It might not feel like you're trolling, but I think you (unintentionally?) are. In any case... On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 9:23 PM, Jason Hsu, embedded engineer, Linux user < jhsu802701 at jasonhsu.com> wrote: > I find it ironic that Linux set out to be the bloatware buster, Linux set out to be a hobby/experiment in building an OS (specifically the kernel as Linus was already leveraging GNU before his first big release) to fill a gap between Minix (not useful enough in the eyes of Linux) and GNU's kernel (too far out in the future (more than he knew)). Anyway, go read for yourself. https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/rhasan/linux/ and other sources. Bottom line, what Linux became was far beyond the vision of its creator. > but the leading distros have themselves become bloatware. Just look how > much the hardware requirements have escalated in the history of Ubuntu, > Fedora, and many other leading distros. There was a time when 256 MB of RAM > was plenty. In fact, my very first distro was Fedora Core 1 (which came > with the book _Linux For Nongeeks_). On this computer (1 GHz, 256 MB of > RAM), Fedora Core 1 was reasonably fast. This computer falls short of the > requirements of today's Fedora. I don't recommend Ubuntu (or even Xubuntu) > for anyone with less than 512 MB of RAM. > Just look how far hardware has advanced since the 1990's. 4GB of RAM can be had cheaply, and 6GB is becoming the new base-line. 500GB seems to be the bottom of most product line-ups for hard-disk vendors, etc.... and then there is Moore's Law for CPUs. And with that power computers do many more things now, with video, audio, GUI's, etc... > As these leading distros increase their hardware requirements with each > version and cut off support for older versions, they're throwing away a > segment of their users. > And arguably gaining more users with the enhanced functionality that people take for granted in modern OS environments. But that doesn't mean the old-school "CLI and TWM 4ever" crowd has been left in the dust - choices exist for you too. :) > Why do these distros need so much more RAM and processor speed? What's > driving the escalating hardware requirements? > Don't forget that in addition to the enhanced functionality being supported, developers are using enhanced tool-streams that do more of the dirty work for them at the expense of larger overhead in the runtime environment and tool chains. > I'm glad that there is antiX Linux. \o/ The success of antiX Linux makes me wonder why other distros have much > higher hardware requirements. What exactly do the users get for their extra > processor speed and RAM? Why do these other distros need more processor > speed and RAM to do the same thing that antiX Linux does? > I see it's using IceWM, not KDE or Gnome (a big source of bloat AND functionality :) ). One of the gaps most distros fill in are administrative GUI's, etc... what does AntiX provide for managing users, groups, disks, networks, and services? Anti-x looks like a nifty distro for a niche. Don't know if I'll ever need it. Embedded engineers tend to see the world through a more hardware-centric lens. For them the draw is the mechanism (hardware) as well as the functionality. So your focus is understandable. -Rob -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20100628/44d734bd/attachment-0001.htm