Neal Lippman declaimed: > I'm just wondering if anyone has any info on why X seems to need so much > CPU power? > > Way back when, probably around 1996 or 1997, I first tried to install > Linux. Back then, I tried distro's from Corel and Redhat. My system was > a Pentium 133 with 48 (and then 96) MB Ram. This system ran both Win 95 > and Win NT 4.0 reasonably well, but when I made the switch and installed > Linux, any sort of desktop - eg Gnome or KDE, not a vanilla WM) was just > so slow as to be unusable. Eventually I gave up for a while and went > back to WinNT for some time. > > For the past 3 years or so, my workstation has been exclusively Linux, > first Mandrake on a PIII-800, and for the last year, I've been hooked on > Debian on an Athlon XP 1700+, and on both of those systems performance > has been just fine, so I didn't really think about the troubles I > originally had, and when I did, I figured I must have done something > wrong on my first install attempts on the Pentium system. > > A few months ago, I decided to put debian on my old Laptop, an IBM > Thinkpad 770ED (PII-266, 64MB Ram). Once again, with KDE running, the > desktop was so slow and unresponsive as to be really unusable (except in > an xterm window). This is a system that has run Win95, Win98, and WinNT > just fine over the years. > > So, my question is: Why does X seem to need so much more CPU power than > windows - such that systems I have tried to use that worked fine with > various windows flavors just were unusable with KDE loaded? I assume the > problem isn't in Linux itself, since my old Pentium 133 was just fine > with X not running, and enough people have attested to the ability of > systems with Pentium processors running Linux without X being able to > handle massive firewall, router, web server duties, etc. Maybe the > problem is KDE and not X - but I had similar trouble with Gnome, so it > isn't just a KDE issue. > > I'm just curious and wonder if anyone has any thoughts. >
Clearly we all think that it's the Window Manager, not X. My history with various window managers: Tried Gnome, too big, too broken. Tried KDE, too slow. Tried Window Maker, nice but config editor was broken. Tried Blackbox and haven't ever wanted to look further. YMMV, Paul -- Paul Mackinney [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
