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KDE 2.2.2
loopkin writes: "Seems that the last KDE 2 is out. KDE 2.2.2 is faster and more stable and secure than 2.2.1, as stated in the Changelog. You will appreciate the trick that makes the icons load 5% faster in particular. Announcement is here. Please use mirrors for download, but original FTP is here.
Note as well that maybe for the first time, there are _official_ RH packages for a _stable_ release (7.2)."
A hearty Thank-You to the programmers of KDE for their time and effort.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
I am now using WindowMaker too and seeing it up and running in 3 seconds (including the numerous applets I use) is really damn satisfying.
There are many good ideas behind KDE, for example it has been the best one when it came to deal accurately with furious trackpad moves while scratching over MP*s.
But I reckon it doesn't fit on a laptop which is supposed to be switched on and off quite often, hence losing some precious productive time waiting for a GUI to be up and ready.
I know I may not have understodd with question but just consider that KDE may also be problematic on "recent" hardware.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
How is Objprelink doing?
I heard building with objprelink enabled can cause khtml and kjs to crash more often. So it trades speed for stability.
Is it still the case?
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
The crossov rplugin has nothing t all to do with KDe... it's a Netscape/Mozilla plugin. It does work in Konqueror, but the KDe team had nothing to do with it.
You're thinking about reaktivate, which is the KPart in KDE-CVS which does essentially the same as the crossove plugin (runs windows AcitveX controls ), but with one big difference - its free, as in beer and speech. It's nowhere near ready for primetime yet though (I don't even think its planned for release with KDE 3.
Well it runs perfectly on my PII 266 laptop, with 64M. I guess that "snappiness" is a higly subjective experience.
Nobox: Only simple products.
My general rule of thumb ist that a speedup below 30% for GUI applications isn't noticed by the user.
Did anyone try KDE 2.2.2, yet ?
"You will appreciate the trick that makes the icons load 5% faster in particular" - how can it possibly be so slow that you can notice a 5% improvement in icon loading speed??? What's it doing, hiring graphic designers to draw them?
You'r a smart guy - run down to a local Goodwill/Salvation Army and get a newer computer. Even if it's just a Pentium 200, the savings in your time would justify it's $50 cost in a few months. Quite frankly, KDE on a p90 would suck, I'd stick to emacs myslef.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Just get the latest kde rpms from the rawhide dir on the RedHat ftp. When attempting to install those you will be told which other packages to upgrade, and you can get those as well from there.
Phobos - Greek word for fear or flight
SuSE has already had these RPMs out for a couple of days. This has KDE 2.2.2 for SuSE the various SuSE versions on the various platforms.
Please note that these are not officially
They also have a similar service for Gnome.
As always, use the mirrors Luke...
6 months ago I was telling people that linux desktop was about equivilent to win95, now I'd say win98. (as far as the applications available). I was using Mandrake 7.8 and upgraded through the web to 8.0 then 8.1. I bought Mandrake 8.1 last night, and it's so much better then the downloaded version. (I can use my network printer on mandrake, but can't on win98!)
If I didn't program for windows everyday, I'd take the linux challenge (use only linux for a month), and it would be no problem at all.
A Followup to explain myself:
A lot of older technology is just fune - a car form the 1970's can keep up with trafic, and an kitchen stove from 1960's may even be better than a modern one. But a refrigerator from the 1970's is almost twice as inefficent as a moden one, and the price a new one will be quickly recuouped through electrical bill savings. Computers are a technology that isn't stagnating, and an increase of speed saves you time. Time, truly, is one of the most important tings to save; it's you life.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
5% quicker. Ooh. The image preview mode must now be up to about one tenth of the speed of xv's visual schnauzer... Slim, well designed and 10 years old. Konqueror can't touch it for speed.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
You have the right idea for sure... just run WindowMaker, and if you want to run an occasional KDE or Gnome app, just run it. Forget about that "desktop" idiom B.S., that's just an over-the-hill paradigm that isn't worth the extra overhead to run.
I mean, I just got a 1.2 GHz Athlon box, and I have no intention of giving up my nice, barebones WM desktop. It's perfect.
