Re: Software bloat

On Wed, Dec 10, 2003 at 12:15:12PM +0100, Daniel C. von Asmuth wrote:
> OK, recently we tried to do some Linux on desktop promotion. We had rigged
> up some PCs (1000 MHz, 128 MB) with Fedora 1, KDE 3.1, Mozilla 1.5 or so, 

There's your problem:    ^^^^^^

The machine I'm using now is running Fedora Core 1 and has a P2 350MHz processor,
and approximately 220 MB RAM (according to cat /proc/meminfo).

When running typical applications (admittedly several at the same time)
it appears to be more disk-bound than CPU-bound. Excluding when it's compiling.

The importance of having enough memory is still overlooked by many. My estimate
would be that a 500 MHz machine with 512 MB RAM will have better responsiveness
and therefore a better "feel" to it than a 1 GHz machine with 128 MB RAM.

I once used an X terminal server with 128 MB RAM running KDE.
It took literally several minutes to unfreeze when several people logged on and
ran stuff. I am not exaggerating.

Total stupidity. They were aware of the problem, but they bought a "big name" box
from a supplier who not only mis-read their specs, but dragged their feet on providing
RAM upgrades. Several months after they had bought the box, they still didn't have
the RAM they originally asked (and, presumably, paid) for.

-- 
Robin

"it's FREE and we get the ability to modify the source code ourselves,
something that is extremely dangerous to do, was discredited decades ago..."
 - Howard Strauss writing in Syllabus magazine
  http://www.syllabus.com/article.asp?id=8460