Because Shiny Things Are Fun - The New New Windows v Linux Thread

Originally Posted by SigTerm if your distribution requires as much RAM/CPU as windows system, or even more (and that's without running AV/software/firewall), then it would be reasonable to conclude that quality of linux is identical or inferior to quality of windows software. If every iteration of a Linux distribution requires more RAM/better CPU, then how it is different from what Microsoft and other companies are doing?

But that's the fault of the bloated distros and desktop environments (which you can simply choose not to use), not Linux.

Originally Posted by SigTerm This is a joke, right? If Linux system requires 1GB of RAM, then it is really bad, and there is nothing to be proud of. If you had all windows 7 features with lower system requirements (say, system requirements of Windows 98), that would be another story, however if your distribution requires as much RAM/CPU as windows system, or even more (and that's without running AV/software/firewall), then it would be reasonable to conclude that quality of linux is identical or inferior to quality of windows software. If every iteration of a Linux distribution requires more RAM/better CPU, then how it is different from what Microsoft and other companies are doing?

Oh COME ON!

You know darn well that Linux doesn't require that! This just happens to be the computer I had...and Linux works fine on it. Win7 certainly would not.

I wish I still had my old WIN98 machine...Linux would work fine on that too.

The point is: Linux is backward compatible. Windows is the opposite- it requires newer and newer hardware. The very thing you're trying to accuse Linux of, is true of Windows.

Some of the distros are increasing their requirements as time goes by- but that is likely just to keep pace with the newer hardware which people are purchasing....and just about every distro is backward compatible and still doesn't require all the resources of Windows. Some of the distros which are more resource-inensive, are likely trying to compete with the Windows market or simply take advantage of the capabilities of newer hardware...but the point is, there are plenty of Linux distros that will work just fine with even ancient computers.

Lets face it, you need at least 2 gigs of RAM to run Vista at any semblance of performance and 4 gigs for WIN7. Many of the current Linux distros will work with 256 MB! What was the last Windows OS to work with 256MB? WIN98!

Seriously, why are you on a Linux forum peddling this nonsense?

Originally Posted by Sumguy Lets face it, you need at least 2 gigs of RAM to run Vista at any semblance of performance and 4 gigs for WIN7. Many of the current Linux distros will work with 256 MB! What was the last Windows OS to work with 256MB? WIN98!

Where did you get those numbers from? I agree that Vista runs better with at least 2GB, but Windows 7 doesn't need 4 GB to run, it works fine with 2 and runs on computers with only 1GB of RAM. Windows XP, while not blazingly fast, has no problems to run on 256MB, I have tried that. I also had no problems to run Windows 2000 with 128MB RAM, so Windows 98 was not the last version of Windows that runs with 256MB of RAM.

Many of the current distros are not made to run with 256MB, they will work but will swap often, that is the same what happens with XP on 256MB of RAM. Try to run a distro with KDE 4 (which in my eyes is the only DE that somewhat has the same features as Windows 7) on a system with less than 1G of RAM. Comparing Windows 7 with distributions that use XFCE or other lightweight environments with Windows 7 is like comparing apples and oranges.

Seriously, why are you on a Linux forum peddling this nonsense?

I would consider your misinformation about Windows resource usage more non-sense. Being a Linux user on a Linux forum doesn't mean you have to spread misinformation about Windows.

Another thing about memory usage: define "usage". Are we talking about caching, "actively" used memory for processes, or both? I'd say you can get any Linux to use way more memory than Windows if you're doing a lot of I/O intensive stuff (since the data often gets put in the disk cache to speed up access; unused memory is wasted memory, as they say). Of course, this all depends on the applications you're using and the tasks you're doing.

It's all relative…

Originally Posted by Sumguy Some of the distros are increasing their requirements as time goes by- but that is likely just to keep pace with the newer Lets face it, you need at least 2 gigs of RAM to run Vista at any semblance of performance and 4 gigs for WIN7. Many of the current Linux distros will work with 256 MB! What was the last Windows OS to work with 256MB? WIN98! Seriously, why are you on a Linux forum peddling this nonsense?

