[nflug] gentoo vs debian

[joshj at linuxmail.org]

Thus spake eric on Fri, 31 Mar 2006

> Will Gentoo run faster than Debian on an older computer?
>
> I have been using/installing debian for a while and want to try
> something more complex, but not without good reason.  :)

Depends on who answers. I use Gentoo so I will say that that is. Someone
else will say Suse, Slackware, Debian, etc. But here's my story...

I have a Pentium (586) MMX 266 that I use as router, filesharing, etc. I
originally ran RedHat (7 through 9 somewhere. I can't remember which).
It ran ok. I switched to Slackware at some point. Huge performance
difference just out-of-the-box. Then merely for the learning experience
I installed Gentoo. The best thing about Gentoo was the control I had
over the installation. the box was (obviously) very limited in
resources. I could get the kernel very tiny as well as the over-all
install (clocked in just under 100M). but I still had a very rich
development system with great package management.

Moral: You will not probably be able to notice a performance
increase between Gentoo and Debian. Technically it *is* there because
everything is compiled with optimizations for your processor (as well as
being able to strip libraries, etc). The only place I notice a 
performance increase is in *raw* data crunching; generation of gpg/ssl
keys, complex math problems with sin,cos. Stuff like that. In general
there is not big difference. If you're like me, it is comforting to
know that it is there. Even if I can't perceive it. But its only worth
it if you are interested in the learning process. There is nothing huge
gained that you can't get from Debian or Slackware.

-Josh

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