Windows XP and the Microsoft agenda - can it get worse?

[Ted Striker]

Yeah, I agree.

[Asher]

The thing I've heard most about Windows XP is if you put it on a faster machine (let's say 1GHz) it seems faster than Windows 2000 did on the same hardware. But if you put it on a slower machine, it seems many times slower.

Kinda weird.

[Korpo]

This may not be news, but there is a Debian BSD initiative, that wants to integrate Debian GNU OS with the BSD kernels, and an article was published on BSDToday.

That makes Debian targeting 3 different kernel architectures (Linux, GNU/HURD and BSD kernels) as their longtime goals. Not bad, that's what I call choice.


Ran both, KDE or GNOME, on my Celeron-I-333 and Pentium-II-350 systems and saw no problems, except KDE was a bit demanding (perhaps I should have offered it more than 64MB on the Celeron?). I really had no problem, so what do you mean by

I find the UI snappier (considerably so, actually) than KDE or GNOME on my P3 800 system.

, Asher ?

[Asher]

All of the UIs I've tried in Linux (naturally, all on top of XFree86 3.3.6 and 4.0.1 recently) have just plainly been sluggish in response times. Windows draws the actual windows much faster, task switching is more instant, etc.

I've heard something about some "preemptive" kernel patch for Linux to make it "more suitable" for desktop multitasking, but I have no clue where to get it.

[Kyle]

Originally posted by Asher
All of the UIs I've tried in Linux (naturally, all on top of XFree86 3.3.6 and 4.0.1 recently) have just plainly been sluggish in response times.

Does that include Blackbox?

[Asher]

No, I don't recall using "Blackbox".

IIRC, though, the KDE/Gnome developers passed off the slowness to the inefficiency of XWin underneath it...

[Korpo]

I'm running XFree 4.1.0 hardware accelerated and I am not experiencing any slowdown. All GUI action is fast and responsive, especially switching. And I am running on old hardware..

Recent article
seems to confirm that Linux is as responsive as XP, with the exception in GUI file managers, where even the fastest are somewhat sluggish.

Didn't you mention earlier you did have problems with properly configuring your graphics adapter? Because that could be one big part of the problem. The configuration of RAM-disks could be one as well.

As I mentioned before, correct installation is crucible for Linux to perform its job correctly, and especially to gain performance.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Korpo
I'm running XFree 4.1.0 hardware accelerated and I am not experiencing any slowdown. All GUI action is fast and responsive, especially switching. And I am running on old hardware..

Well, that's the first I've heard of it then.
Everyone (literally, everyone) else always notices XFree WMs being less responsive/snappier than the Windows GUI. Probably has to do with one being native and one being a kludge to a CLI environment.

Recent article
seems to confirm that Linux is as responsive as XP, with the exception in GUI file managers, where even the fastest are somewhat sluggish.

That very article supports my findings. And I quote:

But I can say cautiously that the overall user experience in Windows is snappy and crisp...

For Linux I'd be a bit more conservative. This is some expensive equipment we're talking about here, and the overal subjective 'feel' under Linux using KDE and Gnome really didn't strike me as sufficiently improved to justify the investment.

Didn't you mention earlier you did have problems with properly configuring your graphics adapter? Because that could be one big part of the problem. The configuration of RAM-disks could be one as well.

Well, if that's the case, I must have screwed up my installation on my P3 800, P3 600, P100 machines, and the syadmins for my school Solaris computers (Ultra 5s and SunBlade 100s) must have screwed up as well.

[Korpo]

Just because you find it to be unlikely, it isn't improbable!

And Solaris-SPARCs don't even have a real accelerated graphics adapter, aside from NOT being Linux, anyway?

[Asher]

The slowness is not Linux's fault, it's either XWindows or KDE/Gnome. Both of those run on Solaris as well.

[Korpo]

KDE is slower than any other windowing infrastructure/window manager for X for sure. It is especially demanding on memory.
GNOME and X (most preferrably the 4.x and 4.1.x versions) aren't known for wasting ressources, through GNOME still suffers from being heavily developed (though 2.0 alpha should make a great leap forward).

I use windowmaker, and keep useful libraries and tools from the "rivals" around, like sound servers etc. It's as responsive as it can be, offers me all I need and does run all I want...


As for the new "trusted computing initiative", here's a from CNET comment
about it. It's the "Cons". The "Pro" was from Craig Mundie, VP of MS, so it is not worth mentioning IMHO. It's basically "the whole industry the same" and "we did and will do everything" which is what MS' PR could have told you 10 years before anyway (and it wouldn't true either).

[Asher]

Originally posted by Korpo
As for the new "trusted computing initiative", here's a from CNET comment
about it. It's the "Cons". The "Pro" was from Craig Mundie, VP of MS, so it is not worth mentioning IMHO. It's basically "the whole industry the same" and "we did and will do everything" which is what MS' PR could have told you 10 years before anyway (and it wouldn't true either).

That's not entirely true.
As part of the "trusted computing initiative", a security team attends every product meeting and analyzes the code before it's put into commercial use for each feature added to try to put an end to the security issues. The regular developers responded very negatively to this, because they said it hindered their progress, so Bill Gates sent out the e-mail explaining that promotions & bonuses now rely on how secure your section of the project is, among other things.

There are actually some brilliant computer security specialists employed by MS that have written numerous industry-standard books, so I think it's more than possible to get this working.