Advantages of RPM based distros?

[Jedinovice]

I keep reading online that RPM based distros tend to be faster than DEB distros. I am *potentially* interested in running with an RPM distro for my tiny AMD c50 machine.

Short version:

Are ROM based distros really faster than DEB editions? Would it make any difference on a c50?
Can I NOT have a Rolling RPM distro but get upgrades for certain critical software such as Libreoffice and Kdenlive?
I collect the deb file from updates and software install so I can re-install using dpkg in Mint after a reinstall. I presume I can so the same in an RPM distro?
Any recommendations for a KDE DE in RPM format for a 1GHz AMD c50 eee netbook?

Long version (skip if not in the mood!)

Now I am very happy with Mint 17 KDE edition but it runs, oddly enough, a bit slow on my feeble 1GHz c50 netbook. I do now have a 4 core atom n2930 which runs rather well but I still want to make use of the little c50. It is soooo portable and kinda cute.

I do NOT want to switch DE. KDE, while a little heavy on a minimal machine, just suits me and nothing else feels comfortable. Besides which I live and die by KDE's user defined keyboard shortcuts. (I have tried alternatives and keep hitting usability problems.)

Would using an RPM based distro make any real difference? I like Mint because adding PPA's for critical software updates is easy and I can download and keep the sources. It also means I can update Kdenlive which is the number one piece of SW for which I want the latest edition. Usually I can handle less than cutting edge SW. Is it really possible to preserve a stable version of an RPM distro (I don't really want a rolling distro with huge downloads ever week and I only care about up to date browsers, Libreoffice and Kdenlive.)

Bear in mind that while I can play around bit, I often end up VERY busy and am constantly on the move. So DIY or source based distros such as Slackware, Arch or Gentoo are NOT an option! I have a language to learn and would rather have an OS that 'just works' though I am not technophobic. Spent 15 years in IT… tied to Windows mind.

Thoughts? If an RPM offers no advantages over Mint, though, I'll drop the thought.

Thanks in advance.

[/dev/urandom]

One thing I liked with yum (Fedora's RPM manager): yum history. Instant rollback (and restore) of any previous transaction. A feature I really miss on all other operating systems I've been using for the past few years.

[xenopeek]

RPM is a package format, like DEB. Consider this a discussion about whether programs on your computer would somehow be affected by your choice on whether to archive with ZIP or with RAR So no, the package format used by a Linux distro doesn't impact how fast your programs work. It will have an effect on how fast your package manager is of course, but no effect on software that doesn't work with package files...

Here's a (somewhat) recent benchmark on Phoronix comparing 6 distros: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... 2014&num=2. Debian and Ubuntu use DEB format. openSUSE, CentOS, and Fedora use RPM format. Antegros uses pacman format. As you can see, results vary and there is no single distro that wins in all benchmarks. So much depends on how you install your system (what filesystem, which kernel, what system configuration tweaks, and so on) and of these benchmarks none are impacted by the package format used

[Pjotr]

In addition to xenopeek: remember that Linux distributions are all.... distributions. They distribute the stuff that they get from upstream, which are the really important things: the Linux kernel, Firefox, Libre Office, you name it. That upstream stuff is more or less the same in every distribution. The distribution just "glues it together".

What differs for each distribution is of course also the selection they make of the available upstream components, but it's mainly about the quality of "the glue" that glues all of the upstream components together. Well, the "glue" of Linux Mint happens to be of very high quality indeed.

[Jedinovice]

Thanks for the comments people. Much obliged.

Yes, I understand that RPM format is simply the package format and so I was puzzled how and why commentators and reviewers kept staying that they found RPM based distros that bit faster. (When I say 'based, I mean loosely) I could not see it iehter but the comments kept being made which is why I posted.

I agree that Mint holds things together very well indeed!

Perhaps I should start another thread on optimising my c50?

[Pjotr]

You can speed up your Mint like this:
https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/3

That should produce a noticeable improvement.

You shouldn't be too impressed by some people claiming that RPM based distro's are (supposedly) faster than DEB based ones. Many people just blabber away without any knowledge whatsoever.... And don't count out the fanboys, who are simply aiming to further their distro of choice without factual basis.

[Jedinovice]

You can speed up your Mint like this:
https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/3

That should produce a noticeable improvement.

You shouldn't be too impressed by some people claiming that RPM based distro's are (supposedly) faster than DEB based ones. Many people just blabber away without any knowledge whatsoever.... And don't count out the fanboys, who are simply aiming to further their distro of choice without factual basis.

Thanks! I wil take a look. But I had already factored int he fanboys. I was puzzled because it was reputable reviewers making the call, people I had been tracking for years.

I will take a check. Cheers!

[srs5694]

Yes, I understand that RPM format is simply the package format and so I was puzzled how and why commentators and reviewers kept staying that they found RPM based distros that bit faster.

FWIW, this thread is the first time I recall hearing the claim that RPM-based distributions are faster than Debian-based distributions. My suspicion is that you're seeing comments started by one or two people in one or two forums and that either they keep repeating the same claims or those claims have been picked up by others in the same forum(s), and that these claims have gone untested. That's just a guess, though.

There are ways to optimize your distribution for speed. If you're really into that sort of thing, you might look into a source-based distribution like Gentoo or its derivative, Funtoo. The theory behind these distributions is that, by building everything from source code, you can optimize the compiler settings for your hardware, eliminate unnecessary libraries, and so on. Advocates claim this can result in a significant speed improvement. The problem is that you'll spend so much time researching and setting the options and working around compile-time problems that you'll end up spending much more time on it than you would waiting the extra 0.1 seconds for your program to load or the extra 0.2 second for your document to print. FWIW, I ran Gentoo on my main box for many years. I persisted at it mainly because it helped keep me on my toes, as it were, not because of any speed benefits. Those were subjectively unnoticeable to me, and I never tried any benchmarks to see if there was a measurable speed benefit to Gentoo. Eventually I got into a very tangled package mess and converted that system to Ubuntu. I'll probably install Gentoo on another system sooner or later, though.

You could go a part of the way towards a locally-compiled system and build your own kernel. This can noticeably improve your boot time and may improve performance for everything else because you can optimize things like the multitasking strategy you use. (A server works better with different options from those that work best on a desktop, for instance.) Again, the trouble is that you'll invest far more time in learning how to optimize the settings than you could hope to gain back; but it might be worthwhile as a learning exercise if you're interested in such things.