Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 15 March 2013, at 17:32, Kevin Chadwick wrote: If you use the Gentoo hardened Tinfoil Linux you will need lots of ram and wait ages to boot but firefox will just pop up. I'm sorry, I don't understand this statement. Could you possibly explain, please? It's one of Blueness projects based on Hardened Gentoo. It loads into ram at boot (you need something like 4 gig of ram) which takes ages from dvd but could be from an ssd/hdd (defeating half the point without a ro switch though). It can update from the net once booted too. Once done everythings in ram so firefox can literally pop up like a web advert upon execution. -- ___ 'Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface' (Doug McIlroy) ___
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 03/18/2013 04:21 PM, Kevin Chadwick wrote: On 15 March 2013, at 17:32, Kevin Chadwick wrote: If you use the Gentoo hardened Tinfoil Linux you will need lots of ram and wait ages to boot but firefox will just pop up. I'm sorry, I don't understand this statement. Could you possibly explain, please? It's one of Blueness projects based on Hardened Gentoo. It loads into ram at boot (you need something like 4 gig of ram) which takes ages from dvd but could be from an ssd/hdd (defeating half the point without a ro switch though). It can update from the net once booted too. Once done everythings in ram so firefox can literally pop up like a web advert upon execution. In other words, it's a distribution designed to not allow persistent storage that might possibly be poisoned, and instead get much of its security-conscious code updated over the network. The just pops up being referred to simply comes from everything being loaded into the kernel file cache before you can do anything with the system. (Frankly, this sounds quite nice for kiosk environments.) signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
It's one of Blueness projects based on Hardened Gentoo. It loads into ram at boot (you need something like 4 gig of ram) which takes ages from dvd but could be from an ssd/hdd (defeating half the point without a ro switch though). It can update from the net once booted too. Once done everythings in ram so firefox can literally pop up like a web advert upon execution. In other words, it's a distribution designed to not allow persistent storage that might possibly be poisoned, Not really, that is one benefit, but don't forget that BIOS, HDD or Video card firmware could have been altered. The main goals are reliability and leave no trace elements but it does have some added tamper ensurance yes. I didn't spell it out because you should check the site to see all the details and would be bound to get it a little wrong without checking myself. and instead get much of its security-conscious code updated over the network. Security conscious code??? What do you mean? That says to me things like PAX brute force protection?? Even though it is from a DVD it can be updated just like standard linux. The problem is, if you run out of ram then things get killed. (Frankly, this sounds quite nice for kiosk environments.) Could be if you have a good enough network connection for Linux kernel updates or cut it right down ;-) -- ___ 'Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface' (Doug McIlroy) ___
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 03/18/2013 05:38 PM, Kevin Chadwick wrote: It's one of Blueness projects based on Hardened Gentoo. It loads into ram at boot (you need something like 4 gig of ram) which takes ages from dvd but could be from an ssd/hdd (defeating half the point without a ro switch though). It can update from the net once booted too. Once done everythings in ram so firefox can literally pop up like a web advert upon execution. In other words, it's a distribution designed to not allow persistent storage that might possibly be poisoned, Not really, that is one benefit, but don't forget that BIOS, HDD or Video card firmware could have been altered. Sure. The main goals are reliability and leave no trace elements but it does have some added tamper ensurance yes. I didn't spell it out because you should check the site to see all the details and would be bound to get it a little wrong without checking myself. and instead get much of its security-conscious code updated over the network. Security conscious code??? What do you mean? That says to me things like PAX brute force protection?? I mean everything that gets updated more frequently owing to its being a high-profile target in security contexts. Web browsers. Mail clients. Listening daemons. Having a static image that you need to update every time you boot is a bit like plugging in an unpatched Windows