Which Linux for dual core processor?

[MajorDill]

How fast is the dual core (in real money) you refer to in the puppy specs info? How does that translate into ye olde gigahertz? I've read the concurrent process stuff and dual core doesn't directly xlate into double speed necessarily, but probably is a good marketing point (four razor blades are better than one). Maybe you could dumb it down for me...please. I have a Celeron CPU 900 2.20G 64-bit which seemed to run ubuntu 16 great and 18 sluggishly.
Should I stick with the 32-bit even though I'm a 64-bit. (7.7 g of RAm)?
Would the distro type make any difference?
In fact, what difference does the ubuntu base have with the debian base? Why should I pick one over the other?
Thanks and sorry for all the questions.

[wizard]

@MajorDill

How fast is the dual core (in real money) you refer to in the puppy specs info? How does that translate into ye olde gigahertz?

No simple answer.

Dual core is a generality, since most of them will have a Passmark v9 score of about 900 or better, plus their generation will also be faster in other areas. The ability of any computer to run a distro overall is affected by many factors including these:

-CPU (cores and speed)
-amount of Ram (and speed to a lesser degree)
-video subsystem
-drive storage speed

Would the distro type make any difference?

Yes, lots

In fact, what difference does the ubuntu base have with the debian base? Why should I pick one over the other?

Both good, pick the one you like best

Have a Celeron M 530 single core, Passmark v9 = 536, with 2gb ram, that runs an optimized F96CE_4, 64bit Puppy and is OK for light duty stuff. My experience is a system with Passmark v9 less than 600 will struggle with video streaming.

Your Celeron 900 has a Passmark v9 = 658, and you have 8gb of ram, you can certainly try the newer 64bit versions of Puppy. They won't be as fast as a 32bit, but 32bit distros and applications aren't going to be developed in the future.

wizard

[mikewalsh]

@MajorDill :- Hallo.....and to the "kennels".

I have a Celeron CPU 900 2.20G 64-bit which seemed to run ubuntu 16 great and 18 sluggishly.

That's not exactly surprising. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS - "Xenial Xerus" - or 'Xenialpup' here in Puppyland, was the culmination and ultimate refinement of the preceding two LTS releases, 12.04 - "Precise Pangolin" (Precise Puppy) and 14.04 - "Trusty Tahr" (Tahrpup). It was a brilliant Puppy, and one of the best of the crop of 32-bitzers for older machines.

With the advent of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS - "Bionic Beaver" - or 'Bionicpup' here for us, Canonical decided in their "wisdom" to try out a whole bunch of new ideas.....ALL AT THE SAME TIME. Needless to say, this impacted quite strongly on the silky-smooth Puppy operation we'd all gotten used to, necessitating many folks to have to adjust their comfort levels and start getting to grips with all this new stuff.

Some members swear by Bionic as being the best Puppy ever. I still run heavily-customized/upgraded builds of Xenialpup - both 32- AND 64-bit - on a regular basis (I'm in 32-bit Xenialpup 7.5 ATM, as it happens). I only run a 64-bit version of Bionicpup......but it doesn't see a lot of use these days. (I'm one of these "idiots" - in the eyes of many - who has never been that excited OR bothered about always running the very newest, bang up-to-date version of everything all the time. These individuals mostly think I'm just plain daft!).

I find something I like, and "build" on it; upgrading/updating everything I can in order to keep it useful & functional for as long as possible. (I usually have at least one fairly new Puppy kicking around in the background somewhere, being slowly & steadily 'worked-on', but these never really come into service as my "daily driver" for perhaps 3-4 years. This has been my routine now for over a decade, and up till now has worked very well for me.)

My main rig is a 5-year old HP Pavilion desktop - well equipped - on which I run a dozen or more 'assorted' Pups spanning several generations. This is powerful enough to run anything I want.....but I don't have a lot of time for 'mainstream' distros, because they're nowhere near as 'flexible' and simply not as much 'fun' as Puppies are! With 32GB of DDR4 and better than 5 TB + of storage, it's a marvellous Puppy box.

My secondary machine is a 2007/8 Dell Latitude lappie; Core2Duo, 4GB DDR2, 120GB SSD, and an integrated Nvidia Quadro NVS-135m GPU. Out of ALL the Puppies I've tried on this machine, once again it's Xenialpup64 that fits it like a glove.

I'm a BIG fan of the Xenials! I must, however, agree with m'colleague above; go with 64-bit Puppies/software wherever possible, because the days of 32-bit software are running out. FAST. (Commercially-successful 64-bit CPUs have been around now for nearly 22 years. It's tried & tested, well-proven technology.....and it's stood the test of time).

Mike.

[stevie pup]

There are a couple of things which, in my opinion, don't get mentioned often enough. Firstly, what do you plan on doing with it? You don't need a quad core, 32Gb RAM and an SSD to view this forum and type a letter. You could do that from a USB stick, plugged into an old PC with single core and 2Gb RAM. Then again, if you're looking at doing a load of video editing, or you're a gamer, then obviously you need far more resources.

The other thing is you. How impatient are you and how much of a rush are you in? Are you the sort of person that gets irritated when something hasn't booted up in 30 seconds? I'm retired so I've got all day to mess around with things, my days of rushing are long gone.

Some years ago I did some video editing on a Windows 7 laptop with only 2Gb RAM. I was quite pleased with the results, but it took me days, and the finished video clip was only 11 minutes long.

So such things are possible, but all depends how much of a hurry you're in.

[dimkr]

Go with a 64 bit Puppy because it will give you more variety of software you can install, less issues and better performance at the cost of slightly increased RAM consumption and a bit of extra disk space. The savings from using a 32 bit Puppy held together with duct tape are simply not worth it.

And don't rush to use the smallest Puppy variant you find, even if some swear by it, because these often omit useful things (which you'll need to install anyway) and use better compression (which means much higher CPU consumption and sluggishness when you run them).

[MajorDill]

thanks for the info. I'm thinking 64 mostly because I can't seem to download the 32. I'm going to be using this for basic stuff when traveling to sketchy areas and don't care if the machine is stolen. anyway I already have another problem - i've created a new topic for it

thank-you again