My primary workstation is 2.2GHz AMD64-machine with 1024MB of RAM. For the hell of it, I tried to bring KDE to it's knees. So I ran 7 Konquerors, 5 Konsoles, Kword, Kmymoney, Kate, Firefox, Mozilla, Kmail, Knode, Kaboodle (playing back an ogg-file), Quanta+, Kdevelop, Kommander Editor, Kpresenter, Kspread and Gimp. The system was as snappy as it was before (and it's pretty damn snappy!). Memory-consumption at that point was about 600MB's, with about 400MB's to spare.
Seriously, I can't bring KDE on it's knees on my system. I can try, but it doesn't budge. KDE4 along with Qt4 should improve the nmemory-consumption even further.
I use KDE3.2 on my laptop which has 300Mhz P2 and 320MB of RAM, and it runs just fine. It doesn't fly, but it's usable. Mind you, the laptop doesn't have accelerated vid-card drivers and it's HD get's about 7-8MB/sec on hdparm.
And besides, if you want to use yesterdays hardware, use yesterdays software on it. Really, new computers don't cost THAT much!
All the software on my machine is 64bits. Well, Macromedias Flashplayer is 32bits, and I use that with 32bit Firefox, but that's about it. Everything else is 64bits.
Note that Linus did a 180 on "Linux Threads" versus "POSIX Threads" because Linux vendors wanted portability.
of course, the fact that the New Posix Threading Library (AKA NPTL) is an order of magnitude faster than LinuxThreads were, had absolutely nothing to do with it...
My personal wishlist:
- 64bit CPUs to become the norm (seems to be happening).
- Cooler CPUs, not requiring fans (seems to be happening, look at the VIA EDEN CPU's)
- Dual/Quad/Multi -CPU configurations becoming the norm in home computers.
You can have those, just not at the same time. Via Eden runs fanless. But it's still 32bit! And it doesn't run in SMP-configurations (yet. there has been some info about SMP-solutions).
I think you could buy an Opteron 2xx-machine, underclock it to around 1GHz so it might run fanless. Then you would have your fanless 64bit SMP-machine,
I don't want to limit id software's advanced games to 2%. I just wish they would limited it to less than 30 percent of the installed base of machines.
Just because you CAN run D3 with a computer than mere mortals can own. does not mean that it has crappy GFX. And besides, what percentage of computers could run D3 with Ultra quality? Very very few, since it requires a whopping 512MB of video-RAM! If you want the absolute state-of-the-art GFX you have it right there! But you need absolute state-of-the-art-machine to run it. And isn't that what you wanted?
Doom3 does have settings which will allow the game to be played with lesser hardware. And you think that is a bad thing??
Not to defend Bush, but his contention is that the Geneva convention requires that soldiers identify themselves as soldiers via an insignia, uniform, etc. Those that don't do this, he claims aren't offered the protections of the Geneva convention.
I wonder what he would say if captured US Green Berets were tortured. I mean, their job is to blend in with the local population. They don't actually march there with their GI-issued uniforms, M-16's with Stars 'n Stripes flying overhead. No, they dress like the local populace does, and the guns they use are the same guns the locals use.
Since they don't clearly identify themselves as US Soldiers, I guess it's OK to torture them?
Sun supports their Java desktop (which is based on Gnome). I don't think they offer any official support to regural Gnome. And Gnome doesn't really advertise their desktop as "Now with Sun backing!".
And besides, looking at Suns Linux-related comments, I'm not sure that is having Sun aboard an asset or a liability.
What market, by the way?
Corporate users. In this case it simply refers to number of users. I was not talking about revenues and such. Just because I used word "market" does not mean that I was talking about sales.
That's of course why so many ex-MS customers prefer GNOME -- they prefer something backed by a big corporation
What "big corporation" would that be? Novell? They support KDE as well! Everybody constantly says how corporations are switching to Gnome, whereas some individual users are the ones using KDE. But I don't see that happening. I see companies switching to Gnome, but I see them switching to KDE as well. I don't think Gnome has that much bigger market-share with corporates than KDE has. Hell, KDE might be the one with a bigger share of the market!
I started to see that with RedHat 7x. When they decided to rip out the new VM and go with something else on a "stable" kernel, plus who knows how many RedHat modifacations.