- Have a picture
Consider a distribution optimized for a modern processor, such as Mandrake. Or consider using a BSD ports collection to compile it optimized for your machine (The LinuxFromScratch.org page has some good tips on optimized compiling).
I recommend getting and installing OpenBSD or NetBSD for the educational experience, but as for a desktop it's fairly obtuse. But for a learning experience, it's a fabulous way to find out what exactly your OS is doing, particularly if you are uncomfortable with it. FreeBSD is a larger target and frankly is just plain faster than most of the BSD's, but a more cluttered install (but still generally simpler/cleaner than the SystemV systems' design).
For KDE, if you do get a BSD (or Gentoo Linux) you can download and compile everything pretty much transparently, plus you can optimize quite a bit by appealing to a modern processor's optimizations. You, if so inclined, can even get the Intel compiler (which optimizes quite well for Athlon's too, I might add), which has numerous significant gains over GCC, but it does break hefty things like glibc and the kernel. (but so does optimizing glibc and the kernel with gcc).
Are there any plans for an official RedHat 7.1 KDE RPM set? I'm currently running with the Red Hat Inc. KDE 2.2 set, and I'd rather not completely upgrade to 7.2 (I've done spot-updates of some of the system).
If not, what dependencies would have to be fulfilled to run the 7.2 RPMS on a 7.1 system?
"The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth." -- Bene Gesserit Precept
kfind: several bugfixes, including "don't crash the system anymore".
Last post!
kio-smb: don't leave smbclients using 100% cpu hanging around.
This has been really annoying me. I'm the sole Linux user in an office full of Windows 2000 boxes, and it's been pretty tough to evangelise Linux's interoperability with Windows while I have to keep killing zombie smbclient processes any time I use SMB.
I haven't had a chance to download it yet (deadline tomorrow, y'see) but this, along with the other speedups and so on, could finally mean it's feasible to start winning people over to KDE.
Good work KDE fellas. You are all very lovely indeed.
--
Karma: Chameleon (you come and go)
From the 2.2.2 announcement under the "new features" section:
You're right, there is no.
:)
Now we agree on that, would you send the P4-2000 system to me? Not that it has a use, but I'll take care of it for you..
I just installed 2.2.2, and there is no real noticeable speed difference in my opinion. Icons 5% faster? Maybe, but if KDE 2.2.1 was too slow to be usable on your system, KDE 2.2.2 will be as well.
Well, Reaktivate was a sort of "proof of concept" that in can ActiveX apps can be run inside konqueror (not only Quicktime and other graphics viewers, but others like YahooVision activex and others)..
The chances of getting it into the main KDE tree are almost 0% - since it relies on wine (which itself is a moving target) and I really doubt that the authors (Niko [WildFox] and malte) want it inside the main KDE tree.
Hetz (Heunique)
I'd recommend installing the KDE RPMs, if you are using distro that supports RPMs. Basically, as root, RPMs can be installed by using
./configure with the --disable-debug option. Read the README file that come with the source for a better description of how to compile.
rpm -ivh [filename]
Then download and compile the kdelibs source, using
Among other things, this recompiles the aRts sounds server library, which was terribly slow and made sounds skip a lot (for me) in the RPM version of 2.2.1. Now I can play mp3s without skipping! Konqueror now also seems to run as fast as IE5.5 does on my Windows partition.
Be prepared, though, for the compile - on my 233MMX, it took roughly 6 hours.
Hrm... if you are right, and they are reading this, I hope they plan to package it as a seperate addon when KDE 3 comes out then. I realy watt to try reaktivate, but I can't bother going through the whole hassle of buildin KDE3 beta to do it. When it is released however, you can be damn sure I'll want it.