machine that you need to run updates on...every time you boot. It's a tad silly in that respect. Even though it is from a DVD it can be updated just like standard linux. The problem is, if you run out of ram then things get killed. (Frankly, this sounds quite nice for kiosk environments.) Could be if you have a good enough network connection for Linux kernel updates or cut it right down ;-) Local gigabit is cheap, and a gigabit connection would transfer the image in under a minute. A bit more, of course, if you've got an overloaded server being slammed by ten or twenty machines. (I wonder if one can anycast TFTP on a local segment. Hm. I think you could just barely pull it off, since you'd have resolved the layer 2 address for your syn packet, and that should stick with the connection.) signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On Mon, 18 Mar 2013 19:28:04 -0400 Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: Even though it is from a DVD it can be updated just like standard linux. The problem is, if you run out of ram then things get killed. (Frankly, this sounds quite nice for kiosk environments.) Could be if you have a good enough network connection for Linux kernel updates or cut it right down ;-) Local gigabit is cheap, and a gigabit connection would transfer the image in under a minute. A bit more, of course, if you've got an overloaded server being slammed by ten or twenty machines. (I wonder if one can anycast TFTP on a local segment. Hm. I think you could just barely pull it off, since you'd have resolved the layer 2 address for your syn packet, and that should stick with the connection.) Kiosks are notorious for having difficulty in getting to connections as there place is determined by other factors. Still it may make a good choice of OS except for reboot time.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 03/18/2013 08:10 PM, Kevin Chadwick wrote: On Mon, 18 Mar 2013 19:28:04 -0400 Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote: Even though it is from a DVD it can be updated just like standard linux. The problem is, if you run out of ram then things get killed. (Frankly, this sounds quite nice for kiosk environments.) Could be if you have a good enough network connection for Linux kernel updates or cut it right down ;-) Local gigabit is cheap, and a gigabit connection would transfer the image in under a minute. A bit more, of course, if you've got an overloaded server being slammed by ten or twenty machines. (I wonder if one can anycast TFTP on a local segment. Hm. I think you could just barely pull it off, since you'd have resolved the layer 2 address for your syn packet, and that should stick with the connection.) Kiosks are notorious for having difficulty in getting to connections as there place is determined by other factors. Still it may make a good choice of OS except for reboot time. I was thinking POS-style setups in a makerspace I help with. If I had to cope with wireless or cellular, and I was seriously concerned about security on a budget, I'd use an internal USB stick with a fuse diode to prevent further writing, or an SD card with a similar fuse tripped. Expire on a schedule. Send updates as replacement data devices. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 15 March 2013, at 17:32, Kevin Chadwick wrote: If you use the Gentoo hardened Tinfoil Linux you will need lots of ram and wait ages to boot but firefox will just pop up. I'm sorry, I don't understand this statement. Could you possibly explain, please? Stroller.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 18:52:41 -0500 Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: I didn't miss anything. I get what some are saying. The reason for my question is this. Gentoo allows a person to customize the OS to the specific hardware it is being run on. Redhat and other binary distros don't allow this, unless you compile your own packages which is no longer really a binary install. So, if I install Redhat on my machine, would it be less efficient than my Gentoo install which is customized for my hardware? Has someone else tested this and made it public? If people can't get this, never mind. Dale I have not really searched for such benchmarks for a while. I would take any such things with a grain of salt, if I did. Unless I want to devote the time to set up a series of application specific tests, and test them on multiple platforms on MY hardware, such results would be almost useless to me. I am sure that there are such tests out there - Computer Science and Engineering departments at Universities have certainly run such tests - whether they are public or not, is another story. Also, if you could specifically define efficient, it would be helpful, at