Linked by Ben Mazer on Wed 15th Oct 2003 20:58 UTC
A few months ago I was a Slackware Junkie. I loved it, and laughed at those who used 'more automatic' distributions (ok, I didn't actually laugh). Then Arch Linux 0.5 came out and I was very intrigued by it. I was getting tired of having to compile updated packages myself. 
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What makes Arch & also CRUX Linux different from, say, Debian, Slackware & Gentoo, is that they are 1686 optimized binary-based distros (though having good source package management features too) designed to be streamlined & fast. I'd guess that there may not be much speed difference between Arch and some source-based distro like Gentoo, because the difference of being optimized for 1686 or, for e.g. Athlon XP, probably doesn't make much difference in most cases. And source-based distros have their stability & other problems too.
It would be interesting to compare the real speed differencies of Arch, Slackware, Debian etc. For example, how fast the distros boot (with about same amount of automated processes) to a login prompt?
There's a whole lotta talk about the speed advantages of hardware optimization of software/distros all the time, but not many actual unbiased test results anywhere (well, maybe objective testing is difficult, because the distros are different, but a bit more reliable testing shouldn't be impossible).
Some say that Slackware is one of the fastest distros to boot, but CRUX & Arch being 1686 optimized should be faster. Has anyone done some actual testing? So, is there really a significant difference in speed, and if, how much, between e.g. Slackware vs. Arch, or Debian vs. Arch, or Mandrake vs. Arch etc.?