[ale] Linux desktop inefficiencies...

[Jeff Hubbs]

Again, I think that there needs to be a recalibration as to what
"efficiently" means.  This may be an oversimplification, but these days
under Linux it's as though the OS says, hey, you've got lots of RAM and
I'm going to mark off boatloads of it; I may change my mind later if the
machine really loads up and then I may decide differently as load
changes.  

I used to watch my NT machines' memory consumption back in the day and
my sensibilities as far as that goes mapped pretty well to 2.0 and 2.2
kernels, but 2.4 kernels are different and 2.6 will prove to be
different still, I imagine.

To me, I think it's marvelous that extremely, extremely sharp people are
drawn to redesign and experiment with the behavior of the Linux kernel
AND HAVE THE FREEDOM TO DO SO.  Different schools of thought emerge and
a "benevolent despot" (Linus) picks how "the" kernel evolves.  But even
with Linus' final call, you can STILL play with so-and-so's patch and
you can see if other people's - or, for that matter, your own - ideas
serve your particular purposes better.

It really makes me wonder sometimes how people can just stay in
Microsoft-land.  

- Jeff

On Thu, 2003-04-24 at 15:56, John Wells wrote:
> I guess what I'm really getting at is....why do Windows apps, at least in
> the GUI sense, seem to run more efficiently memory-wise than Linux apps
> written in Gnome/KDE?
> 
> Now, I'm not painting with a big brush here....many windows apps are hogs
> in their own right.  But what I would call utility programs (explorers,
> sys mons, etc.) seem to be so much heavier under Gnome/KDE as far as
> memory imprint goes.
> 
> I assume it's because of the rather large separation of the underlying OS
> and X, but I'm not sure.
> 
> I'm really not trying to troll here....just curious.  I'm a big fan of
> Gnome, and on a machine with 512 I'm usually very happy...but trying to
> work efficiently on this 256 meg machine has brought some lag/hogging to
> my attention and I'm curious as to what might cause it, and how it could
> be improved.  Note that I'm assuming there's a common, underlying cause
> here.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> John
> 
> 
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