, but this is really bugging me and need help And i think maybe i posted the question in the wrong section, well anyway if its not good, im sure a mod will delete this post for me before coming to debian i made a through study of the other distos available, as part of that i did some memory comparison tests, below are the results
Hardware...........Dell XpsM1730 4gb Ram, Core Duo, Twin nvidia GTX980m in SLI.
Test Condition..... All distros set up on 1 partition (which was wiped before the next distro was installed and tested )
......................distros are set up in "minimal" configuration, nothing but base userland code that ships with the installer, no X, no desktop,no drivers, nothing! ( in most cases no dbus alsa cpufreq etc )
......................( all the distros are the most recent as of 11,12,2011) memory reading using the [free -m] command, the vale is minus buffers and in Mb.
......................The reading was taken immediately after a clean boot.
Fedora ......................... 149
Archlinux........................ 89
Sabayon......................... 147
Open SUSE...................... 175
Ubuntu.......................... 145
Debian (sid).................... 55
.........................And some readings taken with more built systems with desktops in various states
Open SUSE .......... Full Gnome Desktop, clean basic install from dvd....................... 396 ( 175 with just X and 1 Xterm )
ArchBang............. Openbox, clen basic install................................................ 165
Lubuntu.............. LXDE clean install........................................................... 246 ( 234 with all services removed )
Cent OS...............Clean install................................................................. 405
Ubuntu................Clean install................................................................. 605
Ubuntu................ With X, GDM, Compiz, xterm ONLY.......................................202
Fedora.................Clean Install, full gnome................................................... 810
Sabayon CDX.......... Sabayon graphical base install........................................... 147
Sabayon............... LXDE spin................................................................... 203
Sabayou............... Gnome Spin Full............................................................ 500
Debian................ All services, dbus, cpufrequtils, etc etc etc no X or desktop......... 56
Debian................ as above but add nvidia driver........................................... 66
Debian................ as above but running X and Xterm....................................... 97
Debian................ as above but with compiz 0.84 , xterm, lxpanel....................... 116
Debian................ Full Gnome, with Compiz 0.96, all services etc........................ 172
The figures really puzzle me, how is debian using half the memory on average for the same userland programs? I am assuming is something to do with the debian kernel ?????????????????????????????????????????????????
(ps there is no real measurable speed/performance difference between distros in simlar build states, maybe debian is a few degs faster is some tests )
Also here are some observations i made in mt travels around linux
Compiz 0.96 direct from ubuntu repos will run on sid, no seg faults, no problems have found yet, the trick is not to pull in the ubuntu version of metacity, just everything except compiz-gnome, then build emerald 0.94 and checkinstall it, a bit of editing of the compiz decorator text file and your away !!!
Versions 0.97+ ( later ubuntu precise, the beta1 was still using 0.96 which is the one i am running now ) require a newer libc6 which we will have to wait for, but once that is here 0.97should install in the same way
using gnome-fallback and alternative wm's ( compiz) by creating a new session file will lose the icons for sound and bluetooth in the gnome panel, get round that by retaining gnome-fallback session but editing gnome-wm file instead.