I doubt KDE 2.2.2 will be *that* much better than 2.2.1. Certainly not enough to bridge the gap between KDE and Win2K in terms of performance. Linux, however, does have faster things to offer than KDE. Right now, I'm running IceWM with mostly GTK+ (and the occasional GNOME) applications. GTK+/GNOME seems to be a whole lot faster (on my machine anyway, 300MHz 256MB GeForce2 MX) and more responsive (especially in load time and resizing) than Qt/KDE-2. For example, starting a new Galeon window takes much less time than starting a new Konqueror window. Also, I can resize Sylpheed and AbiWord and Gnumeric without excessive rubber-banding, while KMail, KWord, and KSpread are significantly "springier." None of it is quite Win2K yet, but its almost there. Maybe it's even better on a faster machine.
If you chose to go the Linux/GNOME route, here are several hints:
1) Stay away from GNOME like the plague. Apps that use gnome-libs (like Galeon or Eye of GNOME) are for the most part fine, but actually running gnome-session (with the toolbar and control panel and whatnot) and Sawfish slows everything down enormously. Instead, use a fast window manager (IceWM, Blackbox, Window Maker, or even XFce) and GNOME apps.
2) Choose the GTK+ apps over the gtk+gnome apps. GTK+ apps tend to be more mature and snappier than their gnome counterparts. Specifically, Sylpheed is (IMO) a better mail client than Balsa, and GQView works better than Eye of GNOME. Also, ROX-Filer is the fastest Linux GUI application I have ever seen and you should try it out instead of going with the usual gmc.
3) You really have to tweek your system. Linux doesn't come nearly as well optimized as Windows out of box. Mainly, it boils down to making fonts look nice, making sure that X runs at a priority of -10, and setting up the Linux kernel to use preemption and low-latency patches. I've decided to write a HOWTO for this, it should be up here in a few days.
4) Use a good distro. I like Mandrake 8.x because it lets you install the XFS filesystem from the beginning, its i586 optimized, and its good about keeping packages up to date. Also, its urpmi tool mitigates many (but not all!) of the advantages Debian/APT has over the RPM-based distros. No matter what the distro, go minimalist. Install only the software you need and don't choose the bloated default installs. Also make sure you trim your startup so stuff that you don't need (like sendmail) doesn't get run when you start the computer.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The reason you're perceiving 7.2 as less stable is that we're releasing more errata packages these days - which does not necessarily mean the initial packages were all that bad.
KDE 2.2-* (as shipped with 7.2) wasn't bad, and nevertheless we'll release the 2.2.2 packages in errata as soon as QA approved them.
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Say no to software patents.
You can't directly install the Redhat 7.2 KDE 2.2.2 rpms. Redhat 7.2 comes with libxsl 1.0.1 and KDE 2.2.2 requires libxsl 1.0.7. There has been no offical update of libxsl. But you an go get the libxsl 1.0.7 rpm from rawhide and it also requires a new libxml2 rpm from rawhide.
Havoc Penington, the bane of my Linux desktop.
On a p3 550 system I built at work from the ground up I was suprised that I did not get written up for computer abuse because I had it booting, via LILO, Slackware 7.X, Redhat 7.X, Win98se, Win2K and even BeOs.
I was curious about the speed of a default Slack and Redhat install and while not scientific, it was very interesting, indeed.
If there was ever a reason not to use static libs (a la RH) this would be one point to hammer home.
I had KDE 2.X installed seperatly on both boxes (yes, I know it is "wasteful" of space, humor me) and proceeded to get some benchmark utilities off of freshmeat.net.
You see, what I had noticed was KDE 2.X was "snappy" on Slack and slightly "dogged" on Redhat... so it set me to wondering if it was just the RPM install vs compile on Slack.
Turned out that was part of the problem/question.
Memory performance was about +/- 10% with in each other, but hard drive performace was the "killer" of KDE's performance on RH.
This is what I found using hdparm (plus switches that escape me at this time) turned on/off between SL/RH:
MB/s on the same ATA66 drive and even another ATA66 drive just to be sure.
No hdparm init: RH=3.6Mbs, slack=8.6MB/s
hdparm init: RH=8.4MB/s, slack=8.9MB/s.
Hummm...I says. With hdparm init'ed on RH, KDE was quite snappy, despite the rare stumble and thrash of the drive.
Oh, and a word of warning aboud using hdparm (also in the readme) on older drives: not recommended unless it can do > PIO mode 2, IIRC.
