What is weird is that, I can’t decide whether I want to use Debian or Ubuntu. Debian Squeeze is pretty awesome because the modifications are minimal, and it’s always updating but after a while I did get some major updates and it became really slow all of a sudden, and I wasn’t really into it anymore. So I reinstalled Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope, and it’s surprisingly the same slowness as an aging Debian Squeeze installation. I think these installations get slow because of the dependencies being install from the beginning of use. But, it’s hard to tell. It could also be due to upgraded packages which have different configurations. I’m not entirely sure.
It seems that most people are at war between what Operating System they want to use. But, the denominators being different than what my scenario is. One would argue how Microsoft Windows, Mac, and Linux differ, but from where I stand, I’m not at ease between the two Linux distributions I want to use. The last couple blog posts have mentioned 100% Debian usage, but because I believe Ubuntu would be faster because of different kernels and configurations, I am wrong. There’s really no difference between Jaunty, and Squeeze performance-wise on my laptop. But it will change I believe.
When Karmic was in early alpha stages, I tried it and realized that the new kernel, newer evolving versions of programs were a lot faster. I loved it. The performance was really great. The only problem I had was with the sound spazzing out, and ruining the fun. For some reason, it started to get worse and decided I could stand it anymore, and switched over to Debian Lenny, which is the stable version of Lenny. By defining stable, I mean a mature kernel, and mature programs — which means older. Mature, or Stable in technology always means older. At least I’ve come to that conclusion stating so. After a while I realized that the Lenny repositories did not have any programs I wanted. No one suggest to upgrade to the Testing distro which is now Debian: Squeeze, but I was told that upgrading would allow me to install those newer programs since there are newer programs in Squeeze. So I upgrade and seen that a lot of things were different, but the stability was the same, just a bit slower performance-wise. This installation went to smitherines quickly because I was getting used to how things worked in Debian. I went back to Karmic when it was Beta. After a while, it messed up again.
So, while chatting in Freenode on the #debian channel, I realized that Debian must have daily build ISOs too. So I found out where they were, downloaded, burned the ISOs. Installed the daily build from CD because I couldn’t get the ISO to boot with unetbootin.
With Squeeze lasting a few months on my computer prior to said installation, it was a great experience. I got used to how Squeeze worked, how vanilla the kernel felt, not using sudo, and a bunch of other things until I installed some dependencies and it just became slower over time and I didn’t really like how slow it became.
This brings me to my current situation where I am using Jaunty again because Karmic is slow, and the sound is still completely messed up. I know as time progresses and more dependencies are installed because things change including program usage and new dependencies because packages upgrade all the time: that Ubuntu will be get slower, and will have to do something about it. What do you do to keep your machine at peak performance? It seems like it feels like Windows all over again? Not only that, but my RAM is getting used up a lot faster for no reason, too. I run the same programs, and utilities that I did in Debian and it’s a lot slower in Ubuntu than Debian. I haven’t a clue why.
What I think I’m going to do is once Spring hits, and kernel 2.6.32 will be out for Debian I will go back to Debian to see how well it works. This means that optimization for Squeeze will be at its peak performance. If I’m not mistaken, by then — Squeeze will have become stable, and Sid moves up to be Testing with a new name, and Debian 5.0 which is Lenny will be history. This also means that Ubuntu will be evolving too and a newer codename will be out then, too. I wish this chipset would run better than it does. Not that I am complaining how the work being done. I love Linux, I just hate my chipset.
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Have a look at the manpages of apt_preferences, maybe that is what you are looking for. Run stable/testing and pull in some stuff from testing/unstable.
Also, not using that ***-server, disable it or remove it.
Interesting… After some 5 years of using Debian it surely doesn’t seem like performance degrades over time like on Windows but honestly I no longer remember how big of a problem this really was back when I used Windows (at least for me).
However, there sure have been episodes of degrading performance but I think that happened after I went to sid (I started with stable (woody), quickly switched to testing and then somehow naturally progressed to sid where I believe I might have been the longest in these 5 or so years) and I understand why it’s happening and I’m OK with it since I’m on a pretty bleeding edge software with surprising stability (one just needs to learn to be careful picking the updates).
I find that the same things which kill a Windows install will kill Ubuntu and/or Debian: Multiple programs/windows open at the same time. A single user/single task operating system will always run faster than a multi-tasking environment, but many users test a new operating system by doing just a single task at a time that way WHEN you crash, you have less to clean up. When you get to USING an OS, you want to have your email open, maybe have 5 tabs open in your browser, open a Nautilus window, . . . etc. And then they wonder why their shiny new computer doesn’t respond as well as it used to!
