Slashdot Mirror
Is the Linux Desktop Getting Heavier and Slower?
Johan Schinberg writes "Bob Marr wrote an interesting editorial about what many of us have have noticed lately: the three most popular Linux distros are getting "fatter" in terms of their memory footprint and CPU demands for their graphical desktops. Fedora Core 2 isn't usable below 192 MBs of RAM while Mandrake and SuSE aren't very far off similar requirements either. There was a time when Linux users would brag that their favorite OS was far less demanding that Windows, but this doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Modern distros that use the latest versions of KDE and (especially) Gnome feel considerably heavier than before or even than Windows XP/2k3. Sure, Longhorn has higher requirements than XP (256 MB RAM, 800 MHz CPU) and the final version will undoubtly be much more demanding, but that's in 2-3 years from now. For the time being, I am settled with XFce on my Gentoo but I always welcome more carefully-written code."
Things are faster than ever thanks to the CPU optimized builds!
In my experience, Win2k isn't terrible with 128M, but its far from ideal, XP on the other hand is unusable on machines with 256 mb without significant tweaking. Same goes for Linux.
If you want to run an os on a machine from 2000, use an OS from 2000.. how hard is that to grasp?
I also heard we're in Iraq to promote democracy. I've heard all kinds of crazy shit in 2004. :-)
yes, windows is as stable as linux. especially with all those linux viruses and linux spyware out there...
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
Hmmm... GNome 2.6... released about, what, 3 months ago? Maybe?
Hmmm... Win2k released in February of 2000....
Yes, good comparison. For your next trick, will you be comparing Sparc64s and the Intel 8008?
Ok, being serious: how the HELL can you compare Win2k to Gnome 2.6 with a straight face? That's totally irrelevant. Why don't you try comparing Gnome 1.2 to Win2k since they were released at almost the same time?
Try opening a directoy with 800+ files in it and moving them around. On my PIII 866mhz box, it can barely handle moving them one at a time. On my PIII 1.13 GHz box (same RAM in both, faster disks are in the Linux machine - ext3 fs: the default installed by the distro), WinXP (NTFS) still has trouble actually displaying the directory, but not as slow as Linux, and it can move the files around without any trouble.
Linux desktop bites. Gnome bites, KDE bites. The X Windows System NEEDS TO DIE.
See, the problem I have with Linux is that so many of these asshats want to compare it feature for feature against Windows. They'll sit there and trumpet it's (non-inherent) ability to be secure, it's ability to handle lots of processes as a server, etc. etc., but then when it comes to something like the desktop that Windows does very well, they'll get all pissy about the fact that, well, desktops on Linux are pretty shitty unless you invest an awful lot of tweak time.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!