least to narrow down what you're looking for. If you mean, accomplishing the same task with the fewest instructions, that is difficult to test, and very dependent on Kernel, library and compiler versions. If you mean faster, that is more hardware dependent, unless you're dealing with some very poorly written code. Efficient does not always mean faster - as others have pointed out, binary distos are faster to install than source based distros. FreeBSD is faster than GNU/Linux on some tasks, and overall is more UNIX-like, since it was a Berkeley developed version of UNIX. This has been tested on other people's hardware. Would that necessarily compare to mine or yours? We don't know that, since we have NOT tested them on each of our sets of hardware. E.g. FreeBSD uses an older version of just about everything, so I cannot optimize the compiler for my Core-i7-avx processor. I can do this with Gentoo (or any other GNU/Linux distro that I choose to 'optimize' by compiling from source). Just my $0.02, Chris
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 06:52:41PM -0500, Dale wrote I didn't miss anything. I get what some are saying. The reason for my question is this. Gentoo allows a person to customize the OS to the specific hardware it is being run on. Redhat and other binary distros don't allow this, unless you compile your own packages which is no longer really a binary install. So, if I install Redhat on my machine, would it be less efficient than my Gentoo install which is customized for my hardware? Has someone else tested this and made it public? I'm not aware of any. There is my experience with NHL Gamecenter Live on my 2007 Dell Inspiron D530 desktop with onboard Intel GPU. The initial Gentoo install could not handle even the slowest feed. That was the generic i686 code from the initial stage 3. After I ran emerge system and emerge world including the -march=native flag it handles the lowest speed stream just fine. CPU is Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E4600 @ 2.40GHz. -- Walter Dnes waltd...@waltdnes.org I don't run desktop environments; I run useful applications
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 2013-03-15, Dale wrote: I didn't miss anything. I get what some are saying. The reason for my question is this. Gentoo allows a person to customize the OS to the specific hardware it is being run on. Redhat and other binary distros don't allow this, unless you compile your own packages which is no longer really a binary install. So, if I install Redhat on my machine, would it be less efficient than my Gentoo install which is customized for my hardware? Has someone else tested this and made it public? If people can't get this, never mind. I have not tested this nor seen data on this, but I'd look for comparisons on the efficiency and gains from gcc optimizations. These would be what benefits source-based distros on a specific system compared to binary distros, and a benchmark made with gcc will be simpler and easier to deal with than an os-wide benchmark. -- Nuno Silva (aka njsg) http://njsg.sdf-eu.org/
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 2013-03-14, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Grant Edwards wrote: On 2013-03-14, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? I just did a test, and they're all the same. CDs/DVDS of various distros dropped from a height of 1m all hit the floor simultaneously [...] The point being, you're going to have to define speed. OK. It appears not very many can figure out what I asked for. So, let me spell it out for those who are challenged. LOL ;-) Read some humor into that OK. Install a OS. Run tests on a set of programs and record the time it takes to complete a certain task. More tasks the better. The results are going to vary depending on what task(s) are chosen. If app/library/compiler versions are the same, all of the results I've read about show you're not going to see a noticable difference. You might be able to _measure_ a difference, but it's not something you'll ever notice. IOW, if you spend a few days tweaking CFLAGS, you might be able to increase the number of FFTs per second you can run by a few percent when compared to an off-the-shelf Ubuntu, RedHat, or Scientific Linux install. But, if that's what you care about, then using a better library/algorithm or better hardware is what you do. The advantage of Gentoo is ease of administration, ease of customization, ease of getting non default/mainstream things installed and working right. -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwardsYow! The entire CHINESE at WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL TEAM all gmail.comshare ONE personality -- and have since BIRTH!!
