LinuxQuestions.org - Why do people say Ubuntu is slower than Debian?

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Why do people say Ubuntu is slower than Debian?

It sounds like there's more to it than just Unity because this claim is made about all Ubuntu derivatives. What makes Ubuntu so different?

The comparisons I see are usually made between Ubuntu and Debian Testing. Could bugs really make that big of a difference?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Octoberator (Post 4823796)

The comparisons I see are usually made between Ubuntu and Debian Testing.

Exactly. What Ubuntu considers a finished product, Debian would consider still in need of testing. :)

Oh, right. Ubuntu's based on Unstable, isn't it? I've used Unstable for a while and didn't notice any difference in speed.

I've been thinking about trying Ubuntu for its later kernels and better hardware compatibility. I could probably get better drivers for Debian if I looked around, but I don't use my computer enough to go through all the trouble to get them. At the same time, I'm also a freak about performance. I'll probably end up sticking with what I have.

Ubuntu is not buggy because it is based on Debian Unstable. Debian is also based on Debian Unstable, and it is very stable. :) Rather, Ubuntu is buggy because they rush their product to release; attempting in 6 months what takes Debian 2 years.

Processes running

Code:

top - 21:00:57 up  8:50,  2 users,  load average: 0.01, 0.07, 0.12

Tasks:  83 total,  1 running,  82 sleeping,  0 stopped,  0 zombie

%Cpu(s):  0.7 us,  0.3 sy,  0.0 ni, 99.0 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st

KiB Mem:  2029628 total,  616876 used,  1412752 free,    24736 buffers

KiB Swap:  3196896 total,        0 used,  3196896 free,  207212 cached



  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S  %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND          

 9793 root      20  0  161m  76m 4960 S  1.7  3.9  0:46.25 Xorg              

10230 biker    20  0  165m  17m 9780 S  1.3  0.9  0:02.21 roxterm          

 2726 root      20  0  159m  10m 2448 S  0.3  0.5  0:27.15 wicd              

 9956 biker    20  0  678m 219m  29m S  0.3 11.1  3:01.94 firefox-bin      

    1 root      20  0 10636  832  692 S  0.0  0.0  0:00.79 init              

    2 root      20  0    0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0  0:00.00 kthreadd          

    3 root      20  0    0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0  0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0      

    5 root      0 -20    0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0  0:00.00 kworker/0:0H      

    7 root      0 -20    0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0  0:00.00 kworker/u:0H      

    8 root      rt  0    0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0  0:00.05 migration/0      

    9 root      rt  0    0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0  0:00.04 migration/1      

  10 root      20  0    0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0  0:05.04 kworker/1:0      

  11 root      0 -20    0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0  0:00.00 kworker/1:0H      

  12 root      20  0    0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0  0:00.00 ksoftirqd/1

Make Ubuntu slower vs Debian.

I'm currently running Ubuntu on a live USB and it's pretty darn fast for me. My hardware seems to be more compatible with it, but there's still a couple of problems. I think I might install it on another partition in case I decide to go back to LMDE.

My first experience with Linux was when I installed the very first version of Ubuntu, which was Ubuntu 4.10. At the time I was impressed with how much faster Ubuntu was compared to Windows XP, even on the old computer that I had installed it on just to see what this whole Linux thing was about.
However, later versions of Ubuntu gradually became more bloated and resource intensive in my experience.

It has been documented as early as 2008 that Ubuntu was getting slower:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...nch_2008&num=1
And more recently with Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu is getting slower still:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...unity_64&num=1
Jesse Smith found that Ubuntu 12.10 was significantly slower than 12.04 in his review for distrowatch.com recently:
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?is...121029#feature
Ubuntu's Unity was also found to be slower than KDE, Gnome, XFCE or LXDE:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...desktops&num=2
It is no surprise that Unity is slower than LXDE, or even XFCE; but if Unity is even more bloated than a full on KDE or Gnome 3 then I don't want any part of it.

This is why I switched to the light and fast Lubuntu with the LXDE desktop as soon as it became available. Lubuntu 12.10 continues to run very snappy and fast on my systems.
Also, I have always found that Debian seems to run lighter and faster than Ubuntu on my systems, even going back as far as 2008 when comparing Debian Etch with Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Octoberator (Post 4823905)

I'm currently running Ubuntu on a live USB and it's pretty darn fast for me.

So, you don't have a problem. Why the concern?

I feel as though Ubuntu so far has been handling heavier tasks much better than LMDE did. Right now I'm moving an entire library of music and browsing YouTube at the same time, something I never would have been able to do with LMDE. Minecraft also seems to perform much better.