Why not just run 2.6? I'm running 2.6.7 and if future kernels get too unstable (I see no indication of that), I'll just stick to 2.6.7 (which has proven to be rock solid for me).
I started to see that with RedHat 7x. When they decided to rip out the new VM and go with something else on a "stable" kernel, plus who knows how many RedHat modifacations.
Not quite. It was Linus that ripped the VM out. Red Hat sticked with the VM that originally shipped with 2.4
Ultra was release earlier than GT was, and it has been available for some time already (but with a premium price).
I did check the store I usually buy from, and it seems that they FINALLY have GT available. Regural 6800 and Ultra have been available for some time now, but GT is becoming available just now.
Don't take my word for it. Or the reviewers. here's what NVIDIA has to say about it:
"A good quality 350W power supply with a sufficient 12V rail pull can support the 6800 Ultra standard clocks of 400/550. A lot of reviewers have already shown that they are running on 350W power supplies with no problems."
Even the Ultra runs just fine on a more modest poewr-supply. NVIDIA recommended 400 watt PSU just to be on the safe side, but many reviewers ran the card with 350 watt PSU just fine. Later NVIDIA reduced the requirements on the Ultra. So it does not need 400 watt PSU. Not in theory, and not in practice.
I have to sort through hundreds of the ugliest themes I have seen at kdelook.org to find one that doesn't get in my way.
The favourite toned-down style for KDE these days is Plastik. It should suit your needs. Keramik (the current default) wont be changed in a minor release, so it will be dropped in KDE4.
On top of that, I have to still adjust my fonts.
I have to do that as well. It takes me about 2 minutes to change them to my liking. I do hope that Helvetica will be dropped as the default font.
If you all have time to completely configure every aspect of your system then that's great. I don't.
You can't spare 15 minutes? OK, to each on his own I guess....
Well, they do have a monopoly on OSs for their hardware, yet that isn't even brought into question on/.
That hardware has around 5% market-share of the overall market! If you don't want to be a subject of that "monopoly", then don't buy Apple! And since when is 5% market-share a monopoly?
Are you complaining when Motorola has about 99% market-share in operating-systems for Motorola mobile-phones? Booo! Motorola is a monopoly!
Every option you give a user is a choice he has to make. Sometimes he doesn't want to make a choice, he just wants to get stuff done.
Really? So I'm REQUIRED to go through every single configuration-option KDE has to offer? Uh, no. While KDE has lots of options the user can tweak, I only touched handful of those when I configured the desktop to my liking.
I find that most Gnome applications tend to follow the HIG and the result is a more consistent desktop.
Well, I have found KDE and KDE-apps to be VERY consistent, so I fail to see the problem here.
Many say the same about KDE but my personal opinion is that Gnome is despite being different than XP and will need a bit more getting used is the more usable Linux desktop around.
For me, "usability" means "The UI acts and behaves the way I want it to act and behave. The UI must adapt to my style of working, and not the other way around". With Gnome I had serious problems making it work the way I wanted it to work. With KDE I didn't have any problems. I guess the root-cause for that is that GNOME assumes that it knows best what the user wants, whereas KDE doesn't make that kind of assumptions.
I would say that Gnome has had it as an explicit focus for a lot longer than KDE, and has been working a lot more on various aspects of usability.
That depends on what's meant by "usability". I gave GNOME a spin, and became frustrated when it seemed to constantly get in to my way. I had hard time making the system behave like I wanted it to behave. In KDE I don't have such problems, since I can easily alter the UI to be exactly what I want it to be.
Like I have commented earlier in/., GNOME (or more precisely, it's developers) seem to think that they know best what the user wants. KDE doesn't make assumptions like that, but rather, they put the user in charge.
As to which desktop is actually the better one for you - well, that's up to you, really.
Agreed. While I found that GNOME is not my cup of tea, I can see why many people love it. The best way to find out which one is the rigfht desktop, is to try them both.
How exactly are they copies? because they have a taskbar like Windows does? Because they have windows like Windows does? Really, if things like that are what makes an UI "a Windows copy", then just about ALL UI's are "Windows copies" in one way or the other!
OTOH, if you are referring to the fact that both try to give the user an integrated UI (and since you singled out the two desktop environments, I think you are referring to this), instead of mishmash of unrelated applications, then yes, they are Windows-clones. And I would in that case wish that there were more "Windows copies" for Linux!
