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OpenOffice Bloated?
cygnusx writes "ZDNet's George Ou has been writing a series of posts about Open Office bloat. Includes some interesting system usage comparisons" From the article: "Even when dealing with what is essentially the same data, OpenOffice Calc uses up 211 MBs of private unsharable memory while Excel uses up 34 MBs of private unsharable memory. The fact that OpenOffice.org Calc takes about 100 times the CPU time explains the kind of drastic results we were getting where Excel could open a file in 2 seconds while Calc would take almost 3 minutes. Most of that massive speed difference is due to XML being very processor intensive, but Microsoft still handles its own XML files about 7 times faster than OpenOffice.org handles OpenDocument ODS format and uses far less memory than OpenOffice.org."
Perhaps the reason that OO uses more private memory than does MS Office is that MS Office links to all the MS dll files, while OO bundles its own internal libraries with it?
And from article/blog/whatever: "Now to be fair, OpenOffice.org is free and is cross platform, but does this really matter to the 90% of the users in the world who only use Windows?"
If it's legally free to use and does the same task, why wouldn't 90% of the users in the world who only use Windows *not* care? People always look for what's cheaper, sometimes even if it's not better (note how MS became the company it is today...)
Office uses zero MFC. Most of the older bits is Platform SDK C, and is a b*tch to maintain, and the newer parts are C++ *but not* MFC -- I understand the Office team has its own lightweight frameworks, similar to ATL.
Go somewhere random
Openoffice.org is a C++ app. It uses java for some scripting, but everything else is C++.
Hmm, you didn't provide any hardware/software specs OR timing/memory data (so others could confirm your work), but your results are nonetheless "informative". It must be because your results were in OO's favor.
I don't use Windows and haven't since '98. At one point, I ran Linux, but kept a dual boot system with Windows, just for opening complex Word documents. Then, I started using Crossover and that saved me a lot of time and I eventually wiped Windows off my box for good.
Now I got into OS X, and I run MS Office on it. I must say though, without bias, that MS Office has to be their greatest product. It just works and I haven't ever had any issues with it at all. It is fast, user friendly, stable and usable. Let's face it: when coders code a word processor they will always look at MS Office for implementation ideas. On the Powerbook, MS Office just flies.
A few weeks ago, I tried to run Openoffice on my Debian box, and there was a huge performance decrease, when compared to running MS Office. It was certainly noticeable. It took a while for a document to open up.
Though, Office has been around for a long time and Openoffice hasn't, so I'm sure there will be lots of features and performance gains in the coming years for the latter. I'm definitely going to keep an eye on Openoffice.
He provided the test data here and here
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Just go ahead and admit it, they both suck for different reasons. We need a third player.
Indeed. Intel should be pushing OpenOffice, because nothing makes me aware of how much I need to upgrade my processor like starting OpenOffice.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I'd chance my arm and say a fair bit.
I made the mistake of opting for x86-64 Gentoo for one of my desktop boxes ("upgrading" it to 32bit this weekend), meaning I have to use the 32bit precompiled OpenOffice binaries. But these need hooking into a 32bit JRE which x86-64 Gentoo doesn't have, since making 32bit apps available through Portage is seemingly something that Gentoo Won't Do Because You Should Be Happy With 64bit. So whenever you start OOo it spends about a minute looking for a JVM (and failing) before you can do anything. I could have manually installed Sun's 32bit JRE, but I can't be bothered.
Disable Java in the options and it starts in 1-2 seconds on the same machine.
By way of comparison, I tried the same trick on my 32bit box (similar spec but with slower HDD's) and OOo was as snappy as hell and opened like the proverbial soil off a shovel.
