I have had several times running on the exactly same hardware mldonkey plus http+ftp and something else i dont remember. You can make all that work on that hardware. If you are going to run only mldonkey you'll have no problems.

This system was on debian without X and anything special, just minimal system with mldonkey service. With stock kernel you are done.

As with gentoo, you can have a lighter system than with debian, but the installation on that machine will get something long if you have to compile everything. I personally wouldn't mind to do that now if needed, that seems to be a nice project.

[pingouin]

It is sure that with a machine that is used only to run mldonkey and that without X, it will not make any difference.

But if you are in my case with a machine that is very often used at 100% processor use, running X and many different softwares from electronic simulation to music creation, you must fix some priority.

First of all, I want that the sound will run without any xrun in jackd. This is why I use the realtime-lsm module (pam with the rt-limits patch can do the same) that let me to fix both the hardware and software priorities. First the sound card and the audio group, next the other tasks.

I am also very happy with gentoo because I am using a lot of overlays (equivalent to multiple repositories with the deb and rpm based distributions) and I never get in trouble when updating my system. Portage just do the job. And my system is fully usable when portage is compiling and installing the softwares.