I can't think of any incentive for switching from an XP interface to one that is almost as good as XP.
I use XP at work, and KDE at home. And I can tell you that using KDE is a breath of fresh air when compared to XP! For me, KDE is not "almost as good as XP", it blows XP away!
I appreciate this is slashdot, and you're bound by law to slag off anything Microsoft has ever done (or anything you hypothesize they ever will), but you can't honestly say this isn't being just as unfair to other manufacturers, can you?
No, since iPod does not have a monopoly. If iPod had 90+% market-share then this would be a questionable practice. But iPod is NOT a monopoly-product!
Seriously, this is not rocket-science. Many people dislike MS since they abuse their monopoly. But Apple is a different matter, since they do not have a monopoly to abuse, espesially in mp3-players.
iPod is the leading mp3-player out there. But the fact remains that it's far from being a monopoly. Hell, in unit sales iPod is far from having even 50% market-share!
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My primary workstation is 2.2GHz AMD64-machine with 1024MB of RAM. For the hell of it, I tried to bring KDE to it's knees. So I ran 7 Konquerors, 5 Konsoles, Kword, Kmymoney, Kate, Firefox, Mozilla, Kmail, Knode, Kaboodle (playing back an ogg-file), Quanta+, Kdevelop, Kommander Editor, Kpresenter, Kspread and Gimp. The system was as snappy as it was before (and it's pretty damn snappy!). Memory-consumption at that point was about 600MB's, with about 400MB's to spare.
Seriously, I can't bring KDE on it's knees on my system. I can try, but it doesn't budge. KDE4 along with Qt4 should improve the nmemory-consumption even further.
I use KDE3.2 on my laptop which has 300Mhz P2 and 320MB of RAM, and it runs just fine. It doesn't fly, but it's usable. Mind you, the laptop doesn't have accelerated vid-card drivers and it's HD get's about 7-8MB/sec on hdparm.
And besides, if you want to use yesterdays hardware, use yesterdays software on it. Really, new computers don't cost THAT much!
What if I don't like that toolkit or desktop?
my KDE-desktop is pretty damn consistent.
All the software on my machine is 64bits. Well, Macromedias Flashplayer is 32bits, and I use that with 32bit Firefox, but that's about it. Everything else is 64bits.
of course, the fact that the New Posix Threading Library (AKA NPTL) is an order of magnitude faster than LinuxThreads were, had absolutely nothing to do with it...
You can have those, just not at the same time. Via Eden runs fanless. But it's still 32bit! And it doesn't run in SMP-configurations (yet. there has been some info about SMP-solutions).
I think you could buy an Opteron 2xx-machine, underclock it to around 1GHz so it might run fanless. Then you would have your fanless 64bit SMP-machine,
Just because you CAN run D3 with a computer than mere mortals can own. does not mean that it has crappy GFX. And besides, what percentage of computers could run D3 with Ultra quality? Very very few, since it requires a whopping 512MB of video-RAM! If you want the absolute state-of-the-art GFX you have it right there! But you need absolute state-of-the-art-machine to run it. And isn't that what you wanted?
Doom3 does have settings which will allow the game to be played with lesser hardware. And you think that is a bad thing??
I wonder what he would say if captured US Green Berets were tortured. I mean, their job is to blend in with the local population. They don't actually march there with their GI-issued uniforms, M-16's with Stars 'n Stripes flying overhead. No, they dress like the local populace does, and the guns they use are the same guns the locals use.
Since they don't clearly identify themselves as US Soldiers, I guess it's OK to torture them?
Sun supports their Java desktop (which is based on Gnome). I don't think they offer any official support to regural Gnome. And Gnome doesn't really advertise their desktop as "Now with Sun backing!".
And besides, looking at Suns Linux-related comments, I'm not sure that is having Sun aboard an asset or a liability.
Corporate users. In this case it simply refers to number of users. I was not talking about revenues and such. Just because I used word "market" does not mean that I was talking about sales.
What "big corporation" would that be? Novell? They support KDE as well! Everybody constantly says how corporations are switching to Gnome, whereas some individual users are the ones using KDE. But I don't see that happening. I see companies switching to Gnome, but I see them switching to KDE as well. I don't think Gnome has that much bigger market-share with corporates than KDE has. Hell, KDE might be the one with a bigger share of the market!
