but it's plenty fast for me. And I don't even have that great of a machine. I should point out i've been running KDE CVS for a while, so don't bother griping about KDE 3.1/3.0/2.x/1.x.;-D
Rumor has it that both Linux and SCO are using BSD code. It's not surprising given that BSD was a real UNIX and all, and that BSD and AT&T shared at one point (note: I have no idea where the XENIX*cough*SCO source code came from, so I'm just pulling this out my ass) AND the nasty legal battle to open the sources of BSD in the past tends to make me think that SCO is really in violation of the BSD license.
No need to put my fingers in my ears or claim it's a conspiracy anyway. The offending code has allegedly already been removed.
I could be wrong, but I think that Damage could be opening themselves up to a nasty lawsuit; I didn't see where Damage is based, but if they're based in the U.S., they're legally obligated to keep all resumes on hand, readily available, for a certain period of time. Don't remember the time period, but . . .
I'm not sure I agree with that analysis, but hell, that's okay.;-D I've not had my coffee yet.
I'm just surprised to see that anyone still cares. With people going all apeshit stupid over GNOME's further crippling of their own system, I thought KDE's feature richness would have killed it by now. Features are hard!
Heh, just had to put in a shot at GNOME. Yeah, yeah; you can use GNOME apps when you're running primarily KDE, and vice-versa...meh.
Gentoo uses Portage, not an RPM-based system. Linux is NOT Red Hat.
Now having said that, I agree about FreeBSD. It does rock that it's one complete operating system. I do have to point out, however, that there's a much bigger difference between OpenBSD and FreeBSD than there is between, say, Red Hat and Slackware. At least between two Linux distributions most of the kernel is the same.;-D
this is from a Gentoo, FreeBSD, and OS X user. No need for flames.
One of Linux's selling points is its ability to run on older hardware. Suggesting a more lightweight alternative may have been a better approach if you're going for advocacy.
If the original poster wasn't bright enough to find an alternative and was instead bitching about Nautilus, I don't see the problem. Why must we keep coddling people? GNOME is not the beginning, end, and the entire world of desktop environments outside of Windows and MacOS. If one is going for Linux, FreeBSD (yes, there are other UNIXish systems other than Linux!:-P) or whatever and just wants to sit around bitching about filemanagers, they're 1.) not terribly bright and 2.) wasting both our and their own time.
Though I appreciate good eyecandy, I sometimes have trouble figuring out why certain trends are popular. I had no trouble figuring out Enlightenment. That was easy. The popularity of Winam...*cough*XMMS skins was easy enough. Heck, GTK+ and KDE toolkit themes were easy enough to figure out.
Pretty shiny things to clutter your desktop, though? That's just evil. There's no there there. It's just pretty graphics pretending to be useful!
Am I totally missing the point, or am I spot-on?
I tried to like Karamba when it came about; I was never able to find a good use for it, though. About the best use anyone ever came up with was as a half-assed OSX-style Dock. Weather applets? Stuck to my desktop? Until I stop using my computer for anything other than staring at my desktop, no thanks.
It's true. Even after GNOME's latest bloodletting (cutting of features) KDE still has a smaller memory footprint than GNOME.
If you're using KDE and GNOME on some unoptimized system (such as, say, Debian or a from-scratch system) GNOME is more responsive than KDE.
At the risk of starting a flamewar (and keep in mind that I'm a KDE user) GNOME is more user-friendly, IMHO, than KDE. KDE has a nice set of defaults and allows an extreme (some say excessive) level of configurability. GNOME is, well, GNOME. Sometimes it reminds me of MacOS 9. The only thing I miss by not using GNOME, though, is the ability to zoom on images with my scrollwheel. That's it.
Use whatever works for you. Heck, if TWM and a couple of xterms works for you, use it.
You're marked as a troll, but it's true. This is the sort of stupid claim that could threaten all things Not Windows. I realize that there are things out there other than Unix-y and Windows-y systems, but if SCO actually pulls it off (I doubt they can) it'll open the floodgates and allow the software industry outside MS kill itself.