If there's any functionality I miss through disabling Java, I haven't encountered any yet. And please note I'm not saying that Java is slow to execute (it isn't), it's just appallingly slow to load.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
Honestly, I want to love Openoffice and to advocate it... I have worked in finance on excel, dealing with huge huge spreadsheets and many graphs... Have you tried to plot a 10 000 points graph in OOo Calc vs excel... in excel it is done in less than a second... In OOo the application will freeze for half and hour before slowly starting to display the graph. Cherry on the cake it will conviniently try to write "ROW" under each point in a huge ugly font. After that, changing the data means of course waiting half an hour again because the chart is updating. OOo calc simply doesn't do the job, how hard I wish it would.
\u262D = \u5350
Well, according to the Misco catalogue I received this morning MS Office standard costs £300.
At my local computer shop, RAM costs £75/GB, so I could have 4GB of RAM for my machine.
On a price performance comparison MS Office uses 7MB and OO.org uses -3960MB.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
What about the source? Ad hominem attacks are a logical fallacy. Who wrote the article should not have bearing on judging the validity of the article.
You clearly don't know what an ad hominem attack is. The ad hominem fallacy is where you say "Ou is an idiot, and I have reason to believe he's also homosexual. Therefore his article is rubbish". That is indeed a logical fallacy and an invalid argument.
On the other hand, to say "Ou has a well-documented history of writing negative articles on the subject of open-source software" is to state a fact, not to make an attack; and to continue, "therefore it is likely that his approach to the subject will be biased, his evidence selective, and his conclusions unreliable", is perfectly reasonable.
To be perfectly blunt, the provenance of an article is significant. If Linus Torvalds says "Linux is better than Windows", that means very little: of course he thinks that, and nobody really thinks twice when he says so. But if Bill Gates were to say the same thing, then it would be an incredibly significant statement, and people hearing it would immediately put great trust in those words: if Bill Gates says the competition is better, it must be really good!
Similarly, if an OpenOffice.org developer were to announce that their software was, in fact, not as good as MS Office, then that would be a significant announcement that should be given much credence. But when Ou, who has a long and easily verifiable history of writing articles that disparage open-source software, says the same thing, his words should be taken with a generous pinch of salt.
That's not an ad-hominem fallacy. It's called "critical thinking".
Disable Java in the options and it starts in 1-2 seconds on the same machine.
Somewhat off topic but pertinent ENOUGH... Good God man! Thank you! The Java tab in the options dialog was incredibly easy to find but for some reason I just breezed right over it. Unclicking that little devil's box just dropped my start time from 15-20 seconds to 1. I know it likely has nothing to do with the working data that this "benchmark" tested, but it sure shows how good an idea it would be to transition the Java dependency on over to native code.
"This is Zombo Com, and welcome to you who have come to Zombo Com" - www.zombo.com
This would definitely be a factor if you were running it on, say, a 486. Try out the GIMP for Windows, there is no perceptible difference in GUI responsiveness, even though it uses GTK+ instead of the Windows API. I think the main problem with OpenOffice is that it's an ancient codebase and tries to do too much internally. Someone designing it today would probably use platform-specific features more actively instead of trying to make it look the same on every platform (which was the meaning of "portability" about 15 years ago). Not to mention, StarOffice was always a crappy, bloated product and OpenOffice isn't much better.
Just because the design of OO.o is completely braindead, that's no reason to handicap the competition to make it look better. If Excel is smaller than Calc, say so. If Word is smaller than Writer, say so. If Word+Excel+Powerpoint combined are about the same as the OO equivalents combined, then say that, but most of the time people want just Word, or just Excel, or just Powerpoint.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
A quick check with Google shows only one hit, on a page full of Baynesian Babble.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Go to the Options and uncheck the Java option (Use a java runtime environment). After this, OpenOffice.org start like a breeze...
As far as I can tell...
1) OOO IS slow - under Windows and Linux, enough so that competing "offices" like KOffice are kept alive despite reduced feature sets.
2) Office runs faster, but for that matter, so does IE - is it any suprise that MS can write software for its own OS which takes every possible advantage of its native environment to run with speed?
