The officially official Devuan Forum!

evanescente~ondine

Member

Registered: 2025-09-12

Posts: 5  

devuan (fresh install) noticeably slow compared to debian

Hi,
This is not a ragebait thread I swear. I like your project a lot and overall don't complain much.
And I'm sorry if this doesn't belong to this section since I use Sway, not X.
I see a noticeable loss in speed or liveness since I installed devuan, and it might or might not be specific to wayland, I'm not sure.
What kind of message should I be looking for ?

RedGreen925

Member

Registered: 2024-12-07

Posts: 159  

Re: devuan (fresh install) noticeably slow compared to debian

What kind of message should I be looking for ?

Well the way I read that is there is a lack of useful information. At the very least we need to know if the software installed is identical in both OSs. For that matter the OSs versions involved. The method of determining this "slowness" that you are using. Without those and many more details no one will be able to help you.

evanescente~ondine

Member

Registered: 2025-09-12

Posts: 5  

Re: devuan (fresh install) noticeably slow compared to debian

What you ask is pretty much impossible to provide.
I verified: hardware acceleration is on (Intel Alderlake_n (Gen12).
Here's sway's complete log: https://pastebin.com/i221mjmx
I couldn't find anything strange, but I am no specialist.
Here's dmesg's output: https://pastebin.com/3DcbkzUg

ralph.ronnquist

Administrator

From: Battery Point, Tasmania, AUS

Registered: 2016-11-30

Posts: 1,466  

Re: devuan (fresh install) noticeably slow compared to debian

So you are saying that sway+wayland on devuan (of some version) is or seems to be noticeable slower than something else on something else? ...???

Obviously one must ask: what on what was the baseline? And in what way do you notice that loss in speed?

Camtaf

Member

Registered: 2019-11-19

Posts: 492  

Re: devuan (fresh install) noticeably slow compared to debian

Identical computers? Identical software? If not, that is likely your answer.

chris2be8

Member

Registered: 2018-08-11

Posts: 341  

Re: devuan (fresh install) noticeably slow compared to debian

Assuming you have 1 computer you can dual boot to debian and devuan (or two identical systems, one running each OS) please post output from the following commands on debian and on devuan:
uname -a
cat /etc/os-release
That will give us at least something to go on.

Micronaut

Member

Registered: 2019-07-04

Posts: 246  

Re: devuan (fresh install) noticeably slow compared to debian

This is sort of vague since it doesn't say exactly what is slower. But I can say there is a large difference in disk performance between Devuan and MX Linux, which is apparently much closer to Debian. I've got different disks that I plug in to the same machine, and when I am copying large files -- like the data files for games -- I can see the speed on my Gkrellm and it's literally twice as fast copying the files with MX Linux. Possibly something in the drivers that they had to alter in Devuan to completely remove that fake 'init' wrapper that is taking over everything. But MX Linux may have been able to leave in place since it's just trying to neutralize it without purging the system?