Re: [Bulk] [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
I didn't miss anything. I get what some are saying. The reason for my question is this. Gentoo allows a person to customize the OS to the specific hardware it is being run on. Redhat and other binary distros don't allow this, unless you compile your own packages which is no longer really a binary install. So, if I install Redhat on my machine, would it be less efficient than my Gentoo install which is customized for my hardware? Has someone else tested this and made it public? If people can't get this, never mind. I have not tested this nor seen data on this, but I'd look for comparisons on the efficiency and gains from gcc optimizations. These would be what benefits source-based distros on a specific system compared to binary distros, and a benchmark made with gcc will be simpler and easier to deal with than an os-wide benchmark. Or the real difference maker, designing the program itself to be faster or using a really fast storage device bearing in mind any draw backs like storage space. If you use hardened Gentoo or OpenBSD or a PAE gentoo like Sabayon it may be slightly slower but more secure but you won't notice any difference when waiting for firefox to open until the second time. If you use the Gentoo hardened Tinfoil Linux you will need lots of ram and wait ages to boot but firefox will just pop up. Compiling speed, well I would just get better hardware or do distributed compiles as otherwise chances are your taking risks especially if you don't test and understand exactly what you are changing very well bearing in mind that with compilers everything may work fine 97% instead of 99% of the time. -- ___ 'Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface' (Doug McIlroy) ___
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 2013-03-14, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? I just did a test, and they're all the same. CDs/DVDS of various distros dropped from a height of 1m all hit the floor simultaneously [there are random variations due to aerodynamic instability of the disk shape, but it's the same for all distros]. If launched horizontally with spin to provide attitude stability (thrown like a frisbee), they all fly the same. The point being, you're going to have to define speed. Does speed refer to Installation time? Boot time? Linpack? Dhrystone? Whetstone? Time for me to figure out how to fix a configuration problem? Time to do to an update on a machine that's been unplugged for a year? Time to to produce a packaged version of some random C program that comes with a Makefile that uses autotools? Time for a reported bug to get fixed? -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwardsYow! Is it 1974? What's at for SUPPER? Can I spend gmail.commy COLLEGE FUND in one wild afternoon??
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 14/03/2013 16:07, Grant Edwards wrote: On 2013-03-14, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? I just did a test, and they're all the same. CDs/DVDS of various distros dropped from a height of 1m all hit the floor simultaneously [there are random variations due to aerodynamic instability of the disk shape, but it's the same for all distros]. If launched horizontally with spin to provide attitude stability (thrown like a frisbee), they all fly the same. nonononononono, gentoo is much faster. I did the same test, but comparing Centos on a DVD with Gentoo on a USB stick. The stick tends to fall about 8% faster, mostly due to removing those aerodynamic instabilities causing lift effects from the wing-like shape of the DVD. I consider this a perfectly valid test as Gentoo is designed to let me remove unwanted side-effects from the environment. The shape of a DVD was unwanted, so I made a tweak to take it out. p.s. good joke on your part :-) Dale is never going to live this one down. But he's a big boy, he can take it. The point being, you're going to have to define speed. Does speed refer to Installation time? Boot time? Linpack? Dhrystone? Whetstone? Time for me to figure out how to fix a configuration problem? Time to do to an update on a machine that's been unplugged for a year? Time to to produce a packaged version of some random C program that comes with a Makefile that uses autotools? Time for a reported bug to get fixed? -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
Grant Edwards wrote: On 2013-03-14, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? I just did a test, and they're all the same. CDs/DVDS of various distros dropped from a height of 1m all hit the floor simultaneously [there are random variations due to aerodynamic instability of the disk shape, but it's the same for all distros]. If launched horizontally with spin to provide attitude stability (thrown like a frisbee), they all fly the same. The point being, you're going to have to define speed. Does speed refer to Installation time? Boot time? Linpack? Dhrystone? Whetstone? Time for me to figure out how to fix a configuration problem? Time to do to an update on a machine that's been unplugged for a year? Time to to produce a packaged version of some random C program that comes with a Makefile that uses autotools? Time for a reported bug to get fixed? OK. It appears not very many can figure out