So, yes, HD speed does affect KDE more than you would think. Something to be aware of.
If it is not on fire, it is a software problem.
-Legion
The Crossover plugin is not part of KDE, but fixing the bugs in nspluginviewer that kept the Crossover plugin from working properly in earlier releases has everything to do with KDE.
Codeweavers donated some patches so that Crossover now works with Konqueror. A very nice thing. I love being able to watch the Quicktime movie teasers.
One more thing: I don't know if it's the Codeweavers patches or something else altogether, but the video segments on abcnews.com now work for me, too.
Looking very good here. Very good indeed.
A couple of points:
Actually, i586 optimization tends to run just as fast i686 optimization for most things. i386 optimization is just slightly slower. None of it matters much anyway, since GCC really doesn't optimize very well for x86 anyway (not even GCC 3.x so far, unfortunately)
Second, 32bit access and DMA are really important. Still, there are lots of things one can do to make everything smoother. The preemption patches (with the low-latency patches to break up some long spinlocks) do wonders for response under load. Before using the patches, the mouse cursor would skip in X whenever the disk got accessed, or whenever Galeon rendered a page. Now, I can run a compile in the background and flail the cursor like mad without having it skip. Also, custom compiling your kernel with only the needed options will gain you a couple of points.
As for Gentoo, its a very nice system. However, compiling programs all the time becomes a pain. If only they updated their binary packages more often. They're also the only Linux distro that has guys with any asthetic. Check out the graphics on www.gentoo.org and compare them to the cheesy purple icons in Mandrake...
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Great to have those binaries for RedHat. I've been whining about them here after every recent KDE release, so perhaps someone at last did something. THANKS!
.
Now, if they don't work with RH7.1, I'll whine a bit more... (Naah, I'll just update my RH.)
I just hope they finally compiled it with that-one-option-which-makes-app-startup-half-time
1) The phony link was /. screwing with my post. The real link is home.mindspring.com/~heliosc/linux_setup.html.
2) I never said anything about GNOME being quicker. GNOME (Nautilus, Evolution, and all that) is hideously slow. gnome-session slows everything down infinately. However, the applications themselves (run on something like IceWM) are fast. Glimmer, for example, is much faster than Kate. Sodipodi is faster than Kontour. AbiWord dialogues respond instantly while KWord dialogues take their sweet time.
3) I also said you should avoid GNOME apps if there are GTK+ counterparts available. Sylpheed, for example, blows KMail out of the water in terms of speed. Skipstone has an edge on Konqueror, and ROX-Filer makes everything else bow down and cringe.
4) GTK+ *is* faster than Qt. Try resizing any KDE program. You'll see a grey boarder before the app resizes its view and draws them in. Most GTK+ apps flicker when being resized, but redraw with much less drama.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I've not noticed any of this on my computer, Qt and GTK seem to be the same speed, and GNOME and KDE compare pretty much in speed (except that Nautilus is slower than Konqi).
But then again, I have a modern computer (1.2ghz Athlon-C).
Realistically, KDE 3 and GNOME 2 will be slower than KDE 2.x and GNOME 1.x. Sorry, but this is simply evolution as CPU speed ramps up. However, I have noticed that Win2k is speedier on my box than either GNOME or KDE. However, Win2k is old. WinXP is not noticebly faster than either of the current versions of KDE or GNOME.
64MB with KDE-2? So I take it that you're dead. Because that's the only way anybody could consider KDE-2 running on 64MB of RAM to be snappy. And I bet you thing the lines at the DMV run at lightning speed too?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I think optimizations and such matter on old CPUs, but not on modern ones.
I'm using Debian GNU/Linux, which is optimizated for absolutly nothing (other than using objprelink in their KDE packages). Also, I am using a drive and chipset that is really buggy with DMA, so I leave it off (IBM DeskStar with a VIA KT133A). Both KDE and GNOME run pretty zippy on my box (1.2ghz athlon).
