[ubuntu-uk] Application responsiveness, Windows and Ubuntu

[Chris Rowson]

>  > Hi there,
>  >
>  >  My little boy likes playing various flash based games from children's
>  >  websites. I find that in Ubuntu, many of these run pretty badly and as
>  >  this is all he uses my old laptop for, I decided to put Windows XP
>  >  back onto it to see the if it would make any difference for him.
>  >
>  >  I've just installed Firefox 3 Beta 5, Flash and a Java runtime
>  >  environment and seen how it runs.
>  >
>  >  Strangely Firefox runs about twice as fast under Win XP than on Hardy
>  >  (although Hardy is on a laptop which is twice as powerful). Rendering
>  >  and application response are greatly improved under Windows and Flash
>  >  content flys.
>  >
>  >  I'm bamboozled to say the least!
>  >
>  >  Are these particular applications created specifically for Windows
>  >  then ported to Linux? It's wierd, I've tried this on different
>  >  hardware and find it to be the case on the machines I've tested.
>  >
>  >  I wondered if anyone else has tried this out or have any reasons why
>  >  it would be so?
>  >
>
>  If you are only talking about when flash pages are open, then yes, I
>  notice it too. My CPU is constantly at about 10%.
>
>  This is to be expected, Flash is closed-source after all, and you are
>  trusting a company that probably doesn't see its Linux user-base as
>  significant as the Windows one.
>
>  Can't wait for Gnash to become a real alternative, until then I use
>  Flash as little as possible :)
>
>  Matthew.

I suppose that may well be the case. I also see some level of slowness
in sites like Gmail for instance (although I believe this is well
documented). It probably is a case of most application developers
develop for Windows and port to Linux when/if they can be bothered.

I suppose until then I'll have to use Windows for people relying
heavily on Flash/Web apps etc.........

Chris