I'm not so sure. As they seem to say, you can't count on supposedly identically-configured hardware to be identical.
I'm also not so sure about their claims. Sure, they built the same kernel on the machines, but what kernels did they use on each individual machine? Sure, they used DMA on all three, but did the kernels on all three have support for the IDE controller chipset built in? If not, did all three use the proper module(s)? If not, there's yet another reason this test is completely meaningless. Did all three systems use the same kernel version and were all three patched the same way? Were the same model drives in all three machines? Were partitions laid out in exactly the same way on all three machines? Were all the partitions on all three machines using the same filesystem types? Were those filesystems all formatted in exactly the same way, with exactly the same version of the utilites (unpatched, or using the same patches on each, of course)?
There are too many variables here to make this a valid test. This is about as valuable as a Microsoft benchmark of Windows vs. Linux.
One of the nagging suspicions I have is that they've used performance-tuned kernels (that would more than likely be the case for Mandrake, though it's probably tuned for interactive performance) and more than likely merely followed the installation instructions for Gentoo and installed gentoo-sources. Further, I'd be willing to bet that there are performance tweaks done on both Debian and (especially) Mandrake that were unknown to the reviewers. I haven't worked with Mandrake for a while, but it wouldn't surprise me if they use some of the patches that come with Gentoo's ck-sources. The Planet CCRMA project (a Red Hat-based electronic music-oriented distribution using apt) uses many of these same patches in their kernel, and back when I used Mandrake, they used some pretty cutting-edge stuff.
It's great that they decided to pick on Gentoo; after all, it's always good to take a critical look at wild claims. However, if they're just doing this to disprove some bloke who keeps saying "Gentoo is better, Gentoo is higher-performance" I wish they'd keep it to themselves because they haven't proven anything to me other than that in the hands of an untrained newbie without an eye toward optimizing performance Gentoo gets poorer performance than the average Linux distribution.
0 is where it should be. Other distributions run X at a higher priority to make up for "vanilla" 2.4's crappy interactive performance. Once 2.6 is out, this won't be an issue anymore. Also Gentoo's gaming-sources and ck-sources (my personal favorite) have optimizations built in that improve interactive performance greatly, eliminating the reason for running X at a higher priority. Some people report having problems with X running at higher priority; I never have (some people have problems with soundcard starvation, among other things) but then again I don't have to worry.
To be fair, I'm running RH9 until sometime tonight (have a chrooted Gentoo build waiting to be installed) but I'm running a Planet CCRMA kernel, which includes a number of the ck-sources patches.
I've got RH9 on this machine right now; I happened to be checking my email before moving a chroot'ed Gentoo build over to another drive for installation when I read this article.
Gentoo may take massive amounts of CPU time to build, but it's worth it, oh yes, it's worth it, IMHO.
That's because you lack experience to read between the lines.
I did, and seriously doubt this could be a fair test. The only way you could completely miss the point I made and then make it again for me is if you're either trolling or forgetting to take your medication. Which is it?
Have patience and in some 10 years you will be able to make much of even a short, beautifully written article like that.
In 10 years I've seen tech writing go from "let's praise anything Microsoft" to "let's bash anything that's popular." The writing hasn't improved; it's gotten worse. Even more dismal is that testing methods get worse and worse.
Read the article. The reviewers even acknowledge that their identical systems aren't identical!
You'll also become less arrogant, which may help you deal with people.
I'm so glad to see that an Anonymous Coward knows so much about me.
Apparently DMA is enabled on all the machines. Missed that on the first read. Also see my other comment on the article: apparently they ran into differences in the machines, despite the fact that they were supposed to be identical.
Despite missing an obvious point, I still stand by my original sentiment: this article isn't very informative at all.
Upon testing with hdparm, it was apparent that this machine was having troubles setting above udma2. Eventually this problem was traced to the HD cable, a salutary lesson in the variability of identical hardware setups.
