Thoughts from a friend newbie Ubuntu user

[Stephen Michael Kuhn]

On Sat, 31 Jul 2010 03:29:23 am Dave Woyciesjes wrote:
> On 07/30/2010 01:09 PM, Stephen Michael Kuhn wrote:
> > On Sat, 31 Jul 2010 02:51:52 am Alain Muls wrote:
> >> Last June I upgraded to Lucid since I want him to stay with a LTS
> >> version of Ubuntu and not upgrade to a new distro every 6 months (he
> >> is after all a noob). Though I made a mistake. I myself use the 64bit
> >> version of Lucid and so I used this live CD to install his system.
> > 
> > <snip>
> > I've yet to see a speedy 64bit install. Ubuntu or otherwise. I
> > consistently stick to 32bit, especially for paying clients. I won't go
> > further on that note.
> 
> 	Have a look at mine, then. Dell Optiplex 760, 6GB RAM, 220GB HDD, Intel
> Core2 Duo @ 2.666 GHz. Fresh install of Ubuntu 9.10, upgraded last month
> to 10.4. Nice & zippy.
> 	Most of the people I hear complaining about 64bit Ubuntu being slow are
> people with less than 4GB of RAM on that system. For them, there is no
> point of having 64 bit OS anyway.

Let's ask a simple question here, David.
How many struggling small businesses want to purchase a machine (let alone a 
Dell - they don't have a very good relationship with Australia) with that much 
"oomph"? They don't give a hoot. However, they're more than happy to shell out 
say, $400 on a box with 2gb of RAM and a 512mb PCie. Most of the folks I have 
to deal with have gone the route of purchasing "ex lease" or "auctioned" 
Optiplex's over the course of the past ten years, and have groaned at the pain 
of driver installations under Microsoft Windows - so when given an option, 
they've steered quite clear.

All they care about is speed, cost and long term maintenance. So that 
effectively cuts out high-end hardware, Micrsoft Windows, and anything 64bit.

Personally, here at home, with but a few exceptions, I run on "garbage" 
hardware - stuff given to me, stuff thrown out, stuff "not strong enough" for 
others. Nothing here runs Micrsofto anything - discounting VM's. 64bit? Nah, 
no thanks. I do my video editing and video creation fine and dandy on 32bit 
with my measely 2gb of ram and my measely 512mb dual-HDMI Nvidia card. I 
happily run several VM's of Microsoft Windows (whatever version) when I have 
to test something or emulate something - as well as OSX.

I try every now and again to give 64bit a play - both Ubuntu and Fedora - and 
with all the proper bells and whistles and tweaks (and drivers and etc) and 
still, always falls short. On that same token, I've done the same with 
Microsoft Windows (choose any version) and the same - always falls short of 
the expectation given (or advertised). Patience is a virtue, I'll be patient 
and just wait till things grow up enough.
-- 
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.:yankdownunder aka s.m.kuhn aka Elf:.
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.:If it's not Ubuntu, it's just NOT:.
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.:|GNU/Linux Registered User:267497|:.
Linux 2.6.32-24-generic #38-Ubuntu SMP Mon Jul 5 09:22:14 UTC 2010
 
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