Speed! What's the fastest distro with MM and proprietary support?

spaceboy909 · 02-22-2011, 04:17 PM

Hi all. I've used Ubuntu for over 4 years now. I'm sick of it, for various reasons.

I'm looking for speed, which includes minimizing resource hogging.

I'd prefer to avoid a bulky install. I need standard multi-media support, proprietary driver options, and ideally, the option to load everything to memory (I think Puppy does that?).

I also want something that will be a (or can be made into a) suitable environment for development work.

I'm all ears! Opinions, experiences, rumors...!

mpapet · 02-22-2011, 05:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spaceboy909

Hi all. I've used Ubuntu for over 4 years now. I'm sick of it, for various reasons.

I'm looking for speed, which includes minimizing resource hogging.

I'd prefer to avoid a bulky install. I need standard multi-media support, proprietary driver options, and ideally, the option to load everything to memory (I think Puppy does that?).

I also want something that will be a (or can be made into a) suitable environment for development work.

I'm all ears! Opinions, experiences, rumors...!

You list some conflicting goals. Tiny distros tend to have limited functionality and no access to some proprietary stuff. If you are going to develop on the OS, you should just get a faster machine with more capacity. I like using VM's for developing since I can really hose them and just switch back to the last good snapshot.

If you aren't in a position to buy new hardware, then switch desktops to something like XFCE or LXDE should speed things up.

TobiSGD · 02-22-2011, 05:23 PM

You can always go for a lightweight distro, like antiX or Vector, or you take one of the all purpose distros, like Debian or Slackware, and build up your own system from a minimal install, may be just using a WM instead of a DE.

dugan · 02-22-2011, 05:28 PM

If you want a faster version of Ubuntu, then the obvious recommendation is Xubuntu.

eveningsky339 · 02-22-2011, 07:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dugan

If you want a faster version of Ubuntu, then the obvious recommendation is Xubuntu.

XFCE is sluggish on Ubuntu; Lubuntu is the lightest of the spins.

If you have time to kill, a minimal Debian install or another "build it yourself" distro like Arch or Slackware would be your best bet. With Debian you would have access to proprietary software and multimedia codecs, but it would take some work to get them, as Debian is all FOSS software by default.

The PCLinuxOS live CD(s) comes with the option of suspending the session to RAM and running straight from RAM. It ships with every major desktop environment and includes proprietary software and multimedia codecs by default.

Puppy is your best bet in terms of portability. The latest release is also binary compatible with Ubuntu 10.04.

Going by your goals you are looking at a mixed bag here. I recommend using KVM or Virtual Box to see what you like.