I've done it before, more than a year ago, and it felt snappy. And it was a 48mb machine (PowerComputing PowerTower Pro 200, which was a PowerPC 603e Macintosh clone). Note that it was KDE 1.9.x, which was KDE 2.0-alpha and beta. Not only that, but the computer had slow ram, and a pretty slow hd. Also, X wasn't accelerated. Even so, KDE felt more snappy than GNOME with Enlightenment.
:/, and so I used Blackbox for about a year, until I got a new box.
It took forever to compile (about 2 days), but it worked. Unfortunatly, it broke within a few days
Some plugins do work in 2.2.1, but it was just not officially supported.
Actually, KDE 3.x will be faster than 2.x, according to the developers anyway. Also, its not GNOME vs KDE here. I am talking GTK+ vs KDE. If you don't run an actual GNOME desktop, GNOME apps whip KDE apps speedwise. Just go download Sylpheed and compare it to KMail. If you can't tell the difference, then you have infinate amounts of patience.
There should be no corrolation between age and CPU usage, only between features and CPU usage. Win2K might be older, but it has just as many features while being faster. That implies that the free software community cannot outcode Microsoft (which, I think, I something that they would rather not imply). Also, WinXP, while having more features than Win2K, is *faster* than Win2K. Why is it that the "evolution" of Microsoft software includes increases in speed while the "evolution" of GNOME and KDE don't?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
> Actually, KDE 3.x will be faster than 2.x, according to the developers anyway.
That was said between KDE 1.x and KDE 2.x too. It may have been true initially, but probably will not be true later on. I don't think KDE 3.3 will be faster than KDE 2.3.
> Also, its not GNOME vs KDE here. I am talking GTK+ vs KDE. If you don't run an actual GNOME desktop, GNOME apps whip KDE apps speedwise. Just go download Sylpheed and compare it to KMail. If you can't tell the difference, then you have infinate amounts of patience.
I've used both, they seem pretty similiar in speed. However, KDE apps do seem to start slower when not in the KDE environment. However, I notice no speed difference in the actually performance of the programs.
> There should be no corrolation between age and CPU usage, only between features and CPU usage. Win2K might be older, but it has just as many features while being faster.
Yes, because it has tighter integration with the core of the OS. You really can't beat that easily.
> That implies that the free software community cannot outcode Microsoft (which, I think, I something that they would rather not imply). Also, WinXP, while having more features than Win2K, is *faster* [cnet.com] than Win2K.
WinXP has *some* things that are faster than Win2k, but there are plenty of reviews out there that say that WinXP is actually slower than Win2k. I've noticed this myself. To be fair to WinXP, it adds things like being skinnable, which makes it naturally slower than Win2k.
> Why is it that the "evolution" of Microsoft software includes increases in speed while the "evolution" of GNOME and KDE don't?
Nope.. evolution of all software almost always goes down in speed. this is offset by faster computers. win3.1 > win95 > win98 > win2k > winXP in speed. Whatever Microsoft has in store for the future will be slower than winXP.
KDe could use some bottleneck cleaning, especially the nifty stuff like konqueror. But I really don't understand your gripe about load time. I load kde about once every three months, when I upgrade. It is very stable, and there is no reason to load and unload it. And Yes I do work with the command line all the time. I usualy have about eight konsole windows open simultanuously.
-- look, cheese ahoy!
KDE 2.2.2's Konqueror fixes many well known bugs in Konqueror's Netscape plugin API, which now means that:
* Quicktime / QuicktimeVR
* Shockwave
* Ipix
And many more of the browser plugins supported by Codeweavers Crossover now work under Konqueror.
Yeah, I just installed the 2.2.2 RPMs, and now Konqueror is hanging up a lot. Even as I type this message it's taking like 1 sec per character, and dropping characters if I type fast.
This is on a 1.5 GHz system with 256M RAM. I think I'll go back to 2.2.0, unless anyone has any suggestions.
Are you saying redhat-update will be able to update to 2.2.2
Yes, almost certainly.
no need for rawhide
Installing the packages currently in rawhide is a bad idea(tm) because they're linked against the newer libpng from rawhide.
If so, how long does the QA take?
