Best Linux Distribution for CPU Usage
 

I have been able to test the following linux distributions with virtually the same hardware and software to compare CPU Usages and was wondering if someone knows if their is even better than what I've found for low cpu usage. Also added a scale of 10 so you can understand what little changes it is, it's not absolutely drastic, but still worth it when you're talking about dual processors. 10 being the best i've found so far:

Redhat 8 (latest smp kernel) (8.5)
Redhat 9 (latest smp kernel) (9.5)
Suse 9.1 (latest smp kernel) (10)

All machines running dual amd mp 2800+, excess of ram, all 1 GB DDR+
same hard drive(s), as well as 100 Mbps Connections

What I discovered is that Redhat 9 runs better (lower cpu usage) than Redhat 8. No surprise here really.
Recently I discovered that Suse 9.1 outperforms both of them (lower cpu usage). No surprise either.

Tests were done running dedicated game servers, of the same configuration and same game files. (Half-Life: Counter-Strike)
Top command is what I based it off, using averages , max/min etc. Top may not be absolutely accurate, but since I used the same for all I consider it a fair test.

All that matters in my tests are the CPU Usage because cpu usage is always what runs out first, compared to Ram, HardDrive and Bandwidth.

Does anyone have something similar that shows any linux distribution outperforming Suse 9.1 ?

I would reccomend installing Slack with a custom 2.6.x kernel.

I would also recommend slack and maybe compiling your own kernel on it...

I wonder if gentoo would have a greater performance increease if you compiledit for a dual-processor? Would it make a difference?

Thanks

Absolutely, if you are hoping to improve CPU efficiency, you should compile your own custom kernel. Other stuff, like trimming down unneeded services/daemons, should go without saying; you can't really expect trying different distributions to solve the problem without looking at all of the factors that actually affect CPU usage.

I'm not too familiar with how to custom compile the kernel.
If it's beneficial to compile the kernel, could you please tell me how, or show me some guide on how to do it?

I'll try doing that to the Suse 9.1 kernel and see if it performs better.
As for unneeded service/daemons, I took care of that, even after the minimal install. Which was quite decent I might add. Only had to take away a few things, sendmail, other mail crap of coarse and umm, didnt notice much of anything else running that wasn't needed.
The minimal install was very minimal indeed.


I did find an unrelated thing during bootup that bothers me but I do not think it affects anything. During the boot sequence it scans for the hard drives to mount, and searched hda, hdb, etc.... I was wondering if I could somehow disable that since I know it wants hde?

Can I make it just scan right to hde, or somehow skip checking hda hdb? Perhaps something to do with the IRQ ports. I'm not too familiar with editing that stuff and dont want to screw up my hard drives..

The difference from Redhat 8 to Suse 9.1 is a full game server rental, which turns out to be alot if you factor the monthly price of that for many man years. So, that's why I search the Distro's first, before tweaking the individual one. I need a "favorite".

I have heard good things about Slackware, so I'll check that one out and see how it does :)
As for Gentoo, that thing is not that great for servers, although I really liked it on my personal computer, it handles PLAYING games very well, just not hosting them, as much.

Thx for ur input guys, please say more, Its very difficult to gain experience with all these distributions out there to choose from.

I would like to recommend that you install Slackware and
build an LFS system!! and then add whatever you want from the BLFS book, and then see how goes the CPU usage..........

all I understood from that is "install slackware" lol
can you ellaborate some more, or do I need to install slackware first to understand your language?