For me, Gentoo is a great choice partially because I like the control and partly because I use crufty hardware that doesn't fall into any predefined (read: Intel) category.
Try using binaries compiled for an i686 on a Via C3-1G, for example.
Yes, if your entire reason for using Gentoo is to have control over how apps are built, starting from stage3 pretty much defeats the purpose, and yes, if you don't know what you're doing, then rebuilding X can be a real drag. However, I have to say that I appreciate the fact that Gentoo manages to avoid a lot of legal issues by having the user build the packages her/himself. Honestly, I'd love to be Ogg Vorbis-only for music on my computer, but when I own a portable MP3 player, an MP3-capable DVD player, an in-dash MP3 player, and use OS X at work where QuickTime Ogg Vorbis support is dodgy at best, I want lame. And I want lame support built into kdelibs or whatever lame support needs to be built into so that I can drag-and-drop 192kbps ABR MP3s from an audiocd:// ioslave window to my mp3 folder.;-D
My own experience has been that Gentoo outperforms Debian on my hardware, but only after I've done some tweaking on Gentoo. YMMV.
I have to wonder what the reviewers consider to be a "default" install. For example, did the reviewers remember to build in support for their IDE controller (if that's what they use)? If so, is DMA enabled for the Gentoo box, and is it for the others? What kernel did they use? Did they use gentoo-sources or did they use another?
Maybe to the uninitiated this seems informative, but to me it doesn't.
Heh. To tell you the truth, though, I use OS X Server at work and I've been pretty impressed. It's still plagued with a few problems (filesystem code bugs, apparently, from the problems I have on various machines) but by and large it just sits there and does what it's supposed to, which is, in my opinion, what a server ought to do.
It's a great system for an admin-less business, or a small business where the "admin" has to take on another role.
Re:Even THAT deserves a mention in slashdot?
on
fvwm Turns Ten
·
· Score: 1
You can use Metacity with KDE if you'd like; I prefer to use the official WM, Kwin.
Amen to that! You should have read the entirely different response to this on kuro5hin.org; I think I was the one that came the closest to a dissenting opinion, and I just wanted to know why they didn't just use Encap or GNU Stow!:-D
Personally, I think it sounds like a great idea. If you're putting together a desktop system, there's really no need to carry around the old UNIX cruft. Honestly. And as much as the fanboys jizz all over OS X, I'd think this would be a welcome change. I suppose if this came with a system capable of real translucency and drop shadows, the l33t boyz would be jizzing instead of bitching, eh?
Have I run into a Slash bug? Swear to God it looked like Inoshiro was responding to something else...Inoshiro, I agree with you that the parent poster needed to grow up, but at the same time I think the same can be said of you. So much for Canadians being more mature...
And yay for me proving that the average American can't read...
Inoshiro, I have no idea how someone making the argument that computers, like cars, should be less of a hassle and more of an appliance means that the person saying it needs to grow up.
And no, people stop reading kuro5hin because the people administering the site have no idea what they're doing and are too busy adding features that put more of a load on the system, rather than less, and for some reason need more money despite the fact that their bandwidth is free.
Slashdot Mirror
but it's plenty fast for me. And I don't even have that great of a machine. I should point out i've been running KDE CVS for a while, so don't bother griping about KDE 3.1/3.0/2.x/1.x. ;-D
No need to put my fingers in my ears or claim it's a conspiracy anyway. The offending code has allegedly already been removed.
I could be wrong, but I think that Damage could be opening themselves up to a nasty lawsuit; I didn't see where Damage is based, but if they're based in the U.S., they're legally obligated to keep all resumes on hand, readily available, for a certain period of time. Don't remember the time period, but . . .
I'm not sure I agree with that analysis, but hell, that's okay.
I'm just surprised to see that anyone still cares. With people going all apeshit stupid over GNOME's further crippling of their own system, I thought KDE's feature richness would have killed it by now. Features are hard!
Heh, just had to put in a shot at GNOME. Yeah, yeah; you can use GNOME apps when you're running primarily KDE, and vice-versa...meh.