2.7 ==> 2.8 ==> 2.9 ==> 2.10 ==> 2.11....
I fail to see a problem here
Why not just run 2.6? I'm running 2.6.7 and if future kernels get too unstable (I see no indication of that), I'll just stick to 2.6.7 (which has proven to be rock solid for me).
Not quite. It was Linus that ripped the VM out. Red Hat sticked with the VM that originally shipped with 2.4
What on earth are you blathering about? What exactly is wrong with KDE's release-cycles?
Ultra was release earlier than GT was, and it has been available for some time already (but with a premium price).
I did check the store I usually buy from, and it seems that they FINALLY have GT available. Regural 6800 and Ultra have been available for some time now, but GT is becoming available just now.
Don't take my word for it. Or the reviewers. here's what NVIDIA has to say about it:
"A good quality 350W power supply with a sufficient 12V rail pull can support the 6800 Ultra standard clocks of 400/550. A lot of reviewers have already shown that they are running on 350W power supplies with no problems."
That is, if it were actually available. I haven't seen it anywhere. Few Ultras here and there, but no GT's.
Even the Ultra runs just fine on a more modest poewr-supply. NVIDIA recommended 400 watt PSU just to be on the safe side, but many reviewers ran the card with 350 watt PSU just fine. Later NVIDIA reduced the requirements on the Ultra. So it does not need 400 watt PSU. Not in theory, and not in practice.
The favourite toned-down style for KDE these days is Plastik. It should suit your needs. Keramik (the current default) wont be changed in a minor release, so it will be dropped in KDE4.
I have to do that as well. It takes me about 2 minutes to change them to my liking. I do hope that Helvetica will be dropped as the default font.
You can't spare 15 minutes? OK, to each on his own I guess....
That hardware has around 5% market-share of the overall market! If you don't want to be a subject of that "monopoly", then don't buy Apple! And since when is 5% market-share a monopoly?
Are you complaining when Motorola has about 99% market-share in operating-systems for Motorola mobile-phones? Booo! Motorola is a monopoly!
Not really. Well it might be if compared to Gnome's ultra-mininalist style. But uncluttering KDE is NOT difficult. Really, it just takes few minutes.
What's this then?
Really? So I'm REQUIRED to go through every single configuration-option KDE has to offer? Uh, no. While KDE has lots of options the user can tweak, I only touched handful of those when I configured the desktop to my liking.
Well, I have found KDE and KDE-apps to be VERY consistent, so I fail to see the problem here.
For me, "usability" means "The UI acts and behaves the way I want it to act and behave. The UI must adapt to my style of working, and not the other way around". With Gnome I had serious problems making it work the way I wanted it to work. With KDE I didn't have any problems. I guess the root-cause for that is that GNOME assumes that it knows best what the user wants, whereas KDE doesn't make that kind of assumptions.
That depends on what's meant by "usability". I gave GNOME a spin, and became frustrated when it seemed to constantly get in to my way. I had hard time making the system behave like I wanted it to behave. In KDE I don't have such problems, since I can easily alter the UI to be exactly what I want it to be.
Like I have commented earlier in
Agreed. While I found that GNOME is not my cup of tea, I can see why many people love it. The best way to find out which one is the rigfht desktop, is to try them both.
How exactly are they copies? because they have a taskbar like Windows does? Because they have windows like Windows does? Really, if things like that are what makes an UI "a Windows copy", then just about ALL UI's are "Windows copies" in one way or the other!
OTOH, if you are referring to the fact that both try to give the user an integrated UI (and since you singled out the two desktop environments, I think you are referring to this), instead of mishmash of unrelated applications, then yes, they are Windows-clones. And I would in that case wish that there were more "Windows copies" for Linux!
I use XP at work, and KDE at home. And I can tell you that using KDE is a breath of fresh air when compared to XP! For me, KDE is not "almost as good as XP", it blows XP away!
No, since iPod does not have a monopoly. If iPod had 90+% market-share then this would be a questionable practice. But iPod is NOT a monopoly-product!
Seriously, this is not rocket-science. Many people dislike MS since they abuse their monopoly. But Apple is a different matter, since they do not have a monopoly to abuse, espesially in mp3-players.
iPod is the leading mp3-player out there. But the fact remains that it's far from being a monopoly. Hell, in unit sales iPod is far from having even 50% market-share!