Is it me or does Hardy run like a pig?

[Derek Broughton]

Knapp wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 1:18 AM, Michael Hirsch <mdhirsch at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> 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.
> 
> 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 agree.  My wife doesn't do much on her laptop with .5GB, but she tends to
keep somewhere around a million firefox windows & tabs open (give or take
900,000), and sometimes a VirtualBox Windows session.  Not surprisingly it
runs like a (very tired) dog, then.  Usually if I get her to close the
unused FF tabs, things pick up.

> 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. 

The reason we have a "generic" Ubuntu kernel is because the devs could see
no meaningful differences between a streamlined one and the generic in
normal use.

> 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. 

No kidding.  In 1983, I shoehorned a program for an Apple IIe into a much
larger PC, converting the original assembly code into Turbo Pascal.  I
believe I used about 10 times the memory of the original program.  It's
been all downhill from there :-)

> Linux is what you make it.

Ain't that the truth.
-- 
derek