Now having said that, I agree about FreeBSD. It does rock that it's one complete operating system. I do have to point out, however, that there's a much bigger difference between OpenBSD and FreeBSD than there is between, say, Red Hat and Slackware. At least between two Linux distributions most of the kernel is the same.
this is from a Gentoo, FreeBSD, and OS X user. No need for flames.
If the original poster wasn't bright enough to find an alternative and was instead bitching about Nautilus, I don't see the problem. Why must we keep coddling people? GNOME is not the beginning, end, and the entire world of desktop environments outside of Windows and MacOS. If one is going for Linux, FreeBSD (yes, there are other UNIXish systems other than Linux! :-P) or whatever and just wants to sit around bitching about filemanagers, they're 1.) not terribly bright and 2.) wasting both our and their own time.
Pretty shiny things to clutter your desktop, though? That's just evil. There's no there there. It's just pretty graphics pretending to be useful!
Am I totally missing the point, or am I spot-on?
I tried to like Karamba when it came about; I was never able to find a good use for it, though. About the best use anyone ever came up with was as a half-assed OSX-style Dock. Weather applets? Stuck to my desktop? Until I stop using my computer for anything other than staring at my desktop, no thanks.
If you're using KDE and GNOME on some unoptimized system (such as, say, Debian or a from-scratch system) GNOME is more responsive than KDE.
At the risk of starting a flamewar (and keep in mind that I'm a KDE user) GNOME is more user-friendly, IMHO, than KDE. KDE has a nice set of defaults and allows an extreme (some say excessive) level of configurability. GNOME is, well, GNOME. Sometimes it reminds me of MacOS 9. The only thing I miss by not using GNOME, though, is the ability to zoom on images with my scrollwheel. That's it.
Use whatever works for you. Heck, if TWM and a couple of xterms works for you, use it.
You're marked as a troll, but it's true. This is the sort of stupid claim that could threaten all things Not Windows. I realize that there are things out there other than Unix-y and Windows-y systems, but if SCO actually pulls it off (I doubt they can) it'll open the floodgates and allow the software industry outside MS kill itself.
It's a chilling thought, IMHO.
I'm also not so sure about their claims. Sure, they built the same kernel on the machines, but what kernels did they use on each individual machine? Sure, they used DMA on all three, but did the kernels on all three have support for the IDE controller chipset built in? If not, did all three use the proper module(s)? If not, there's yet another reason this test is completely meaningless. Did all three systems use the same kernel version and were all three patched the same way? Were the same model drives in all three machines? Were partitions laid out in exactly the same way on all three machines? Were all the partitions on all three machines using the same filesystem types? Were those filesystems all formatted in exactly the same way, with exactly the same version of the utilites (unpatched, or using the same patches on each, of course)?
There are too many variables here to make this a valid test. This is about as valuable as a Microsoft benchmark of Windows vs. Linux.
One of the nagging suspicions I have is that they've used performance-tuned kernels (that would more than likely be the case for Mandrake, though it's probably tuned for interactive performance) and more than likely merely followed the installation instructions for Gentoo and installed gentoo-sources. Further, I'd be willing to bet that there are performance tweaks done on both Debian and (especially) Mandrake that were unknown to the reviewers. I haven't worked with Mandrake for a while, but it wouldn't surprise me if they use some of the patches that come with Gentoo's ck-sources. The Planet CCRMA project (a Red Hat-based electronic music-oriented distribution using apt) uses many of these same patches in their kernel, and back when I used Mandrake, they used some pretty cutting-edge stuff.
It's great that they decided to pick on Gentoo; after all, it's always good to take a critical look at wild claims. However, if they're just doing this to disprove some bloke who keeps saying "Gentoo is better, Gentoo is higher-performance" I wish they'd keep it to themselves because they haven't proven anything to me other than that in the hands of an untrained newbie without an eye toward optimizing performance Gentoo gets poorer performance than the average Linux distribution.
