On Tue, 2003-06-24 at 10:19, Mike Wafkowski wrote: > You're kind of missing the point. It seems like most Linux boosters do and I > believe on purpose so as not to "undermine" Linux. No X no KDE, no Gnome. > > If someone wants a full function/look GUI like Win or MAC then telling them > to use Blackbox instead or (your lightweight gui of choice here) is not a > helpful response to people who complain what a pig Linux running KDE or > Gnome is. Compared to Windows it SIMPLY IS!
Youre right, comparisons between Win and Linux should be done with feature comparable desktops. But pragmatically speaking, if someone wants a more responsive system without the features, they SHOULD use a lightweight desktop. I dont have that choice in Windows / MacOS. > > I wish people would tell them the simple truth that on the same hardware as > they used to run Windows whatever, Linux running whatever full blown gui of > your choice will NEVER run as fast as Windows. No amount of tweaking, > praying or good luck is going to change that. Actually this is plain wrong. Microsoft had the exact same problems with gui sluggishness with windows NT ( compared to Windows 95 ) that Linux appears to have. Their solution was/is a kind of cheat: to move the gui/video code into the kernel in order to improve latency. Microsoft controls all the code in windows, therefore they can ( but probably shouldnt ) break good software engineering principles. The end result is that when a game crashes on win2000, the whole computer is gone -- when X crashes, I can just restart X. The Linux solutions are far better technically. You say no tweaking will fix it-- WRONG: try to renice your X to a higher priority, which will allow the kernel to service X requests sooner. Also the new NVidia and ATI video cards have more complete drivers which support their 2D acceleration features. This is not because X "sucks", but because until recently the hardware manufacturers refused to support Linux, where as microsoft could afford to buy all sorts of support and tweaking. You say to prayer/luck will help-- WRONG: currently there are a few low latecy patches available for 2.4 kernels, and there is Robert Love's patch in the 2.5 kernel. Also XFree 5 is supposed to be reworking the kernel mode DRI layer to improve performance. Keep in mind that the style and pace of F/OSS developement largely dictates what is available in any given moment, the desktop hackers are still implementing key features to make linux a viable desktop for the whole world, and dont have enough time/money to hack religiosly over speed issues. > > So I'll rephrase my complaint. X plus (the full blown wm of your choice > here) sucks, is slow as hell on moderate hardware, and that and the fact > that the current Linux GUI desktop looks like shit (fonts, ui, etc.) to most > non Political Linux and regular 'ol windows/mac users is the reason why > desktop linux is not overtaking (or even competing with) any other desktop > OS soon or in the forseeable future. "current desktop looks like shit" is just plain WRONG. I dont know what desktop *you* are using, but *my* desktop is down right beautiful. I think XP theme looks hideous, and MacOS looks a little too Fischer-Price-ish for me. I can choose any theme I want for Linux, and Im not forced to use either one of the above. I like every visual part of my desktop, which is more than I can say for Windows / MacOS. ( Thats not to say that the desktops dont need much more user interface lovin, we're still behind MacOS, but catching up soon! ) Font rendering *used* to be a problem, before Xft2 and the Bitsream fonts, but Im running XD2 which includes professional quality fonts from Agfa, and Adobe, the free fonts from Bitstream ( which are my favorite after Arial ), and the Microsoft web fonts. I prefer *my* text rendering to XP's after a head to head comparison with a friend's XP laptop. ( Although I think Mac font rendering might be still better than linux. ) > > In short, X and KDE, Gnome, etc. sucks and for Linux to be a great desktop > OS the entire video/gui layer of Linux will have to be redone from scratch. Why does it have to be redone from scratch? Are you a software developer? No competent software devloper would claim even *semi-decent* piece of code should be thrown out completely. You have yet to make any case why "X sucks", you just state it without proof as if its self evident! Some people complain its has all this "network code" which must make it slow-- as of 4.0 this is simply not the case due to DRI. Some people complain "its bloated"-- X can be brought down to about 500KB for embeded systems. But most importantly, wheres the replacement? If you want to design and implement an entire windowing system, please do so and let us know when youre finished so we can judge whether it "sucks" or not. > > Because, as the foundation for a desktop GUI on an individual machine, X > sucks 8^) You have yet to make your case. Until then, you are wrong. > > Regards, > Mike Wafkowski > This is such a common falacy, I had to put my two cents in. Cheers, Ryan -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