Man, I'm not surprised the way you keep posting all these things without even having a real life experience about most of them. I dare say that. You are one of the Linux fanboys I talk about.

Long before I mentioned that I had my first PC a P4 with 256MB RAM, ran Xp home for 3 years with ease if not blazing fast.
And it ran with Anti Virus, IE and other bloats but it worked. Have you even ever tried something like that? Seems not.
Where on this earth did you get to know about 4GB requirement of Win7? holy dung.
I'm sure you don't even have an idea about Win7 being a revamped Vista.
C'mon dude, get real.


@MTK358 : The end user doesn't care whose fault it is. The WM/DE is being shipped with Linux distro, if it fails to deliver what is required, it is a fail.

Originally Posted by MTK358 But that's the fault of the bloated distros and desktop environments (which you can simply choose not to use), not Linux.

That's an excuse, IMO. Desktop environment represents roughly half of user experience, so saying "it is desktop environment's fault" is not a good idea.

There are "some" linux "enthusiasts" that claim that Linux is always better/faster and less resource-hungry than windows. To live up to such promises, a distribution should be able to provide equivalent experience with lower resource requirements and better response time, no matter what DE user chooses. A "stripped down" DE frequently does not provide "equivalent experience".

(Subjective) Aside from desktops, ext3 filesystem gave me impression of being "less reliable" than NTFS. In my experience NTFS is pretty much indestructible - within 10 years I saw chkdsk being triggered just once of twice on NTFS filesystem. Ext3 had an annoying habit of triggering fsck on startup (you know - every X mounts/days, which takes quite a lot of time for large drives), plus if machine just happened to lose power for some reason, you'll see fsck check again. With NTFS system this doesn't happen.

Originally Posted by Sumguy You know darn well that Linux doesn't require that!

Does not match my experience. When Win98 was still around it was possible to configure redhat based distro so it would use only 70 megabytes of ram by switching to icewm. However, Win98 could easily use 50 megabytes when idle (without much of effort), and desktop experience was better than icewm. When WinXP was around, it was possible to fine-tune (optimize kernel for CPU) slackware 11 on 512 and get similar/superior desktop performance when compared to winxp machine, however slackware machine required more RAM, could not enable udma automatically (DMA didn't work properly if IDE cable had 40 wires instead of 80, which was not the case on windows machine. It took a lot of time to figure out a way to fix those problems), and performed horribly whenever system managed to hit the swap, while windows machine handled swapping nicely. Ubuntu was unusable on same hardware, and next slackware release on the same hardware became significantly more sluggish. I.e. according to my experience unless you want a server without desktop or unless you are willing to sacrifice some features, Linux distribution will have at least similar hardware requirements, because comparable DEs (Gnome/KDE) are resource-hungry.

Originally Posted by Sumguy Win7 certainly would not.

Have you tried?

Originally Posted by Sumguy The point is: Linux is backward compatible. Windows is the opposite- it requires newer and newer hardware. The very thing you're trying to accuse Linux of, is true of Windows.

In my experience, this is wrong, opposite is true. Windows is backwards-compatible, Linux generally is not. Older binary package most likely will not work on modern linux system, and if source code is available it might be impossible to recompile it and make it work at all (if there are external dependencies). On windows machine it is normally possible to launch/use old software, although it doesn't always work, and in truly extreme cases it would require reverse-engineering (which isn't different from hacking through the source code in "extreme case" on linux).

Originally Posted by Sumguy Some of the distros which are more resource-inensive, are likely trying to compete with the Windows market or simply take advantage of the capabilities of newer hardware...but the point is, there are plenty of Linux distros that will work just fine with even ancient computers.

You're saying that there are distributions that purposely waste hardware resources in order to make them more attractive. IMO, this is nonsense.

Originally Posted by Sumguy Lets face it, you need at least 2 gigs of RAM to run Vista at any semblance of performance and 4 gigs for WIN7.

Wrong. Minimum Win7 system requirements are 1GB of RAM.

