OS X (macOS) vs Linux: which OS is faster on a weak Mac?

Question

macbook

Hello, now the MBA 13'' mid2013 Core i5, 128 GB SSD & 4 GB RAM is running OS X 10.11.6 and it's enough for everyday work, but sometimes for work you need to load a couple of Ubuntu virtual machines in Vagrant for a test, which, along with 15-20 open tabs in the browser and iTunes tightly loads the computer. There is a guess that under some Kubuntu, elementary OS or something else on the same hardware, I can still perform these tasks. Will such a transition give a real performance boost (at least 10-20%)? How problematic are popular Linux distributions on Macs, are there problems with drivers (especially F1-F12 control), how much worse is battery life?
PS If there are devops / system administrators among you, then I would be happy to read what your main hardware / OS is.

Answer 1

Your emphasis is on 4GB of RAM. For virtual machines and many open tabs in the browser, RAM is the main resource. I have an MBA mid2013 i7 / 8Gb / 512Gb and I do not experience any problems with performance as long as there is enough RAM for the programs used. But 3GB is taken right after the bare system boots. So with 4 GB you start using swap very quickly, and this, although the disk is fast, gives significant brakes, because. many pieces of memory needed at the moment have to be driven from disk to RAM and back. It is unlikely that another OS on the same tasks will solve the problem (unless it uses more economical RAM). But in 4GB, the emphasis will be reached in any case very quickly.

Answer 2

The old OS X should be faster. Linux is generally sluggish in the GUI, especially on older computers.

Answer 3

And on a poppy, don't you have to fuck with dsdt patches and other charms of iron sharpened for hy^W poppies?
If not a problem, I would install something lightweight like arch linux or gentoo with a window manager instead of de. 300 mb at the start, like the norms.