But it gradually seemed to run more and more slowly. My guess was that it was suffering from bloat. Maybe the developers were so busy adding new stuff that they forgot to remove the buckets of old stuff which were overloading the distro.
When I tried Netrunner (which come from the same stable as Kubuntu), the most impressive quality of the new distro was its speed.
I even sent a letter to ‘Linux Format’ magazine on this topic.
This is what I wrote.
" We’re blessed with a constant succession of distros, each one bigger and better than the last. And families of distros are growing like weeds. Mint emerged from Ubuntu, which in turn grew from Debian etc etc.
So everything in the garden is lovely ? Perhaps not. Every time I click to start a program or open a website, it seems to me that my computer is getting slower and slower.
Hang on, it’s not possible for a computer to get slower. So is it my Internet connection ? No, it’s up to speed. Maybe it’s my imagination ? Do your readers get this same impression even on the hottest new machines like mine ? You wait and wait and wonder why everything takes so long to start.
Try a really tiny distro like Crunchbang or Simplicity and you’ll realise what you’re missing by using vast over-programmed distros like Mageia or openSUSE. Suddenly your computer recovers its youthful speed and vigour. You click and even slow servers open web pages instantly; that big file takes only a moment.
Now look at the case of Kubuntu and its offspring Netrunner. Which is the tortoise and which is the hare ? Kubuntu has put on weight; I suspect that it’s getting slower and slower. Could it be that their programming is less economical, more elaborate and loaded with inherited coding which no-one bothers to remove ? An insider might be able to tell us.
If only there was a way of accurately measuring the speed of distros instead of relying on our fallible impressions. In the meantime I’m looking for a fast lean up-to-date distro. It just might be Netrunner.
Hi Maurice, and thanks for sharing your experience with the world! We hope you be impressed what Netrunner 15 brings to the table with regards to speed. We do a lot of under-the-hood customization and fine-tuning, like turning off unwanted FX, etc. so that probably results in the faster and more responsive system.
I had Ubuntu till its ATI driver started locking up…was already fed of of the increasing bloat. So I tried SUSE…choked trying to load Via USB…Tried Elementary OS buggy as hell…Tried PCLinuxOS refused to load up from properly setup USB stick.
Finally tried Netrunner which I installed to USB stick…FINALLY a distro I could load on USB and have it work.
Stable…and WAY faster than Ubuntu. Plux it works with most of the aplications I want. Except Netflix which doesnt seem to want to work with any Linux Distro. Even after I tried the fixes :-/
Oh well guess its a reason to keep my Xbox 360, to play Netflix.
Wow, it’s the same story for me. I’m very impressed by this distro: it’s fast, has exactly my personal selection of software installed, and also it’s really good looking. Thanks a lot for this!