This can take quite a while, because they're VERY busy with other things (ports to other architectures etc).
Simply use the packages from ftp.kde.org, they're the same thing.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
QObject::connect: No such signal NSPluginInstance::destroyed()
QObject::connect: (sender name: 'unnamed')
QObject::connect: (receiver name: '_ptrpriv')
kio (KProtocolInfo): ERROR: Protocol '' not found
kio (KProtocolInfo): ERROR: Protocol '' not found
when visiting www.apple.com... sigh.... help?!
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
Let me tell you a few of the features in KDE that make me vastly more productive, and which I feel crippled without.
I spent many years using WMs such as CDE, Afterstep (1.0 is the only good version, IMO), WindowMaker, BlackBox, and so forth. I have also used GNOME quite a bit, as well as MacOS, various flavors of Windows, and so on. None of them made me want to give up my console (though in some cases I had to because I was doing web design or something). But with KDE, I don't miss the console at all.
Can't get excited ? Don't, that wasn't the purpose. I agree that the announcement here was a bit exxagerating about that change. But have a look at the icon loading code, and try to make it faster than that, then we'll talk.
How come everyone seems to think that developers make thing slow _on purpose_ ? When we find a way to make things faster, we do, even if the result is only a 5% difference. Small steps, but they accumulate. Would you prefer that we don't fix the things we find ?
David,
actually happy about his icon loading fix....
and disappointed everytime he reads Slashdot, by this habit of criticizing really _everything_.
PS: note that the announcement could have said "icon-loading speedup" and nothing else. You could at least appreciate that someone took the time to measure the actual speedup even if the result isn't huge.
Yes, because it has tighter integration with the core of the OS. You really can't beat that easily.
>>>>>>>>>
Then how do you explain the fact that ROX is as fast as Explorer? XFree 4.x is *not* slower than Windows/GDI. In fact, for many things, like image blitting, its as fast as DirectX. Also, the integration thing is overblown. Most Windows apps run quickly, and you can't tell me that they all have tight integration with the core OS! Its just that Linux desktops have too many performance sapping paradigms. Take, for example, XUL. Parsing a text file to display a GUI? Are you insane! Then the use of CORBA instead of something nice and fast like COM. There are lots of KDE/GNOME features that make computer nerds cream, but do nothing except sap the performance of users' machines.
WinXP has *some* things that are faster than Win2k, but there are plenty of reviews out there that say that WinXP is actually slower than Win2k. I've noticed this myself. To be fair to WinXP, it adds things like being skinnable, which makes it naturally slower than Win2k.
>>>>>>>>>>>
I don't think so. Most of the reviews I've seen that say XP is slower are pased on the Release Candidates. XP sped up a *lot* between the those and the gold release.
That was said between KDE 1.x and KDE 2.x too. It may have been true initially, but probably will not be true later on. I don't think KDE 3.3 will be faster than KDE 2.3.
>>>>>>>>>
But KDE 2.2.x is *faster* than KDE 2.0.x! That's the KDE develoment model. Big features, then incremental quality improvements.
Nope.. evolution of all software almost always goes down in speed. this is offset by faster computers. win3.1 > win95 > win98 > win2k > winXP in speed. Whatever Microsoft has in store for the future will be slower than winXP.
>>>>>>>>>
Its really not like that all the time. There are tons of programs that don't keep getting slower. Photoshop, for example, has been pretty much the same since 4.x. 3D Studio keeps getting faster. KDE 2.2.x keeps getting faster. It does slow down over time, but the stuff you see in the Linux world is *much* more dramatic than the same in the Windows world.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
1. Why do people use KDE? It uses up more system resources than Windows 2000, uses the QT library which most programs do not (GTK+ is far more popular, even though it needs some work). .dot release of a desktop... Whoohoo, we can load icons 5% faster, this is much more important than the fact that Stallman is trying to take over the world.
2. Why does Slashdot need to report on software releases? I can understand reports on something that is technologically innovative, but this is just a new
3. Who gives a damn about what RedHat says is 'official'? The idea behind Open Source is to no longer depend on a central source, be it Microsloth or RedHat.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
> How you explain the fact that ROX is as fast as Explorer?
