iB::Topic::Just why exactly is DSL so fast?

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Topic: Just why exactly is DSL so fast?

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raid517

Group: Members
Posts: 8
Joined: May 2006

Posted: May 11 2006,18:52

Hi, I among many others cannot believe the speed of DSL. I have installed Linux on a number of resource limited systems myself in the past. Recently I installed a version of Debian unstable on a 400MHZ machine with only 92MB of Ram - with nothing but X, Mplayer and a whole bunch of codecs installed - but nonetheless performance still really sucked.

However when I put DSL in this machine, it was able to launch firefox and a bunch of other apps, significantly faster than is even possible when launching them on even my 3.4GHZ machine with over 1GB of RAM.

As someone who likes to tinker with various Linux projects, I am very curious as to how this was achieved?

Is it a secret - or is the information on how to optimise Linux for resource limited systems like this available anywhere so that someone like me might get a chance to learn how to do it?

Any input would be much appreciated.

GJ

mikshaw

Group: Members
Posts: 4856
Joined: July 2004

Posted: May 11 2006,19:05

Mainly I think it is the result of using the lightest apps available (some of which have been modified to be even lighter), and not running any services other than what is absolutely necessary.

DSL uses Fluxbox stable or JWM rather than KDE (which is the default on most distros).
It includes no Qt or Gtk2 apps, which tend to be much fatter than Gtk1, FLTK, or those requiring only X.
Most distros will run daemons such as cron, alsa, arts, ssh, and syslog by default, which also use a small amount of your system resources.

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http://www.tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/index.html

raid517

Group: Members
Posts: 8
Joined: May 2006

Posted: May 11 2006,21:03

So if I wanted to strip out all of the stuff I don't need, what is the bare minimal I should have running (in order to mimic what DSL does?).

The only requirements I have are that I can connect to the internet and my local network (and perhaps use the network to tranfer files to and from the DSL machine.

Also I only have a requirement for a very few apps. One is Mplayer with all the codecs, the second is LastFMproxy, the third is LastFM player, the fourth is possibly xmms or BMP (again pretty lightweight) - and that's about it. My only other requirement is that I can get digital audio out sound to work out of the box. Unfortunately none of this this hast proved possible with a standard out of the box install of DSL I has a lot of problems with old compilers and missing libraries which appeard to be almost impossible to resolve.

As you can probably tell I have a very specific project in mind. (I'm trying to build a lightweight hardware based LastFM radio player).

How can I even tell what services I have running? I would love to strip it all back to the bare bones and have just what I need and no more?

GJ