Originally Posted by Sumguy What was the last Windows OS to work with 256MB?

The last OS to work on 256 MB was WinXP (it is still being used, although it will be obviously replaced with Win 7). Minimum requirements were 64 MB, it was usable on 128 MB.

Originally Posted by Sumguy Seriously, why are you on a Linux forum

I go where I please.

Originally Posted by MrCode Another thing about memory usage: define "usage".

Memory allocated by processes that cannot be freed until process terminates and can only be unloaded into swap. (Yes, I'm aware of linux disc caching habits)

Anyway, all this was posted many times before.

Originally Posted by SigTerm That's an excuse, IMO. Desktop environment represents roughly half of user experience, so saying "it is desktop environment's fault" is not a good idea. There are "some" linux "enthusiasts" that claim that Linux is always better/faster and less resource-hungry than windows. To live up to such promises, a distribution should be able to provide equivalent experience with lower resource requirements and better response time, no matter what DE user chooses. A "stripped down" DE frequently does not provide "equivalent experience".

The problem is that such a user experience requires a big, bloated desktop. But in Linux, at least, you're not forced to use it.

Originally Posted by Sumguy It doesn't matter if that fact fragments the potential customer base, because Linux is not selling anything. Linux exists so that those who learn of it and care to use it can have an alternative. It doesn't much matter whether two people use it or two billion. The more the various branches of Linux come together in pursuit of a common demographic, the less choice there will be; the more dumbed-down the OS will become and the more like Windows it will be....which will render it useless, because the whole point of it's existence is to provide an alternative to Windows and to give us the freedom to do what we want with our computers.

if the whole point

is to provide an alternative to Windows and to give us the freedom to do what we want with our computers.

then it certainly matters how many use it whether for sale of by free offer

It doesn't much matter whether two people use it or two billion.

but suppose that

an alternative to Windows

could mean many things, that alone i would think is mostly an individual thing,

guess i'm just not clear on the philosophy, goals and aims of linux,

my point about focus was that you get better results by working together rather than warring with each other

if

Linux exists so that those who learn of it and care to use it can have an alternative.

for that reason only, then there is no point in bringing win into the picture

Originally Posted by MTK358 The problem is that such a user experience requires a big, bloated desktop. But in Linux, at least, you're not forced to use it.

The problem is that such experience requires a big, bloated desktop on Linux. Explorer.exe (at least on WinXP) is fairly lightweight. (Kinda makes me wonder what the hell KDE is using that much for. Still, to get an answer, I'd have to dig through KDE sources for a month or two, and I'm not in the mood).

Originally Posted by SigTerm The problem is that such experience requires a big, bloated desktop on Linux.

Then just write a new one that's not big and bloated. It's still not technically Linux's fault.

Originally Posted by MTK358 Then just write a new one that's not big and bloated.

Who's going to fund development (host website, promote new DE and maintain it)?

Originally Posted by SigTerm Who's going to fund development (host website, promote new DE and maintain it)?

Probably would be done just like it is now. I would guess there are thousands of servers hosting Linux software. That would likely be just in the USA. I wouldn't even want to guess at it worldwide.

As with everything, start off small and work your way up. I would guess that most distros start off in very few heads as just a thought and conversation. Once things get started, it just grows. The better it is, the more it grows generally.

Originally Posted by dalek The better it is, the more it grows generally.

bingo and the more users

Originally Posted by MTK358 Then just write a new one that's not big and bloated.

If you're interesting in better DE, then you write it, improve it or fund it.

Originally Posted by MTK358 It's still not technically Linux's fault.

It still sounds like an excuse to me.

Originally Posted by dalek Probably would be done just like it is now. ...

Then I'm not interested. If there's no funding, then there's little reason to start new DE from scratch when comparable alternative exist on another platform.

Originally Posted by jonyo bingo and the more users

I wasn't talking about windoze. I was talking about a Linux desktop. Don't put words in my mouth that are not there.

The only reason windoze is where it is is because of the advertising, the fact that it comes on a computer with no user choice and a lack of education that alternatives exist. It's certainly not because it is better.