There is much talk about Arch Linux and its superior performance compared to other operating systems, not just Windows, but also other Linuces and whatnot. After a bit of a Linux-free spell, I had a chance to feel the performance difference again.

I've been playing with Windows again, and there is no need to explain why I had to switch back to Linux again. Suffice it to say that Linux does more out-of-the-box than Windows ever will.

Anyway, I had to emergency-install a Linux a couple of weeks ago. I only had Mandriva Linux One 2008 live/install CD in my desk drawer, so I went with that. Installation was painless, hardware all detected and supported out of the box (and we're not talking some prehistoric relics, it's a spanking new Core2Duo machine, 2 GiB memory, with next-after-next generation ATI card, yada yada), software I need installed, etc, etc. Linux users know what I mean.

So I started setting up my Ruby on Rails workshop with Ruby, RubyGems, JDK and NetBeans. Mandriva is i586-optimized, so everything works just fast. Then I encounter a few glitches (I even forgot what they were, nothng serious), so I decide to dich Mandriva (I just don't have the nerves to use a system I'm not intimately familiar with these days) and install openSUSE.

So I install openSUSE. Again, installation is pretty straight-forward and most of the things are there out-of-the-box. I start setting up Rails. Hm, suddenly things are not running that fast on openSUSE. I don't know why, but most stuff in openSUSE are also i586...

Well, as usual, I popped in the Arch Linux installation CD. Now, here's a system I know very well, and I know it's fast. Arch is i686-optimized, and I even have an x86_64 optimized install CD that I never use. The system is installed and most things work out-of-the-box. I only have to install the software. Once the Rails workshop is set up, I start NetBeans. Wow! I mean WOW! It is soooooo fast. I was sitting there, closing and opening NetBeans a few times just to make sure. Reboot, start NetBeans again. Fast... damn fast.

So, next day, I come to work where I also have NetBeans installed on a Windows XP box. I start it and yawn as the splash screen is showing the progress bar. Sometimes I wonder if it was sarcasm that named that thing 'progress' bar. Windows XP is the absolute looser in this 'perceived speed test' of mine.

And this is not just about NetBeans the huge JAVA app that was showing differences in performance accross different platforms. Rails' own scripts ran much much faster on Arch than on any other Linux or OS. In openSUSE, for example, I could even catch a line of two while migrating some dozen database migrations. On Arch, those simply finish before I get a chance to read a single line. And numbers that are conveniently displayed after every migration tell me that Arch is about twice as fast (sometimes even more!).

DISCLAIMER: Now, keep in mind this is by no means a scientific test. All I can say is that all of this happened on the same box, except Windows XP which was on a different (but very similar) box at work. Configuration of the OSs and installed software were all different, and there is little in the way of methodology while testing. So I call this a 'perceived speed test'. And yes, I am an Arch Linux fan, but I think I'm quite objective here. How can one not appreciate this beautiful OS? :)