Is it me or does Hardy run like a pig?

[Knapp]

On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 1:18 AM, Michael Hirsch <mdhirsch at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 8:57 AM, Mike Shaw <mdshaw89 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Everyone,
>>
>> Just wanted to see what other people's experience with Hardy after
>> upgrading from Gutsy?  I had been running Gutsy on my T41 for quite a
>> while and although the performance was not as good as when I was
>> running Gentoo it was okay.  But I noticed a huge difference after
>> upgrading to Hardy - and it wasn't a positive.  Firefox especially
>> seems to have gone down hill.
>
> I would agree.  I think that each release has used more memory.  After
> the hardy upgrade my wife's system is running out of memory.  I'm
> ashamed that Linux can't run well in .5 Gig.  She doesn't do much, but
> with firefox, kmail, and openoffice running, she's out of RAM.  I
> figure with another stick or two it should be fine again.
>
> Michael

You blame Linux but if you look at what you just said, a large part of
it is because the software you are using is dealing with MS stuff. If
the web were always standards compliant and file formats did not have
windows formats to deal with and all the drivers were open source you
would see a much smaller memory footprint. As it is you can still run
Damn Small Linux just fine with the memory on your wife's computer.
Try booting it to ram, you will be shocked at the speed!! Thing is you
most likely want all the bells and whistles. I would bet that just
compiling your own Kernel would cut your memory usage way down with
the removal of unused drivers. Of course I could be off here because
the newer kernels only load what is needed. I have not played with
this side of it in many years. Software always grows to use available
space and speed and that is based on the nice computers a lot of the
devs have.

There is also a huge shift in how people code. When I wrote code for a
C64 we would spend a week going over the machine code to remove a few
bytes. Now when I code I go over it and make the code longer so that
it is clearer for debugging and maintenance. I also rarely worry about
making my code faster or smaller. Why would I waste the time? I have a
HUGE hd and LOTS of ram and my CPU is a x2 64 bit monster. Then there
are all the new languages. They make coding faster and less buggy but
they don't make it more efficient or smaller. A lot of code is now
done in Python, an interpreted language. It used to be all done in
assemble or C and compiled.

If you really want Kubuntu, FF, and OO then you will have to live with
bloat. If you want small and fast change to Xubuntu with Dillo for
your browser, and Abacus for writing. Or get really crazy and learn
Vim, ELinks and just forget about a GUI! I can do 99% of my computer
tasks without a GUI. The only time I need a GUI is for FF and
Blender3D. The rest of the time I use it because it is convenient and
I like to cut and paste between software.

Linux is what you make it.

-- 
Douglas E Knapp

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