Okay, I just completed an install of Sarge. There were some glitches in the install process, but I have to say, once installed it runs extraordinarily fast! I don't really have a way to quantifiably measure the speed difference, but I can honestly say GNOME in Debian is as fast as IceWM is in Ubuntu. Some applications that I use everyday load 5x faster in Debian. What is the reason for this? Does everyone else experience this difference? Can I expect Etch will be even faster?

Debian doesn't have all the bloatware that Ubuntu has. No extra services installed and no applications with dependencies that you do not need.

For the rest of the known universe, Ubuntu is not another distro compared to Debian.
What is it with Debian people ???.

Get out and try the real world.

Your post implies that Debian is faster than other distros, but you just compare it with Ubuntu. Ubuntu is not *other* distributions, its just one distro.

Now that is certainly a peculiar analysis by someone who apparently should know better. Ubuntu is not Debian. Quality is only one of the differences.

To the OP, Distros that pander to incompetent users, and the vagaries of proprietary software are naturally going to take a serious hit in responsiveness. That's the price for ease of use. OTOH, if you know how to set up a system, I'm sure that even Ubuntu could be configured to run as fast as Debian (or any other streamlined distro).

LOL, this thread is not very helpful. I am looking into installing debian on a new computer that I am building. I want all of the shiny bloat-ware that comes pre-installed for us incompetent users.

I bought a dual core cpu. Give me liquid windows!!!

*Note for all you serious guys* I use linux for fun at home. I have guests use a linux box all of the time and they never know unless I tell them.

Roll your own if you want something quick.

Try Zenwalk, a slackware based distro, if you want fast.

It comes down to what services are running. As eluded to, a lot of the user-friendly distributions have a lot of bloat, and run a lot of extra unnecessary services, which makes responsiveness slower on the same hardware.

For example, I used to be a SuSe user, but when 10.1 came out and I did a fresh install on a 1.5Ghz machine with 512MB of RAM, it took a full 7 seconds for Firefox to load after clicking on the icon. I wiped that machine clean, and, for a number of particular reasons, installed Slackware 10.2 instead. On the same hardware, and running the same version of Firefox, it took 2 seconds to load after clicking the icon. Slackware is lean out of the box and doesn't install a lot of stuff I'll never use, and doesn't have a lot of extra services running that I don't need, so its much faster.

I never said anything was better than anything. I simply stated that Ubuntu installs many things that are not necessary. I have used Ubuntu, and I like it. What I don't like is having things installed I don't need.

THAT is what I was responding to. Take a chill pill... I'm not trying to start a distro war.
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So to respond to General's post, I am saying that Ubuntu doesn't compare to pure Debian in speed for obvious reasons. I have new hardware (Dell Inspiron E1505 core 2 duo and the works) and I still choose to use Debian, since I want to get the most out of my Debian OS. With Ubuntu you can get the same optimization, but with less of the Ubuntu perks for automagically completing tasks.

So yes General, Debian will run faster than Ubuntu. I don't see why though Etch would run very much faster than Sarge. Etch only has newer versions of applications that are also available in Sarge... (minus xorg) An upgrade to Etch will give you more features in those applications, plus a few other applications. IMO.

Alk3

you could try Reconstructor configuring your own Ubuntu CD that only has the user-friendlies you really want/need. I wouldn't mind one of these for Debian actually.

Fast means a lot of things...
For a server, for a workstation, for a RT system?
Depends on lots of things like the scheduler, the architecture-dependent optimization, IO handling, ...
Does it mean percieved response time: reactivity or IO transfers ?
For what tasks? Gimp, gzip, cp ?
Do you compare the same desktop environment? Some daemon are probably to remove if they take too much cpu.
Tweaking shouldn't take so long to get an idea.

One setup will be fast for you while it will be slow for a user running a number-crunching app or even a different DesktopManager