what I asked for. So, let me spell it out for those who are challenged. LOL ;-) Read some humor into that OK. Install a OS. Run tests on a set of programs and record the time it takes to complete a certain task. More tasks the better. Then install another OS on the same hardware. Run tests on a set of programs and record the time it takes to complete a certain task. More tasks the better. The object of this is, does Gentoo with the customization it allows run faster than some binary install that does NOT allow those controls? In other words, can a Gentoo based install perform more efficiently than a binary based install like Redhat, Ubuntu or some other distro? I am NOT concerned about compile times or the install itself. Does that put the dots closer together for the challenged ones? ROFL Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 14/03/13 22:41, Dale wrote: Grant Edwards wrote: On 2013-03-14, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? I just did a test, and they're all the same. CDs/DVDS of various distros dropped from a height of 1m all hit the floor simultaneously [there are random variations due to aerodynamic instability of the disk shape, but it's the same for all distros]. If launched horizontally with spin to provide attitude stability (thrown like a frisbee), they all fly the same. The point being, you're going to have to define speed. Does speed refer to Installation time? Boot time? Linpack? Dhrystone? Whetstone? Time for me to figure out how to fix a configuration problem? Time to do to an update on a machine that's been unplugged for a year? Time to to produce a packaged version of some random C program that comes with a Makefile that uses autotools? Time for a reported bug to get fixed? OK. It appears not very many can figure out what I asked for. So, let me spell it out for those who are challenged. LOL ;-) Read some humor into that OK. Install a OS. Run tests on a set of programs and record the time it takes to complete a certain task. More tasks the better. Then install another OS on the same hardware. Run tests on a set of programs and record the time it takes to complete a certain task. More tasks the better. The object of this is, does Gentoo with the customization it allows run faster than some binary install that does NOT allow those controls? In other words, can a Gentoo based install perform more efficiently than a binary based install like Redhat, Ubuntu or some other distro? I am NOT concerned about compile times or the install itself. Does that put the dots closer together for the challenged ones? ROFL Dale :-) :-) The point of the challenged ones was that while we can take measurements like these, it's rather meaningless to do so. The result will be different for every single person out there depending on their configuration, USE, CFLAGS and who knows what else. I can compile a package with support for 3 different DEs, few WMs, oss and alsa and about a billion things I will never use. Does this make for a more or less of a meaningful test than doing the same test with no flags what so ever? There is no correct answer as it varies per user basis. The most meaningful measurements that we can probably take would be between different USE flags configurations. Maybe we can say that package ‘foo’ with certain USE and CFLAGS runs in less average time than the same package on a distro Bar. In my opinion, it would be far more meaningful to measure the effect of different USE flags on the same package, *in relative time* on the same system. This would give us more idea about the impact of each flag as opposed to a very limited view of ‘package foo with certain specific USE flags runs 10ms faster than the same package on the same hardware on a binary distribution’. If you still want such measurements and you want them to be somewhat meaningful to you, it is you who will have to take them. Unless there are some gross inconsistencies in run times on different distributions, we have no use for such measurement. Everyone understood what you asked for. It's _you_ that misunderstood their explanation for why it's meaningless to ask such a question in the first place. -- Mateusz K.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
Mateusz Kowalczyk wrote: On 14/03/13 22:41, Dale wrote: Grant Edwards wrote: On 2013-03-14, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? I just did a test, and they're all the same. CDs/DVDS of various distros dropped from a height of 1m all hit the floor simultaneously [there are random variations due to aerodynamic instability of the disk shape, but it's the same for all distros]. If launched horizontally with spin to provide attitude stability (thrown like a frisbee), they all fly the same. The point being, you're going to have to define speed. Does speed refer to Installation time? Boot time? Linpack? Dhrystone? Whetstone? Time for me to figure out how to fix a configuration problem? Time to do to an update on a machine that's been unplugged for a year? Time to to produce a packaged version of some random C program that comes with a Makefile that uses autotools? Time for a reported bug to get fixed? OK. It appears not very many can figure out what I asked for. So, let me spell it out for those who are challenged. LOL ;-) Read some humor into that OK. Install