To be fair, I'm running RH9 until sometime tonight (have a chrooted Gentoo build waiting to be installed) but I'm running a Planet CCRMA kernel, which includes a number of the ck-sources patches.
I've got RH9 on this machine right now; I happened to be checking my email before moving a chroot'ed Gentoo build over to another drive for installation when I read this article.
Gentoo may take massive amounts of CPU time to build, but it's worth it, oh yes, it's worth it, IMHO.
I did, and seriously doubt this could be a fair test. The only way you could completely miss the point I made and then make it again for me is if you're either trolling or forgetting to take your medication. Which is it?
Have patience and in some 10 years you will be able to make much of even a short, beautifully written article like that.
In 10 years I've seen tech writing go from "let's praise anything Microsoft" to "let's bash anything that's popular." The writing hasn't improved; it's gotten worse. Even more dismal is that testing methods get worse and worse.
Read the article. The reviewers even acknowledge that their identical systems aren't identical!
You'll also become less arrogant, which may help you deal with people.
I'm so glad to see that an Anonymous Coward knows so much about me.
Have a nice day. And try to learn, this time.
Thanks, for your gratuitous, comma.
Despite missing an obvious point, I still stand by my original sentiment: this article isn't very informative at all.
Upon testing with hdparm, it was apparent that this machine was having troubles setting above udma2. Eventually this problem was traced to the HD cable, a salutary lesson in the variability of identical hardware setups.
Very telling pair of sentences.
Try using binaries compiled for an i686 on a Via C3-1G, for example.
Yes, if your entire reason for using Gentoo is to have control over how apps are built, starting from stage3 pretty much defeats the purpose, and yes, if you don't know what you're doing, then rebuilding X can be a real drag. However, I have to say that I appreciate the fact that Gentoo manages to avoid a lot of legal issues by having the user build the packages her/himself. Honestly, I'd love to be Ogg Vorbis-only for music on my computer, but when I own a portable MP3 player, an MP3-capable DVD player, an in-dash MP3 player, and use OS X at work where QuickTime Ogg Vorbis support is dodgy at best, I want lame. And I want lame support built into kdelibs or whatever lame support needs to be built into so that I can drag-and-drop 192kbps ABR MP3s from an audiocd:// ioslave window to my mp3 folder. ;-D
My own experience has been that Gentoo outperforms Debian on my hardware, but only after I've done some tweaking on Gentoo. YMMV.
Maybe to the uninitiated this seems informative, but to me it doesn't.
Amazing, isn't it? "Audiophiles" value poorer frequency response and poorer reproduction quality over anything else--and they pay good money to do it!
I can get poor-quality sound out of some pretty cheap equipment. :D
About your sig:
Heh. To tell you the truth, though, I use OS X Server at work and I've been pretty impressed. It's still plagued with a few problems (filesystem code bugs, apparently, from the problems I have on various machines) but by and large it just sits there and does what it's supposed to, which is, in my opinion, what a server ought to do.
It's a great system for an admin-less business, or a small business where the "admin" has to take on another role.
Yes, KDE has its own windowmanager.
What's keeping you from plunking down $35 for 256MB of RAM, anyway?
Personally, I think it sounds like a great idea. If you're putting together a desktop system, there's really no need to carry around the old UNIX cruft. Honestly. And as much as the fanboys jizz all over OS X, I'd think this would be a welcome change. I suppose if this came with a system capable of real translucency and drop shadows, the l33t boyz would be jizzing instead of bitching, eh?
Have I run into a Slash bug? Swear to God it looked like Inoshiro was responding to something else...Inoshiro, I agree with you that the parent poster needed to grow up, but at the same time I think the same can be said of you. So much for Canadians being more mature...
And yay for me proving that the average American can't read...
And no, people stop reading kuro5hin because the people administering the site have no idea what they're doing and are too busy adding features that put more of a load on the system, rather than less, and for some reason need more money despite the fact that their bandwidth is free.
Wait, you help administer the site, don't you?