Mark, I know this is gonna get me trouble but here goes.. As much as I hate to admit it, for Joe six pack Linux just isn't there yet. I run Windows 2k here at work but at home I run Linux about 95% of the time and love it. My brother after dealing with windows crashing all the time decided to try linux. I tried to talk him into a dual boot but he would not even consider it so I gave him my Mandrake 8 disks and told him to have at it. He got it installed on his own (for the most part) and got the stuff he used most working and loved it. For about two days, until he had to install real player and a couple of other apps he wanted to try. Most people don't want to work any harder than point and click to get stuff to work. In another year or two this will change but for now Linux just isn't ready for the average home user, corporate user may be a different story but I kinda doubt that too. To make an already long and boring post a little shorter, my brother has gone back to using windows. -----Original Message----- From: Mark Browne [mailto:markbrowne at mn.mediaone.net] Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 9:01 AM To: tclug-list at mn-linux.org Subject: Re: [TCLUG] Linux vrs Windows speed - What gives? Sorry about that. I even re-read before posting and missed the size. I have a 200mb swap on my test machine - not 20. The reason I am trying to learn Linux is to see if I want to risk my GURU reputation to recommend it at work and for my friends. I do NOT want to spend my life running around cobbling up other peoples systems. I want a distro I can recommend right out of the box - that will do what "average" folks do. (surfing, e-mail, word processing) I gave the example of surfing the web because it is such a common task. Other areas of perceived slow speed are slow boot-ups and time to spawn new X window apps. These are apples to apples kind of comparisons. Windows does a windowing system and I am using the tools installed by default. I expect my test distribution to work the same way. Having to cherry pick and tune apps does not cut it. OK, X-windows is a resource pig. What else am I going to do to run a GUI on Linux? (see comment on running out of the box above) I don't see a lot of difference using Gnome. I will not recommend FWM to newbies, even if faster. They will not feel that it is something better. I am not going to switch people over to a text based system, no mater how well it runs SAMBA or Apache. Despite the bashing and crashing - for a lot of the folks I support- windows does just install and work. The default apps and setting are pretty reasonable. Windows does a fair job of tying all the little bits together for a nice responsive system. Sure they cheat - they don't have to do a modular system - they don't have to. Does it really come down to admitting that windows is really better for Joe-six-pack consumer computers? I hope not. Mark Browne ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Spinti" <jspinti at dart.dartdist.com> To: <tclug-list at mn-linux.org> Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 8:15 AM Subject: RE: [TCLUG] Linux vrs Windows speed - What gives? > Try Opera under Linux. It flies and doesn't crash the machine the way IE > does. > > Also, your swap is too small (windows dynamically manages swap, so it is > probably using 60-100 MB of swap, try system monitor to see). > > If you want to run X on that slow a machine, try a smaller window manager, > like fwm, etc. KDE is designed for faster machines. I don't run it on a > machine slower than 200 MHz. Anything slower, I run Linux without X and use > it for a server. I had a 486-100 under samba as my PDC until 2 months ago, > it would out perform a PII-233 with 4 times the RAM under NT. > > Thanks, > > James Spinti > jspinti at dartdist.com > 952-368-3278 x396 > fax 952-368-3255 > > | > |-----Original Message----- > |From: Mark Browne [mailto:markbrowne at mn.mediaone.net] > |Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 10:37 PM > |To: tclug-list at mn-linux.org > |Subject: [TCLUG] Linux vrs Windows speed - What gives? > | > | > |I am still geting used to Mandrake 8.0. > |My concern is that with a dual boot system Windows seems faster than Linux > |in KDE. > |Example: Explorer opening a web page 3x faster compared to KDE or netscape > |on same system. > |Is there some sort of speed tuning I should do? > |I am testing Linux primarily with a 133 MHz P1 with 64 mb with > |20mb of swap. > |Don't tell me to get a faster box - I have one. > |WIndows 98 runs OK with this hardware. > | > |I have tried several other distributions with much the same results. > |I fear that the claims of Linux speed in relation to Windoze may be just > |hype. > | > |Mark Browne > > _______________________________________________ > tclug-list mailing list > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > https://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list _______________________________________________ tclug-list mailing list tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list