a OS. Run tests on a set of programs and record the time it takes to complete a certain task. More tasks the better. Then install another OS on the same hardware. Run tests on a set of programs and record the time it takes to complete a certain task. More tasks the better. The object of this is, does Gentoo with the customization it allows run faster than some binary install that does NOT allow those controls? In other words, can a Gentoo based install perform more efficiently than a binary based install like Redhat, Ubuntu or some other distro? I am NOT concerned about compile times or the install itself. Does that put the dots closer together for the challenged ones? ROFL Dale :-) :-) The point of the challenged ones was that while we can take measurements like these, it's rather meaningless to do so. The result will be different for every single person out there depending on their configuration, USE, CFLAGS and who knows what else. I can compile a package with support for 3 different DEs, few WMs, oss and alsa and about a billion things I will never use. Does this make for a more or less of a meaningful test than doing the same test with no flags what so ever? There is no correct answer as it varies per user basis. The most meaningful measurements that we can probably take would be between different USE flags configurations. Maybe we can say that package ‘foo’ with certain USE and CFLAGS runs in less average time than the same package on a distro Bar. In my opinion, it would be far more meaningful to measure the effect of different USE flags on the same package, *in relative time* on the same system. This would give us more idea about the impact of each flag as opposed to a very limited view of ‘package foo with certain specific USE flags runs 10ms faster than the same package on the same hardware on a binary distribution’. If you still want such measurements and you want them to be somewhat meaningful to you, it is you who will have to take them. Unless there are some gross inconsistencies in run times on different distributions, we have no use for such measurement. Everyone understood what you asked for. It's _you_ that misunderstood their explanation for why it's meaningless to ask such a question in the first place. I didn't miss anything. I get what some are saying. The reason for my question is this. Gentoo allows a person to customize the OS to the specific hardware it is being run on. Redhat and other binary distros don't allow this, unless you compile your own packages which is no longer really a binary install. So, if I install Redhat on my machine, would it be less efficient than my Gentoo install which is customized for my hardware? Has someone else tested this and made it public? If people can't get this, never mind. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 18:52:41 -0500, Dale wrote: So, if I install Redhat on my machine, would it be less efficient than my Gentoo install which is customized for my hardware? Has someone else tested this and made it public? No. They may have tested it on their machine, but not on yours, so their results aren't applicable to running the same tests on DaleOS[tm]. The times this really matters is when running resource-intensive or time-critical applications (like the NASDAQ example you gave) and on those situations it is possible to define a set of test that give meaning results, but only n those situations. Your question makes how long is a piece of string seem a model of precision. -- Neil Bothwick A Smith Weason beats Four Aces everytime. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 14/03/13 23:52, Dale wrote: Mateusz Kowalczyk wrote: On 14/03/13 22:41, Dale wrote: Grant Edwards wrote: On 2013-03-14, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? I just did a test, and they're all the same. CDs/DVDS of various distros dropped from a height of 1m all hit the floor simultaneously [there are random variations due to aerodynamic instability of the disk shape, but it's the same for all distros]. If launched horizontally with spin to provide attitude stability (thrown like a frisbee), they all fly the same. The point being, you're going to have to define speed. Does speed refer to Installation time? Boot time? Linpack? Dhrystone? Whetstone? Time for me to figure out how to fix a configuration problem? Time to do to an update on a machine that's been unplugged for a year? Time to to produce a packaged version of some random C program that comes with a Makefile that uses autotools? Time for a reported bug to get fixed? OK. It appears not very many can figure out what I asked for. So, let me spell it out for those who are challenged. LOL ;-) Read some humor into that OK. Install a OS. Run tests on a set of programs and record the time it takes to complete a certain task. More tasks the better. Then install another OS on the same hardware. Run tests on a set of programs and record the time it takes to complete a certain task. More tasks the better. The object of this is, does Gentoo with the customization it allows run faster than some binary install that does NOT allow those controls? In other words, can a Gentoo based install perform more efficiently than a binary based install like Redhat, Ubuntu or some other distro? I am NOT concerned about compile times