.rc files. I beleive MacOSX also does it in special files in bundles.
Because it does much less than Explorer does, and can do. Remember that the internal infrastructure can slow down things, at the expense of getting more stuff done (or being extensible, which ROX isn't).
> XFree 4.x is *not* slower than Windows/GDI. In fact, for many things, like image blitting, its as fast as DirectX.
Yes, that's true. Then again, I never said it wasn't.
>Also, the integration thing is overblown. Most Windows apps run quickly, and you can't tell me that they all have tight integration with the core OS!
Ah, yes, but the underlying libs that "most Windows apps" depend on do. Much of the win32 api is kept in kernel space rather than user space. This is similiar to classic MacOS as well, with all Mac toolbox functions kept in the core OS. In the case of winXX, this includes GDI, parts of COM,
> Its just that Linux desktops have too many performance sapping paradigms. Take, for example, XUL.
Mozilla is quite a bit faster on Windows than Linux. It's as fast as explorer in turbo mode, for example.
> Parsing a text file to display a GUI? Are you insane!
This is done in a variety of environments. It's nothing new. KDE does it with XML-GUI. Gnome does it with libglade. Windows does it with
> Then the use of CORBA instead of something nice and fast like COM.
Again, power versus speed.
> There are lots of KDE/GNOME features that make computer nerds cream, but do nothing except sap the performance of users' machines.
Both run quite zippy enough here.
> I don't think so. Most of the reviews I've seen that say XP is slower are pased on the Release Candidates. XP sped up a *lot* between the those and the gold release.
Out of personal information, I can tell you that XP in fact, IS much slower than win2k on the same machine. It is certainly in mine!
> But KDE 2.2.x is *faster* than KDE 2.0.x! That's the KDE develoment model. Big features, then incremental quality improvements.
Yes, but that is minor versions. If you take major versions into account, you see that this is not the case. For example, KDE 2.x's speed Its really not like that all the time. There are tons of programs that don't keep getting slower. Photoshop, for example, has been pretty much the same since 4.x.
Almost everyone I know that uses Photoshop can tell you that Photoshop was much faster in certain tasks than Photoshop 5.x and 6.x. That's why there are still many Photoshop 4.x users left.
> 3D Studio keeps getting faster. KDE 2.2.x keeps getting faster. It does slow down over time, but the stuff you see in the Linux world is *much* more dramatic than the same in the Windows world.
Yes, but say a new version of 3d studio came out with 25% new features. It'd be certainly slower. However, people would move on to faster comps.
For what it's worth, after a couple of hours with 2.2.2 it seems snappier than 2.2.1.
I don't know whether it's down to improvements in the code or because I cranked up the optimizations on this build, but it definitely feels smoother and quicker to me. A pleasure to use on a 450MHz PIII laptop, which isn't really the state of the art nowadays.
While I was building KDE yesterday (took all afternoon!) I switched back to GNOME, and I have to say that I think GNOME really has a lot of catching up to do. Galeon is cool, but it and Nautilus together can't compete with Konqueror for flexibility and ease of use.
I'm also yet to find a GNOME mail client as simple and stable as KMail.
Looking forward to GNOME 2.0 though. If they can jump back ahead of KDE then it will be a mighty cool desktop.
But a refrigerator from the 1970's is almost twice as inefficent as a moden one, and the price a new one will be quickly recuouped through electrical bill savings
In many cases, the local eletric company will give you a steep discount with leading brand name if you tell them you have an old refrigerator. Same goes for low flow toliets. If you have the old 9 gallon toliets, the local water company will almost pay for new low-flows.
Just a small side note.
Linux O Muerte!
Because it does much less than Explorer does, and can do. Remember that the internal infrastructure can slow down things, at the expense of getting more stuff done (or being extensible, which ROX isn't).
.rc files. I beleive MacOSX also does it in special files in bundles.
.rc files are not straight text. They're binary packaged. Besides, .rc files don't store packaged GUIs, they simply store resources like bitmaps and icons.