So I guess everything's fine now, but thanks for the input anyway.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Octoberator (Post 4823796)

The comparisons I see are usually made between Ubuntu and Debian Testing. Could bugs really make that big of a difference?

Its not just bugs causing lower performance with ubuntu, its cruft, and some of the crap the put in (e.g. pulseaudio).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Octoberator (Post 4823806)

Oh, right. Ubuntu's based on Unstable, isn't it?

Most versions are based on unstable, LTS versions are normally based on testing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Octoberator (Post 4823806)

I've used Unstable for a while and didn't notice any difference in speed.

Maybe you wont notice, not everybody does.

In my experience, aqnd as much as possible using valid comparisons (e.g. xubuntu vs debian testing/sid Xfce, kubuntu vs deian testing/sid kde, ubuntu vs debian testing sid with gnome 2.X or gnome-shell) debian has always felt faster to me. Benchmarked faster when I've bothered as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Octoberator (Post 4823905)

I think I might install it on another partition in case I decide to go back to LMDE.

Just FYI, LMDE used to be a modded debian testing. Now its got its own repos, and its less compatibile with debian.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cascade9 (Post 4823943)

Its not just bugs causing lower performance with ubuntu, its cruft, and some of the crap the put in (e.g. pulseaudio). ...

It is not just pulseaudio that makes Ubuntu slower. For example, the hardware drivers manager is always running in the background, forever searching for new hardware that may or may not need to have proprietary drivers installed.
Is it really necessary to have the hardware drivers manager running all of the time? How often do users install new hardware that needs proprietary drivers???
Would it not be better to just have an app that you could click on whenever you needed to update or install a proprietary driver, and leave the hardware drivers manager turned off by default????

This is just one example of why Ubuntu uses more resources than Debian. I am sure you could find many others.
It seems that Ubuntu is becoming more and more like Windows in that they have all of the services turned on all of the time by default just so that users will never have to learn how to do things manually when they need to do them.

LMDE is not vanilla Debian Stable (or even Debian, really), false comparison.

Glad Ubuntu is working well for you, though. Some people luck out with their hardware combination and/or the applications they choose, and are not affected by the terrible performance-sucking bugs that seem to affect other users, such as CPU usage near 100% constantly due to video problems for example.

I am not a fan of Ubuntu at all after running it for years and switching to Debian.

All that said though I feel the need to defend Ubuntu in this case.

First comparing Ubuntu to LMDE is not a real comparison between Ubuntu and Debian. I have LMDE installed here too.

Comparing Ubuntu with Debian testing is pretty fair. Or Sid (unstable) depending on the Ubuntu release and the age of the particular development cycle.

Speed is going to depend on how you installed and what you have installed. Also what hardware you have it installed on.

If you have a fast box and are comparing Ubuntu running Gnome Shell with Debian running GS they will be pretty similar.

If you are comparing Xubuntu with Debian running Xfce you will find Debian faster.

A BIG reason for this is the package "ubuntu-minimal" in Ubuntu. This is the core of all Ubuntu releases including server additions. This package is there to make Ubuntu stable and optimize it for, currently, Unity.

This is included in every "family" member.

My box, for instance, will not run Plymouth well at all. The last Ubuntu I had on here was Xubuntu 12.04-testing. Over 3 minutes to boot and usually needed to Alt + SysRq + b to actually get it to shut down at all.

Lubuntu seems to be the best of the bunch for Canonical right now as far as speed goes but it still has to have "ubuntu-minimal" in it.

Ubuntu will work fine and fast on the right hardware. It is somewhat easier to set up if it has the right hardware.

If it is working for you, stick with it.

If you want to try a real Debian install to compare it to try Debian testing or wait until early next year, probably, and install Wheezy (the current testing) when it goes stable. I say probably because Debian is not married to a release schedule but has rules about what kind of bugs have to be fixed before testing can be released as stable. The calander has to wait for that to happen.

LMDE is a very nice OS and I recommend it to noobs. Don't really like it myself as it is too bloated and slow for my tastes. Seems pretty stable and their system of taming Debian testing seems to me to be superior to the way Ubuntu handles it in the LTS releases.

The only thing that really matters is what you find works best for you on your hardware and for what you do with your box. The experience of any of the rest of us is interesting but not all that important to what you should be doing or thinking.

Speed is something that can be benchmarked but that has nothing to do with the precieved experience that is purely subjective and more important to the user.