True, I somewhat agree. But my laptop should handle that without a problem. I’m running a Lenovo R61e with 2gb RAM. Performance was better before, but I guess with time, everything ages. Or hardware is failing. I need to do some memory, and hard disk tests.
Have a look at Sidux. A rolling release of Debian with the latest of everything. It comes in KDE 4.3.4 or Xfce4. You could install xfce lite and add Gnome, but Gnome is not a supported platform. Not for beginners, and you must have a read of the online manual to understand the update process. The forums have a warning section where you can get prior warning of problematic updates.
My KDE setup flies and the sound works beautifully – no pulseaudio.
http://sidux.com/
Start with a “lite” install and add only what you need.
Sidux is for advanced users who are sick of all the things you describe in your post.
Definitely will take that into account sooner or later. Thanks.
Debian Squeeze works perfectly fine on my current 2(maybe 3) year old HP desktop where one of the *buntu wouldn’t even recognise my screen.
Anyway, what is the laptop that you are using? Am looking for a laptop and definitely wanted to aviod it
Yeah, I love Debian. First when I installed Lenny, it surprised when therer were not many choices for packages, upgraded to Squeeze, and it was great. I want to get back to Debian soon. Though, tempting to try Sidux soon.
It’s a nice laptop, but the GM965 is alright.
Lenovo R61e, C2d @ 2GHz, GM965 chipset, Intel 3945ABG, Intel 82801H audio, 2gb RAM.
I have to say that I have Debian Lenny on an old Dell 6000 with 512 ram and a 1.8 GHz celeron processor and it is running fine. I also have it on a 3.0 GHz core2duo with 8G ram. It is running fine on both machines. No slowness at all. It’s all good.
Intertesting that your setups keep slowing down; I’ve got a few machines on Debian Sid and a few on Testing, and I’ve not noticed any slowdowns. I’ve had issues in the past with Ubuntu, but never the slowdowns that you mention.
Perhaps its something in your home folder’s default settings that is causing this slowdown. Your desktop settings are stored in hidden files in your home directory and start with a . (.dot) to keep them hidden by default. Try either moving all of your .files to a folder and logging out and in again; this will cause configs to be rewritten to default settings. Any improvements in speed? You could also just create a new user and see if that login and desktop is any faster.
Debian, in my opinion, is just too good at what it is and the *buntus drag that down, IMHO. The SimplyMEPIS 8.5 release is coming soon and that used to be a great distro, also Debian based, so if you’ve some time to kill before your next Debian reinstall you may wa nt to look into Mepis 8.5.
Will check that out. I’ve always known about the configuration files there. Perhaps I’ll remove most of them and see how that goes.
I agree, Debian is very awesome. I miss it, I told myself I would not go back to using Ubuntu because Debian is so much more stable, reliable, and vanilla.
I’ll check MEPIS, too. That’s one distro I’ve never tried.
Thanks.
The distribution for you is sidux
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I dont use gnome and kde. I am satisfied with the speed on my debian squeeze + ext4 + fvwm-crystal. Keep checking htop output and remove mem hogging process. Check this for my fav softwares:
http://sites.google.com/site/alindsharma/
I’ve never used fvwm, or ext4 before. Is there much improvement with the ext4 filesystem? I haven’t really used any other windows managers other than Metacity, KWin, Fluxbox, Openbox, Xfwm. I’ll look at htop.
Thanks!
i’m running sidux on two machines also; i don’t know if its any better than Debian Sid, its just that i cannot get the debian people to give me support. i don’t know if thats really a benefit (ok its not) and i’ve not really seen anything else that is better than regular Sid.
did you try clearing out your .files?
Sidux sounds like a plan. Going to work on removing configuration files, and seeing if that helps. Would mono have anything to do with the slow down?
I’ll try Sid. I’ve only tried both Lenny, and Squeeze. Squeeze had a massive difference with performance, and newer packages(as expected). I should have stuck to my guns and checked Sid out while I was at it. Maybe I’ll grab a daily build of Sid.
Thanks.
Something to try
make a new user name for your system and log into it. You now have a plain setup with no config files. Same base system but clean.
Is it faster?
I tried making a different user in Ubuntu to see if that would do anything altogether, and it just made it slow like it always has. When I configure my installation just after installing, it’s always faster — just not fast enough. Not that I have a hotrod of a laptop, but, I’ve seen better than this with my laptop.
I’ve yet to figure out a plan to start testing my hardware. I need to do a memtest soon, and test my HDD to see if it spits out anything bad.
Anyway, thanks for the reply.
Cheers.