or the install itself. Does that put the dots closer together for the challenged ones? ROFL Dale :-) :-) The point of the challenged ones was that while we can take measurements like these, it's rather meaningless to do so. The result will be different for every single person out there depending on their configuration, USE, CFLAGS and who knows what else. I can compile a package with support for 3 different DEs, few WMs, oss and alsa and about a billion things I will never use. Does this make for a more or less of a meaningful test than doing the same test with no flags what so ever? There is no correct answer as it varies per user basis. The most meaningful measurements that we can probably take would be between different USE flags configurations. Maybe we can say that package ‘foo’ with certain USE and CFLAGS runs in less average time than the same package on a distro Bar. In my opinion, it would be far more meaningful to measure the effect of different USE flags on the same package, *in relative time* on the same system. This would give us more idea about the impact of each flag as opposed to a very limited view of ‘package foo with certain specific USE flags runs 10ms faster than the same package on the same hardware on a binary distribution’. If you still want such measurements and you want them to be somewhat meaningful to you, it is you who will have to take them. Unless there are some gross inconsistencies in run times on different distributions, we have no use for such measurement. Everyone understood what you asked for. It's _you_ that misunderstood their explanation for why it's meaningless to ask such a question in the first place. I didn't miss anything. I get what some are saying. The reason for my question is this. Gentoo allows a person to customize the OS to the specific hardware it is being run on. Redhat and other binary distros don't allow this, unless you compile your own packages which is no longer really a binary install. So, if I install Redhat on my machine, would it be less efficient than my Gentoo install which is customized for my hardware? Has someone else tested this and made it public? If people can't get this, never mind. Dale :-) :-) I don't think that it's plausible to take such measurement. We could set every USE flag possible for the package we are benchmarking to try and replicate the support for everything that the binary package is likely to have. We also have to do this for all its dependencies (and their dependencies and so on) to have nothing that could potentially influence the measurement. Assuming that portage complies with this (it won't), we compile the package with optimizations for our hardware. The result? We probably have the same result on Gentoo and the other distro. Why? The reason is simple: binary distributions provide packages compiled with optimizations turned on for specific architectures. Unless you are doing some unheard of optimizations for your obscure model
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 15/03/13 08:31, Mateusz Kowalczyk wrote: On 14/03/13 23:52, Dale wrote: Mateusz Kowalczyk wrote: On 14/03/13 22:41, Dale wrote: Grant Edwards wrote: On 2013-03-14, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: ... RedHat maintainers aren't stupid (you can probably tell I've never used RH) – they will release packages optimized for architectures they will run on. Overall you might get very slight performance boost because of some CFLAG you enable but you might as well have worse performance because you don't know as much about optimizations as the RH maintainers and developers. Bah, you can even find examples on Gentoo wiki where compiling certain packages with certain flags actually makes them slower and not faster where usually the opposite is the case. Further, when we did the tests I mentioned before (exactly what Dale was asking about in fact) - we had 3 identical machines for testing in parallel ... Celerons at the time. While setting up, it became clear that while gentoo was working well on my P4 laptop, cloning it onto the celeron gave performance worse than a default i386 debian. So after a bit of swatting on compiler flags I tuned it closer to the architecture, did an overnight rebuild and we went from there ... and it could only shade i386 default debian about 10% ... mostly. 1. The upshot is that I consider its actually easier to shoot yourself in the foot performance wise if you get it wrong than it is to get it right. 2. Tuning for a particular load/job *WILL* make the machine more unsuitable to other load/job profiles. 3. On the same hardware, any distro can/should be made to perform identically if tuned by someone in the know (or made worse) 4. Gentoo is easier to tune (make better ... or worse :) BillK
