"Jeremy (mailing list box)" <listbox@unix-boy.com> writes:
> Petri Laihonen wrote:
>> Has anyone sought up or stumbled upon any sites with "reliable" speed
>> tests between the distros in regular every day use?
Benchmarks never measure "every day use". Benchmarks are useless for
this sort of thing.
What you want is a machine that feels responsive, not one that is
"faster".
For instance, most modern OSes perform multi-tasking. It is easy to
demonstrate that computers that multi-task do not complete tasks as
quickly as those that perform those same tasks in batch mode. We
prefer multi-tasking because it feels like the system is more
responsive.
> None that I've ever seen... It sounds like a good idea to pursue
> though. Considering my BSD background, I'm partial to Gentoo, but I'd
> like to see some proof with benchmarks, etc. that other distros are
> faster even though they aren't built from source....
They are all built from source. The point of using pre-built binaries
is that one person compiles the system once (with a reasonably good
optimizing compiler) and everyone can use those binaries.
That is a far better use of computing time than having everyone
compile their own binaries.
(Gentoo seemed to need more compiling for installation than FreeBSD,
but that could just be that I used FBSD differently than Gentoo.)
Mark.
--
A choice between one man and a shovel, or a dozen men with teaspoons
is clear to me, and I'm sure it is clear to you also.
-- Zimran Ahmed <http://www.winterspeak.com/>
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