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Not explorer circa WinNT 4.0. Besides, there are tons of GTK+ apps that have comparable features to Windows ones and are just as fast. (Sylpheed and GIMP come to mind).
Ah, yes, but the underlying libs that "most Windows apps" depend on do. Much of the win32 api is kept in kernel space rather than user space. This is similiar to classic MacOS as well, with all Mac toolbox functions kept in the core OS. In the case of winXX, this includes GDI, parts of COM,
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A) Running in kernel space does not automatically make something faster. The reason that graphics in the kernel are often faster isn't because its in userspace (because a totally-userspace GUI would be the fastest of all, since kernel calls are slower than regular function calls) but because userspace GUIs usually have to run in a seperate address space to protect window manager data. When global data (such as a window list) isn't involved (which is most things in a UI), kernel space is no benifet. For most applications, running in kernel space really doesn't gain much of a speed benifet. Besides, the components that DO run in kernel space are often seperate processes (in Windows NT) and they have the IPC overhead. For example, to create a new process, the kernel is called to do some initialization, then a notification message is sent to the Win32 server. Win2K really has some performance-sapping uglyness in the design, and "tight integration" is not a design feature.
B) Most of Windows' libraries do *not* run in kernel space. Please read an OS book that covers Windows NT. Most of Windows is in a series of userspace DLLs. The only major part of Windows that runs in kernel space that doesn't do so on a UNIX system is the GDI. And since X is just as fast as the GDI, there goes that excuse.
Mozilla is quite a bit faster on Windows than Linux. It's as fast as explorer in turbo mode, for example.
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Except its not. I've just downloaded it on a 750MHz Duron and its MUCH less zippy than IE.
This is done in a variety of environments. It's nothing new. KDE does it with XML-GUI. Gnome does it with libglade. Windows does it with
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Windows
Again, power versus speed.
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But useless power is of no worth. CORBA might be powerful, but almost nobody can take advantage of it (when was the last time a desktop user needed to access remote objects?) COM, on the other hand, isn't as good for remote usage, but for local usage (the "common case") its faster. Also, power isn't always needed. Read some of Tannebaum's work. He points out that at some point, somebody has to say "no" to features. They should ask the question "would anything bad happen if we left this out?" Besides, features do not have an inverse relationship with speed. Case in point: the Linux kernel. Its got tons of features (its threading model, in particular, is really cool) but its really fast.
Both run quite zippy enough here.
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Not over here. Of course, everyone has a different sense of "zippy." Some people consider GNOME zippy. Then there are normal people. Of course, it boils down to the fact that Windows 2000 is faster than either of them. That's the embarrasing part. These desktop environments are like American cars. Full of useless features and get their asses whooped by European models that are faster (and have nifty features too!)
Out of personal information, I can tell you that XP in fact, IS much slower than win2k on the same machine. It is certainly in mine!
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Turn of Luna, since that skin really makes the comparison unfair. Its like using GTK+ (or Qt) with a pixmap theme!
Yes, but that is minor versions. If you take major versions into account, you see that this is not the case.
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You were argueing that the early 3.x releases might be faster than 2.x, but later ones won't be. I was pointing out that later versions of the 2.x series were faster than the original.
Almost everyone I know that uses Photoshop can tell you that Photoshop was much faster in certain tasks than Photoshop 5.x and 6.x. That's why there are still many Photoshop 4.x users left.
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Use it here everyday. Some new (and useful!) features are slower, but the core stuff is still the same.
> 3D Studio keeps getting faster. KDE 2.2.x keeps getting faster. It does slow down over time, but the stuff you see in the Linux world is *much* more dramatic than the same in the Windows world.
Yes, but say a new version of 3d studio came out with 25% new features. It'd be certainly slower. However, people would move on to faster comps.
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First, new features do not `*necessarily* make something slower. Its just an excuse made by lazy programmers. You add a whole bunch of tools to an image editor, it shouldn't get any slower. Sure, if you add a fundemental new abstraction, things slow down, but can you honestly say that KDE or GNOME have so many new cool things to warrent their speed hits compared to Windows 2000?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...