3) I use OOO whenever I can, because open standards means I know I'll be able to access my data in 10 years, unlike the struggle I've had with old Office/Wordperfect/XyWrite documents I've had to try to convert.
4) OOO is "bloated" in the same way my big multitool is bloated - you can't be small, fast, and everything to everyone on every OS
Using plain ol' text since 1968
Read this comment for a nice description of why that is not ad hominem.
Your slur on his 2 digit ID, however, is completely off topic. Google for "petard, hoist upon".
Infuriate left and right
Is it time yet to admit that Excel is an excellent piece of software? It has managed to stay true to its core competencies (calculations) while gaining many new audiences. I have used it in the past year for stock analysis, dynamic web queries (a simple Crystal Reports), and site wireframing. While many look at the insecurity of macros, they are enormously useful for the financial community and advanced data analysis.
The great thing about open source though, I bet there is someone *right now* using the test files provided by this author to improve the Open Office parsing routines. Gotta love it.
IIRC there was an article not too long ago that explained that the main difference between Office and OO is that Office makes extensive use of lazy loading, while OO essentially hammers through loading every library it may need, which not only thrashes the disk once on initial load, but again as you (likely) swap out memory pages. My recollection was that this lack of lazy loading had something to do with cross-platform compiling and linking issues, as well as MS having extensive resources to put into optimizing Office loading that OO did not. My understanding is that Sun hasn't exactly dumped developer time into OO, either, and I believe the focus of this release was compatibility and.
Typically people solve this problem by preloading a bunch of the relevant libraries at startup, a strategy both MS and OO attempt to employ (viz OfficeStartup and OO QuickStarter). I used to detest that, but if I had 1 or 2GB or RAM and wanted to rely on OO, I might not find it so bad. I think an interesting addition to this comparison would be to see how OO fared with QuickStarter enabled, and what drain that placed on the rest of the system. Likewise disabling the JVM loading.
I realise you're trying to make a statement with all your telnet to port 80 instead of using a browser and such, but I think you should at least have used a compiler to build OpenOffice.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
This is one area where Open Source has its weakness.
Cutting down and optimizing existing code is not nearly as glorious as adding new features.
Micro$oft, on the other hand, can afford to have a whole team of programmers who's only job is to optimize and slim down the code.
As much as I hate MS, they did get a lot of things right in Office (except for that damn paperclip).
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
I don't like Microsoft. I don't like Windows. I do, however, like Office. It's been a good office suite for a very long time. It's been very easy to use since I first started playing with Office 4.2. If Microsoft would actually release a version of MS-Office for Linux then I would probably purchase it.
Before everyone starts ranting about how this isn't good for GPL, or how I'm being bad by saying this, remember, the point of the GNU OS is for application developers to have a level playing field. Microsoft, like any other consumer software maker would be just as correct to participte in that kind of market as anyone else.
I use Open Office, but I don't agree that it's the best productivity suite. It is the best free productivity suite for Linux at the moment. Since Microsoft's product will always cost money, Open Office undoubtedly will remain the best free productivity suite; it will serve as a baseline. If vendors wish to make a commercial product that is better than Open Office and charge for that product it's their right to do so.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I'm not sure how feasible it is to profile such a large program, but I'm sure Microsoft profiles the daylights out of their stuff. Do OOo developers profile things like the start-up time? After all, you can't start optimizing things unless you figure out exactly what is slowing it down. Is it the Java run-time engine? Is it because it needs to load a lot of libraries that MS Office does not need to (because of dynamic linking to Microsoft DLLs). Maybe when loading certain data sets, the program goes into a pathalogical state, creating hundreds of thousands of small objects? I don't know.
