[aclug-L] Re: Linux as an alternative to a Windows desktop

[Nate Bargmann <n0nb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

* Jonathan Hall <flimzy@xxxxxxxxxx> [2002 Dec 13 06:05 -0600]:
> My laptop (486DX2/50, 24mb RAM, 10gb HD) is living proof that Win95 is
> better than Linux for GUI operation on limited hardware.  I have both 95
> OSR2 and Linux (Debian woody) installed.  I don't even bother using X any
> more.  For a while, when my main PC was down, I used that laptop as my main
> home computer, and used it in 95 the whole time (nearly 6 months), b/c it
> was so much faster than X with the most basic configuration was in Linux.

I think this is an apples vs. oranges comparison.  Saying a 6 to 7
year old consumer "OS" works better on hardware a slight bit older than
said "OS" compared to a Debian distribution released a few months ago on 
the same hardware seems inconsistent to me.  A better comparision is
loading Win XP Pro or Win 2k Server on your laptop and testing that
against Debian Woody.

I ran X 3.3.6 on a 486/100 with 20 MiB of RAM as my primary desktop 
machine up through March of 2001.  I haven't updated it beyond Debian 
2.2.  Yes X was slower than Win95 had been, but(!) I was using a much
richer environment overall.  Yes running OO or Mozilla was out of the
question, yet I did run Star Office 5.2 on that machine even though it
was a bit slow.

OTOH, later versions of Debian are not intended for "limited" hardware 
at least in terms of disk space.

> If/when I have spare time, I may do some benchmarks to estimate the
> threshhold where a Linux GUI becomes faster than Windows. I suspect it's
> somewhere between 64 and 128mb of RAM for Win95/98NT.  Versus W2k/XP, Linux
> will probably always win.  CPU is probably mostly irrelevant.

Don't forget to compare the boot times of DOS 3.3 on the same hardware.
;-)

> My K6-3/400 w/ 196mb RAM, 3gb HD is running NT4 "happily".  It's not
> breaking any performance records, but it's stable and I don't have any
> specific complaints about response time.

Oh. my NT box at work is stable too.  In the same way concrete is
stable.  Only problem is that on bootup so much background stuff is
loaded by default (and no, I don't have admin rights to change it) that 
opening Lotus Notes 5 causes a fair amount of swapping and if Acrobat 5 
is opened with Notes, you just as well go get a cup of coffee or some such.

This isn't the fault of NT per se, but is a glaring example of our IT Dept 
trying to crowd too much on limited hardware.  I tried adding a 128 MiB
SODIMM to the machine last week, but found that generic memory won't
work in that Compaq.  So, I need to buy a specific version for the
Compaq.  Arrgh!

An interesting comparison of experience and opinion in this thread.

- Nate >>

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