I am planning on moving from SuSE 8.2 to slackware 9.1. I have a few questions. One of the main reasons im changing distros is that i was a really fast linux OS and ive read that slackware is one of the fastest, and they its the least user-friendly so ill end up learning more. Is there a way during installation that i can have the packages compile for an Athlon CPU to get better performance? Also when i am installing regular software packages, such as gaim, and xine, is there a way to compile them to be optimized for my platform? i686 amd Athlon? Also, i cant seem to find the 9.1 ISO's all the mirrors ive checked seem to have about 6 files but they are all 1kb, anyone know where i can get the ISO? Thanks

Karl

you should look into gentoo - you can optimize everything for your architecture as you described.

I have taken a look at the gentoo website and the whole installation and configuration looks really complicated, but i am going to try it anyway. I am sure the end result will be exactly what i want a fast system, even though it may taken a few days. BTW have you installed gentoo? whats the best installation method? I am thinking about using the two live-cd to install the system then compile everything. Also when i go about installing Gentoo is there some sort of installation GUI, or will i have to remember all of the comands to start compiling/getting my system running.

Karl

yes, i installed it a couple of times on an old PII 300. it took about a week each time. the method i used was: booted to the live CD, got my network going, opened up the gentoo website in lynx (press alt+F2/F3/F4, etc. for other terminals you can use, then type lynx), and then i just went through the instructions carefully step by step, installing from stage2, iirc. another time i installed it to my main computer from within slackware, but i messed something up and couldn't get it to boot so i scrapped it. all in all it's not really too difficult, though, mainly just time consuming. i feel l learned a lot from the process, too. if you want to optimize everything, i'd say have a go at it, it's actually pretty fun.

No No not gentoo.

Go for Slack. It is easily the fastest distro that I have tried. Just make sure you run hdparm to get the DMA operating.

I used an Athlon 2400+ and everything was almost instant - for example even loading KDE from X-windows log-in only took about 2 seconds. On Fedora Core 1, this takes about 10 seconds. Everything is noticeably faster in Slack.

humm, now im torn, i dont know which to try....ive read a little bit more of the gentoo manual and it doesnt seem all that bad, and i like how everything is compiles for my system. What are the advantages of slackware over gentoo?

Ive got a 2500+ and 1gig of memory, so either way i believe each distro will run fast on my system, I am just unhappy with the performance of suse 8.2 and wanted something more for my system. I want the best performance while running all of my desktop applications, such as xmms, xine, and Eclipse(this runs slower than a turtle)

Does slackware have a live-cd i could try?


Edit: Also, does anyone know how gentoo reacts with nforce2 ethernet?

the slack vs. gentoo speed question is destined to be a classic.

with a 2500+ and 1GB memory, you are not going to have problems with either one. it just depends if you want to take the time to compile everything with gentoo (which you don't even have to do if you don't want to). the benefit of gentoo aside from the optimization issue is the portage system.

i have nf2 ethernet, but i can't remember if i used it through gentoo, sorry. i'm sure it's okay, but double check the gentoo forum just to make sure.

and yes, there's a slackware live CD, slax i'm not sure if that will tell you much about the speed of an installed slackware system, but it's a good CD to have anyway.

To get the fastest setup, you have to compile the software packages with the optimizations specific to the cpu. I would say Gentoo would be faster as I doubt all packages in Slackware will have K7 optimizations. But if you decide to try Gentoo, you have to wait for the time it takes to compile the software and that takes a long time.

I think i am going to go with gentoo, just to see what its like, it seems very interesting, and seeing how i cant get the slackware iso image it kind of limits my choices.

thanks for the help everyone

in case you change your mind (or want to try both ):
http://www.linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=17

or you can always use one of the slackware mirrors:
http://www.slackware.com/getslack/

none of the US mirrors have an actuall ISO file, it seems to be a dummy file that is 1kb and linuxiso.org is going to tae about 8 hours for 1 cd

can any one point me to a fast mirror

some mirrors just have the md5 and some other file -- you have to search around for which ones have the ISOs. here's a couple of US mirrors with ISOs, not sure about the speeds -- sometimes non-US mirrors are actually faster, though:

ftp://ftp.biochem.uthscsa.edu/pub/li...kware-9.1-iso/
ftp://ftp.cs.columbia.edu/archives/o...kware-9.0-iso/

my swaret usually seems to use sunsite, it seems fairly fast:
ftp://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/mirror...kware-9.1-iso/