But things like analyzing profiling data and then optimizing are not fun to most people. Even more so if it means that an algorithm needs to be re-written. After all, if the "open file" operation needs a complete re-think + re-write, who's going to do it? It's not "fun". After all, the "open file" operation already exists. Generally, I think programmers like to build *new* things as opposed to fixing old things. And in this case, it's not even a matter of "fixing". It's a matter of rewriting. I presume that at Microsoft, if Word's "open file" operation (run with me on this for a minute) is uber-slow, then somebody is going to *have* to fix it, or not get a good performance review/etc. However, in the case of OOo if no one makes it faster, well, it does not negatively affect the person who wrote the slow version in the first place (not to discredit OOo authors or anything. They've done a phenomenal job given that they do this for fun and not profit).
Of course, there are an equal number of programmers who like to fix security holes and so forth, but patching a security hole is one thing, while re-writing major algorithms in a large program is another. There are of course some programmers who love optimizing code (Michael Abrash?). But I think they are far and few between. Very often, once something works, an attitude sets in that "It's working. Now don't break it". And optimization in it's early stages will often break things.
"It is a known problem that OOo takes a while to start. Staroffice (at the point when Sun bought it) was made by a German company. Most of the internal functions are named in german, and use abbreviations that are not obvious."
While I understand that you were not trying to be an open source apologist, this statement is the epitomy of the frustration that many mainstream users have with open source:
Office worker: "why does Open Office take so long to load?"
IT guy: "That's because the routines were written by a German guy in his free time. I'm sorry, little-miss-everybody-should-speak-English, but this poor guy was working for free. What do you expect?"
Office worker: "what does the German language have to do with this?"
IT guy: "Your PC was built in Austin, Texas. German is its second language. See this routine here, öffnenSiediegroßeAkte()? Your American PC doesn't know what that means, and has to consult a dictionary each time it sees it. There's a group of teenagers translating it into English. They work on one word each for greater safety. One of them saw two words of the program and spent several weeks in the hospital."
Office worker: "So, what do I do about it?"
IT guy: "Have a little more tolerance for the global community in which we live, and worship the holy light of open source that's shining out of Richard Stallman's ass. Oh, and consider dying your hair blond, adopting a schnauzer, and carrying a riding crop. Open Office seems to like that."
Office worker: "Dork."
If this continues, I think it will inevetably lead to new ad campaigns like:
Microsoft Office: We won't coerce you into adopting a schnauzer!
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Hidden code, you say? Before you go off accusing Microsoft of a Consent Degree violation, perhaps you should be a bit more careful about what exactly you're comparing. It is extremely important when you try to compare "memory usage" on different Operating Systems that you are actually comparing apples to apples. And since you didn't cite the source for your "7.10" and "9.81" numbers above, I doubt you really understand what you're measuring.
If you're using Task Manager, for example, you will by default only see "Mem Usage" which reports the physical memory (i.e., the "working set") consumed by the process. Even though this metric includes both private and shared pages (i.e., shared code and data segments of DLLs are charged to each process here), it does NOT include pages which still reside on disk (either in the executable images, memory-mapped files, or the system pagefile.
Another common memory statistic from Task Manager is "VM Size" (you have to add it to your column view by "View->Select Columns"). "VM Size" tallies private virtual bytes consumed by the process. Private means that this quantity does NOT include shared/shareable pages like DLLs and memory-mapped files. "VM Size" is sometimes smaller than the "Mem Usage" precisely because shared pages aren't counted. This causes a large amount of consternation to those who don't understand what is being reported, because they expect physical memory usage to be smaller. "VM Size" is the equivalent of the process's page file allocation, since shared pages by their nature are already backed up on disk elsewhere.
Another common memory usage metric in Windows can be obtained from Perfmon (perfmon.msc, the Performance MMC snap-in). From this tool, you can view "Virtual Bytes" of each process, which is the amount of reserved virtual memory for the entire process, including shared pages. It is equivalent to "VM Size" from task manager PLUS shared virtual memory.
So, as you can see, it is not altogether obvious what is being reported unless you really understand the details of memory management on the underlying OS. Before comapring application memory usage across platforms, you need to be sure you're using comparable metrics!