Hi,
Slackware has the reputation to be a very fast distro.
I have noticed Slackware has a very fast boot time but what about loading and running apps?
I'd like to hear from Slackware users where this speed 9if really exists) comes from and also how does Slackware ranks (compared to distros optimized for i686 like Archlinux) on newer hardware.
Albeit personal opinions are welcomed, i'd like to hear from someone who run benchmark or some sort of scientific comparison.

I have recompiled most of the software I use for i686 (even made a custom installer disc with kernel 2.6 and everything optimized for i686) so I don't have any speed problems except for my video card.

It costed me a 84ll, (i mean many argues with my mom) but now that it's done it runs smoothly and it doesn't give me any problems.

Salve Slackware Caesar et Imperator!

interesting, can you give me any hints on the process you followed to do that?

Any chance of you sharing this disk?

Well I'm running Freerock GNOME on Slackware, on my 1.13Ghz PIII (512MB RAM), and it's AMAZINGLY fast. In fact, on my system there's almost no speed difference between GNOME and Icewm. I've never seen GNOME this fast, not even under Gentoo.

hi,
I have been googling around (I admitedly know very little about slack) and have seen that Pat says slack packages (as well as kernel) can be compiled for i686 natively.
Is that something done with checkinstall?
what kind of parameters will be used in the process?

I don't believe the speed diff between i486 and i686 is that much and that is why pat packages at i486. I read that some where, I don't know if it is true. I have never had speed issues with slackware myself, even on my new amd64 rig. I don't use hotplug so I disable it and put ldconfig in cron, then remove it from boot. Speeds up boot time. Thats the only thing I don't like.

For me, my Slackware10.0 works just fine, and I run KDE as a DE, on my AMD K6-2 450MHz, 448MB of ram, it works rather well with all the extra KDE flash turned off. The only real slowdown I notice is web-browsing, because most java and flash based sites, really kills my system, other than that, its fine, and also I disabled hotplug to speed up boot time, which was my only issue, I would have to wait almost two minutes for hotplug to finish, maybe some systems it might be faster, but I don't know, hotplug seems to take the most time, and sure if you never reboot very often, its fine, but I'm on a multiboot, Slackware/Win2KPro(for my printer). I hope one day I can get a notebook and load Slack on it. My only real wish, is that somehow hotplug can be speedup, especially if I plan to use Slack on a notebook.

True slackware packages are compiled with the "arch=i486 cpu=i686" options - which means it will use i686 optimizations if running on a 686-class computer, but will still work on an i486 computer.

Speed increases are only very marginal in my experience. As alisonken1 says, the Slackware binaries are 686-optimized. I never really noticed any differences in speed between x86_64 distributions and Slackware Linux (except for some select areas, like asymmetric encryption).

I use hotplug-perl. It kills most of the coldplugging time, because it only loads the device ID tables once (off-the-shelf hotplug does this very often, as well as a lot of forking). It is really fast .

mcpu isn't all that it is cracked up to be.

It enables every thing that speeds up code on a 686 but that will still run on a 486.

The resulting binary runs very slow on a 486 compared to a binary no mcpu, and it runs slower on a 686 than a march=i686 would, and the benefit of mcpu is very little.

Slackware with the default 2.4.32 kernel and KDE seems slightly slower than Ubuntu Breezy Badger on my laptop, not enough to get excited about though. Where Slackware wins my miles is that it encourages you to stay in text console mode, guis don't do much on servers.

yeh its speed is very nice, 1.5ghz here, and it runs very nice with my geforce 6600GT and 2.6 kernel! dont notice any slowdowns atall!

but yeh I do also fine slackware to be a good sever OS as well

on older hardware (cpu < 1 GHz) I have noticed that slackware is alot faster than other distros. On newer hardware it uses alot less ram than other distros, maybe even a little faster but I'm not sure.

Hello all,

When I first installed Slackware 12.0 it was quick, fast and responsive. But now it has been 3 months or so, it became slower and kde kicker began
to crash frequently. Here is my laptop's config:

AMD Sempron Mobile 1.6 GHz cpu
1024 MB RAM
40 GB 5200 rpm HDD
NVIDIA G-Force FX 5200 Go 64 MB graphics card

Actually, I started to become frustrated. I couldn't configured where the problem is yet... I also run some bloated ware like MATLAB R2007b...

Thanks,

Ekin