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On Mar 15, 2013 7:31 AM, Mateusz Kowalczyk fuuze...@fuuzetsu.co.uk wrote: On 14/03/13 23:52, Dale wrote: Mateusz Kowalczyk wrote: On 14/03/13 22:41, Dale wrote: Grant Edwards wrote: On 2013-03-14, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? I just did a test, and they're all the same. CDs/DVDS of various distros dropped from a height of 1m all hit the floor simultaneously [there are random variations due to aerodynamic instability of the disk shape, but it's the same for all distros]. If launched horizontally with spin to provide attitude stability (thrown like a frisbee), they all fly the same. The point being, you're going to have to define speed. Does speed refer to Installation time? Boot time? Linpack? Dhrystone? Whetstone? Time for me to figure out how to fix a configuration problem? Time to do to an update on a machine that's been unplugged for a year? Time to to produce a packaged version of some random C program that comes with a Makefile that uses autotools? Time for a reported bug to get fixed? OK. It appears not very many can figure out what I asked for. So, let me spell it out for those who are challenged. LOL ;-) Read some humor into that OK. Install a OS. Run tests on a set of programs and record the time it takes to complete a certain task. More tasks the better. Then install another OS on the same hardware. Run tests on a set of programs and record the time it takes to complete a certain task. More tasks the better. The object of this is, does Gentoo with the customization it allows run faster than some binary install that does NOT allow those controls? In other words, can a Gentoo based install perform more efficiently than a binary based install like Redhat, Ubuntu or some other distro? I am NOT concerned about compile times or the install itself. Does that put the dots closer together for the challenged ones? ROFL Dale :-) :-) The point of the challenged ones was that while we can take measurements like these, it's rather meaningless to do so. The result will be different for every single person out there depending on their configuration, USE, CFLAGS and who knows what else. I can compile a package with support for 3 different DEs, few WMs, oss and alsa and about a billion things I will never use. Does this make for a more or less of a meaningful test than doing the same test with no flags what so ever? There is no correct answer as it varies per user basis. The most meaningful measurements that we can probably take would be between different USE flags configurations. Maybe we can say that package ‘foo’ with certain USE and CFLAGS runs in less average time than the same package on a distro Bar. In my opinion, it would be far more meaningful to measure the effect of different USE flags on the same package, *in relative time* on the same system. This would give us more idea about the impact of each flag as opposed to a very limited view of ‘package foo with certain specific USE flags runs 10ms faster than the same package on the same hardware on a binary distribution’. If you still want such measurements and you want them to be somewhat meaningful to you, it is you who will have to take them. Unless there are some gross inconsistencies in run times on different distributions, we have no use for such measurement. Everyone understood what you asked for. It's _you_ that misunderstood their explanation for why it's meaningless to ask such a question in the first place. I didn't miss anything. I get what some are saying. The reason for my question is this. Gentoo allows a person to customize the OS to the specific hardware it is being run on. Redhat and other binary distros don't allow this, unless you compile your own packages which is no longer really a binary install. So, if I install Redhat on my machine, would it be less efficient than my Gentoo install which is customized for my hardware? Has someone else tested this and made it public? If people can't get this, never mind. Dale :-) :-) I don't think that it's plausible to take such measurement. We could set every USE flag possible for the package we are benchmarking to try and replicate the support for everything that the binary package is likely to have. We also have to do this for all its dependencies (and their dependencies and so on) to have nothing that could potentially influence the measurement. Assuming that portage complies with this (it won't), we compile the package with optimizations for our hardware. The result? We probably have the same result on Gentoo and the other distro. Why? The reason is simple:
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 10:12 PM, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: On 14/03/2013 16:07, Grant Edwards wrote: On 2013-03-14, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? I just did a test, and they're all the same. CDs/DVDS of various distros dropped from a height of 1m all hit the floor simultaneously [there are random variations due to aerodynamic instability of the disk shape, but it's the same for all distros]. If launched horizontally with spin to provide attitude stability (thrown like a frisbee), they all fly the same. nonononononono, gentoo is much faster. I did the same test, but comparing Centos on a DVD with Gentoo on a USB stick. The stick tends to fall about 8% faster, mostly due to removing those aerodynamic instabilities causing lift effects from the wing-like shape of the DVD. I consider this a perfectly valid test as Gentoo is designed to let me remove unwanted side-effects from the environment. The shape of a DVD was unwanted, so I made a tweak to take it out. Nice try, but CentOS has a network install option. So before you guys get up the elevator to the tenth floor, the sysad on the ground has already smashed the machine in frustration.
