I'm impressed...

[SuSEholic]

I've just finished installing and setting up my laptop with Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (7.04). Previously I was using openSuSE 10.2, it makes my laptop faster (than Windows), but it really slow with the package manager (YaST).

I often hear people talking about Ubuntu (or debian) is faster than SuSE, so I give Ubuntu a shot, I took my old notebook harddisk (Hitachi 60GB 4200RPM), and d*mn, Ubuntu fly away, the performance beats openSuSE 10.2, it is 2 times faster in *almost* everything: booting, log in (to gnome), applications and of course, the Synaptics also so fast.
Whereas, the openSuSE 10.2 enjoys my new Hitachi 120GB 5400RPM, and still it beaten by Ubuntu (on the same laptop, but with 4200RPM HDD).

And guess what, I'm not even touching the Ubuntu's system configuration (hdparm, sysctl, fstab), and "it just fast as is".

I'm counting the startup time:

• openSuSE 10.2 : 2:03 minutes until login screen.
• Ubuntu: 0:53 minutes until login screen.

Is that because of the services? But I already turn off the services I don't use in openSuSE. It may be, but I wonder, how can the same applications (eclipse, firefox, vim, etc) work faster on Ubuntu.

I'll try this Ubuntu for 2-3 weeks, using it as my production laptop, and if it has no problem, well... I'll move this Ubuntu to the 5400RPM HDD, replacing the openSuSE and can I change my nickname to UbuntuHolic ?

[bigtomrodney]

The longest delay for me in SUSE is it pauses on my /home partition. I am using ResierFS and it is a 550GB LVM partition. That annoys me because it waits about 25 seconds. I couldn't find any way to speed that up.

I think Ubuntu's changes to the init system makes the biggest changes (I think they use Upstart instead of SysV Init).I will say that SUSE probably has too many services on startup. Also X/GDM take longer to start in SUSE.

I am now using Ubuntu on my new Dell Inspiron 6400. It boots in about 35-40 seconds, my WiFi works perfectly, suspend and hibernate are perfect, bluetooth 2.0 is perfect. All of that with Compiz runnning on an Intel 945GM! And to top that I get nearly 5 hours battery life. I remember there was a time when Linux was harder on batteries but the new kernel ticker changes seem to have made a huge difference and apparently there are a few more tweaks on the way.

Now I know a lot of what I said is Linux related and not strictly Ubuntu, but until the next release of SUSE at least, Ubuntu is definitely the best laptop distro I have ever used.

[zba78]

...but until the next release of SUSE at least, Ubuntu is definitely the best laptop distro I have ever used.

Well if you're into XGL then the next version of Ubuntu also looks pretty impressive as they plan to include compiz fusion by default.

You're right bigtomrodney, the change over to upstart certainly seems to have made a positive difference

[SuSEholic]

... my WiFi works perfectly, suspend and hibernate are perfect, bluetooth 2.0 is perfect. All of that with Compiz runnning on an Intel 945GM!

Well, on openSuSE 10.2, hibernate work flawlessly, but suspend never work (at least in my laptop), don't know why. But in ubuntu, suspend & hibernate work. Currently I'm using beryl (compiling by hand), and it's (also) smoother than openSuSE, although I used AIGLX on openSuSE.

What I really wonder, how can the same applications runs faster on Ubuntu than SuSE.

[bigtomrodney]

Yeah I could never get suspend working. To be fair though I'm using an all intel chipset so that might be helping. I remember on my old laptop one of the errors I always got for suspend was my bluetooth chip refusing to sleep. It all works fine now without any manual intervention. Even applications seem to suspend without any protesting.