Ubuntu faster than Arch on Pentium-M

erm67 · 2010-01-28 08:56:43

I have a Dell D610 Laptop with a Pentium-M 1.86Ghz, it was running Arch but since I had problems installing the drivers for my new gsm modem, in AUR (it installs the package for Ubuntu), I decided to install Ubuntu and see how the driver was supposed to work on the distro it was designed for. The driver worked better on Ubuntu but what struck me really is that Ubuntu feels faster than Arch, I tried several benchmarks and they confirmed it, in particular all firefox benchmarks (peacekeeper sunspider) were almost twice as fast on Ubuntu than on Arch.
I had already made a similar comparison on a Pentium4 and Arch was faster on all benchmarks, well it is expected because of the i686 against i486 optimization, so this is a bit confusing ....
How do you explain this? Is it possible that the Pentium-M runs code optimized for i686 slower than code optimized for i486, it is more geared towards power-saving than speed after all, or maybe there was something wrong with my Arch install?

JackH79 · 2010-01-28 09:15:17

erm67 wrote:

... or maybe there was something wrong with my Arch install?

As Arch ALWAYS depends on how the user has set it up, I would say, and I apologise for this sounding arrogant, it's always the user's fault.
Ubuntu can be on the quick side, but it takes a lot to make it quicker. Arch on the other hand is very quick from the start and then made slower by the user.

erm67 · 2010-01-28 09:42:18

It was a fresh Arch install, base base-devel xorg gnome gnome-extras and nothing more beside a couple of browsers .....

Last edited by erm67 (2010-01-28 09:42:43)

makimaki · 2010-01-28 09:48:59

@erm67
are you using the same filesystem for / in each distro? Some people have cpu loading problems with firefox on ext4. This is due to firefox using fsync() calls (all data gets synched to the hd), see here and here. Also if a set of drivers are being heavily developed (like the recent work on the intel graphics drivers over the last few months), then things can be slower. So in the case of intel drivers, many people stuck to an older set of drivers until the performance in the new ones improved and stabilised. I'm not sure if this is case in your situation, but did you check the driver versions? It could be a similar issue for the version of your filesystem, or how you configure it on mount.

Anyway, I'm not going to be much help, perhaps someone more knowledgeable has some ideas.

alecmg · 2010-01-28 09:54:21

twice as fast difference...
perhaps in Arch the CPU was running in power saving mode only?

JackH79 · 2010-01-28 09:57:41

Well, could be that Ubuntu's done a really good job with tweaking Gnome. They do a lot of fiddeling if I recall correctly. Whereas the Arch Gnome is pretty much Vanilla. I run a few Linux-Mints in our Internet cafe and they are quite quick, even on our shoddy old hardware (which is actually why I installed them there) and they are way quicker than our Win XPs and 7s.
On my own machine however, I've got awesome running with only a few gimmicks and my boot times flatten pretty much anything I know around me (about 28s into a full X session, excluding login typing) and I could probably still get it down if I left out MPD and such things (again, not that I'm trying to boast or anything silly).
So I guess it depends.

erm67 · 2010-01-28 10:02:31

@makimaki both systems with ext4 ...
@alecmg I use the cpu frequency scaling applet in gnome to see the current speed and in both was 1.87, but since you pointed this out I remembered one big difference, on Arch I was using laptop-mode while on Ubuntu I am not. Both systems use cpufreq-ondemand. I will try laptop-mode on Ubuntu to see if it makes the difference, and than Arch without it ....

EDIT: Ubuntu with laptop-mode active still runs the peacekeepers benchmark faster ...., still have to test Arch without laptop-mode.

Last edited by erm67 (2010-01-28 11:31:50)

moljac024 · 2010-01-28 11:49:19

Report back here when you do, we are all interested.

erm67 · 2010-01-28 14:57:21

I can't :-) I am not home and without the gsm modem drivers I have no internet connection, but I will further investigate when I will be back home in Februar :-)

moljac024 · 2010-01-28 15:18:19

We'll wait

quarkup · 2010-09-05 12:44:35

if you want more speed, try to install the kernel26-pentium-m on AUR (its optimized for pentium-m)

ive got binaries so it will be fast to test that

EDIT: try to disable for both the cpufreq stuff and test it again, same system, same stuff
you should try out bootchart and put those here,

i would recommend you to use simple fluxbox or a lightweight WM because DE's are way too much complex having its own process and by having differend versions, they could be faster/slower - besides the DE's may be compiled differently for each distro, different flags..

remember also :: there are many kernel options that ubuntu may bring that arch may not bring, im not sure about for example: the swappiness - check the swap for each of those systems too

Last edited by quarkup (2010-09-05 13:41:03)

.:B:. · 2010-09-05 16:29:42

The OP hasn't posted in over half a year, while he said he would test when he was back (a month later). Somehow I doubt he tried (or will try) to install Arch on that box again.

Also, a kernel optimised for the specific processor might make a difference, but not the difference.

quarkup · 2010-09-05 16:33:32

oh, sorry - only noticed that after posting to the thread :s

Arch Linux

#1 2010-01-28 08:56:43

Ubuntu faster than Arch on Pentium-M

#2 2010-01-28 09:15:17

Re: Ubuntu faster than Arch on Pentium-M

#3 2010-01-28 09:42:18

Re: Ubuntu faster than Arch on Pentium-M

#4 2010-01-28 09:48:59

Re: Ubuntu faster than Arch on Pentium-M

#5 2010-01-28 09:54:21

Re: Ubuntu faster than Arch on Pentium-M

#6 2010-01-28 09:57:41

Re: Ubuntu faster than Arch on Pentium-M

#7 2010-01-28 10:02:31

Re: Ubuntu faster than Arch on Pentium-M

#8 2010-01-28 11:49:19

Re: Ubuntu faster than Arch on Pentium-M

#9 2010-01-28 14:57:21

Re: Ubuntu faster than Arch on Pentium-M

#10 2010-01-28 15:18:19

Re: Ubuntu faster than Arch on Pentium-M

#11 2010-09-05 12:44:35

Re: Ubuntu faster than Arch on Pentium-M

#12 2010-09-05 16:29:42

Re: Ubuntu faster than Arch on Pentium-M

#13 2010-09-05 16:33:32

Re: Ubuntu faster than Arch on Pentium-M

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