quote:
Originally posted by WMD:
Try using KDE on something other than Red Hat and you may change your mind. KDE in Knoppix runs fast on my dad's 900Mhz, 256MB laptop.
KDE in Knoppix is faster than Red Hat on my machine my works computer but I've always found it slower than Windows XP or Linux running some other Desktop like GNOME. The problem with KDE is it tries to do too much with the same module, this wastes memory for example Konqueror is a file / compressed archive manager, desktop layout and web browser plus a whole lot more. GNOME is better because all these features are provided by different modules for example the archive manager is done by a separate file roller program even Windows XP uses a different module for archives.
KDE may run fast on 256MB when all you're using is KDE plus a few small applications but as soon as you load Openoffice.org (which i criticise for the same reason as KDE) + The GIMP with a big picture my system slows to a crawl. Loading the same programs with the same files in Windows XP the performance is acceptable and under XFCE no swap memory is being used my system runs even faster. Now I know XFCE isn't a fully featured desktop but you can download most GNOME utilities and increase it's functionality without casing a resource hog, I have used file roller with it and it works a dream.
I know that if you have lots of memory you may benefit from having more programs loaded as it means that you don't have to wait for them to load, but if you don't or you load very big files you're system can hard disk thrash or even crash (well X has hung up on me on numerous occasions when using KDE)
quote:
Originally posted by WMD:
And Konqueror is NOT an IE equivalent. Yes, it's a web browser and file manager, but it isn't integrated into the OS. Big difference.
Well IE isn't an integral part of Windows either, its part of the desktop you can download other desktops for Windows too. (I can't remember the name of the one I tried but it sucked anyway)
quote:
Originally posted by insomnia:
It does ask a lot of ram tho...
Exactly, KDE's a major bloat factor in most modern Linux distributions, I consider Windows XP a light OS if you compare it to a full graphical install of a modern Linux distribution. Take
Fedora Core 2 for example:
quote:
Memory Requirements:
This section lists the memory required to install Fedora Core 2.
Minimum for text-mode: 64MB
Minimum for graphical: 192MB
Recommended for graphical: 256MB
WTF! 64 fucking MB just to run in text mode, XP will run graphical with this amount of RAM. (I wouldn't expect good performance though) And 192MB minimum for graphical, I can run XP with 128MB with acceptable performance. Compared to
Windows XP quote:
The minimum hardware requirements for Windows XP Home Edition are:
Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended)
At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended)
I have used Windows XP on 128MB at work and it gives acceptable performance, its faster than both Red hat and Knoppix is on my 256MB box.
However nothing beats
Vector Linux quote:
VL 4.3 Hardware Requirements
The minimum hardware requirements to run VectorLinux 4.3 are a 166 MHz Pentium class processor with 32 MB of RAM memory, and just 850 MB of hard disc space (*).
To have a more comfortable experience with VectorLinux 4.3 we would recommend a 233 MHz (MMX) processor with 64 MB of memory as a minimum.
[ October 21, 2004: Message edited by: Aloone ]