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What Linux dist to use?
Purple Rabbit:
If your computer is reasonably new (last few years) with sufficient memory then X won't have much of an impact on processing assuming that you've disabled screen savers and other background programs that use graphics. It takes up memory and uses CPU cycles when you are looking. It'll use a few cycles when you're not looking, but if your CPU is reasonably fast I doubt that you'll notice.
I had the same thoughts about a year ago so I tried the experiment on an AMD64 X2 3800+ using the optimized apps running level 3. I didn't see much difference one way or the other.
If your computer is starved for memory to the point that it's swapping files to the hard drive then removing X might do some good, but buying more memory would probably help more. Hopefully you have at least 1GB RAM.
I tried Ubuntu about a year and a half ago. It installs a lot of "crap" with the default install. Pruning the start up list may help. Getting the "last ounce" out of the computer would imply deleting X, but like I said, if you optimize everything else you probably wouldn't notice.
Rick
As an aside: When asking for help the more information you can give about your situation the easier it'll be for the helpers. I'm kind of guessing here ;)
sunu:
As Purple Rabbit says, if you need the absolute best in speed then you can think about running with no X server. Then again if you need a light installation you won't go to ubuntu. Check Damn Small, Puppy, Tiny Core. Or you can go to super customisable, super optimisable (potential for more speed) Arch Linux or Gentoo. All these and much more you can see in www.distrowatch.com (well probably you already knew that address :)).
On the ubuntu front, you should know that jaunty's (9.04) kernel has some problems with the optimised apps. So you'll have to make your own, or use intrepid's (8.10) kernel.
notalent:
Thanks for everyone's help.
To give more info, I have two 'extra' six core processors that won't be used for a bit. So I wanted to do some crunching on them. The system has 4GB of memory.
The system will just be running headlessly once I get it up and going. I'll just log in via vnc or putty however I have it set.
sunu thanks for the tip on Ubuntu, I'll stay away from it for that reason. I would put my "linux skills" at a 4/10. I can hunt around and usually find out what I need from searching but if there is an issue and no one has dealt with it before I won't figure it out.
I think I'll try out puppy or similar and see how that goes.
notalent:
looks like puppy doesn't have 64bit, so I'll find another
sunu:
For a full desktop you can also try sidux (with xfce, more light than kde). It's based on debian sid, that means always the latest and most modern packages. The sidux team takes care of some problems here and there that come up in debian sid every now and then. Link http://sidux.com .
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