K
Kenny S
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=7324
Consider these memory requirements for Fedora Core 2, as specified by Red
Hat: Minimum for graphical: 192MB and Recommended for graphical: 256MB Does
that sound any alarm bells with you? 192MB minimum? I've been running Linux
for five years (and am a huge supporter), and have plenty of experience with
Windows, Mac OS X and others. And those numbers are shocking -- severely so.
No other general-purpose OS in existence has such high requirements. Linux
is getting very fat.
I appreciate that there are other distros; however, this is symptomatic of
what's happening to Linux in general. The other mainstream desktop distros
are equally demanding (even if not as much as Fedora, for example Arch Linux
or Slackware run Gnome on 128 MB, but not very comfortably when you load 2-3
apps at the same time), desktops and apps are bloating beyond control, and
it's starting to put Linux in a troublesome situation. Allow me to
elaborate.
A worrying tale
Recently, a friend of mine expressed an interest in running Linux on his
machine. Sick and tired of endless spyware and viruses, he wanted a way
out -- so I gave him a copy of Mandrake 10.0 Official. A couple of days
later, he got back to me with the sad news I was prepared for: it's just too
slow. His box, an 600 MHz 128MB RAM system, ran Windows XP happily, but with
Mandrake it was considerably slower. Not only did it take longer to boot up,
it crawled when running several major apps (Mozilla, OpenOffice.org and
Evolution on top of KDE) and suffered more desktop glitches and bugs.
Sigh. What could I do? I knew from my own experience that XP with Office and
IE is snappier and lighter on memory than GNOME/KDE with OOo and
Moz/Firefox, so I couldn't deny the problem. I couldn't tell him to switch
to Fluxbox, Dillo and AbiWord, as those apps wouldn't provide him with what
he needs. And I couldn't tell him to grudgingly install Slackware, Debian or
Gentoo; they may run a bit faster, but they're not really suitable for
newcomers.
Now, I'm not saying that modern desktop distros should work on a 286 with
1MB of RAM, or anything like that. I'm just being realistic -- they should
still run decently on hardware that's a mere three years old, like my
friend's machine. If he has to buy more RAM, upgrade his CPU or even buy a
whole new PC just to run desktop Linux adequately, how are we any better
than Microsoft?
Gone are the days when we could advocate Linux as a fast and light OS that
gives old machines a new boost. BeOS on an ancient box is still faster than
Linux on the latest kit. And to me, this is very sad. We need REAL reasons
to suggest Linux over Windows, and they're slowly being eroded -- bit by
bit. Linux used to be massively more stable than Windows, but XP was a great
improvement and meanwhile we have highly bug-ridden Mandrake and Fedora
releases. XP also shortened boot time considerably, whereas with Linux it's
just getting longer and longer and longer...
Computers getting faster?
At this rate, Linux could soon face major challenges by the upcoming
hobby/community OSes. There's Syllable, OpenBeOS, SkyOS, ReactOS and
MenuetOS -- all of which are orders of magnitude lighter and faster than
modern Linux distros, and make a fast machine actually feel FAST. Sure,
they're still in early stages of development, but they're already putting
emphasis on performance and elegant design. More speed means more
productivity.
To some people running 3 GHz 1G RAM boxes, this argument may not seem like
an issue at present; however, things will change. A 200 MHz box used to be
more than adequate for a spiffy Linux desktop, and now it's almost unusable
(unless you're willing to dump most apps and spend hours tweaking and
hacking). In those times, us Linux users were drooling over the prospect of
multi-GHz chips, expecting lightning-fast app startup and super-smooth
running. But no, instead, we're still waiting as the disk thrashes and
windows stutter to redraw and boot times grow.
So when people talk about 10 GHz CPUs with so much hope and optimism, I
cringe. We WON'T have the lightning-fast apps. We won't have near-instant
startup. We thought this would happen when chips hit 100 MHz, and 500 MHz,
and 1 GHz, and 3 GHz, and Linux is just bloating itself out to fill it. You
see, computers aren't getting any faster. CPUs, hard drives and RAM may be
improving, but the machines themselves are pretty much static. Why should a
1 GHz box with Fedora be so much slower than a 7 MHz Amiga? Sure, the PC
does more - a lot more - but not over 1000 times more (taking into account
RAM and HD power too). It doesn't make you 1000 times more productive.
It's a very sad state of affairs. Linux was supposed to be the liberating
OS, disruptive technology that would change the playing field for computing.
It was supposed to breathe new life into PCs and give third-world countries
new opportunities. It was supposed to avoid the Microsoftian upgrade
treadmill; instead, it's rushing after Moore's Law. Such a shame.
Denying ourselves a chance
But let's think about some of the real-world implications of Linux's bloat.
Around the world in thousands of companies are millions upon millions of
Win98 and WinNT4 systems. These boxes are being prepared for retirement as
Microsoft ends the lifespan for the OSes, and this should be a wonderful
opportunity for Linux. Imagine if Linux vendors and advocates could go into
businesses and say: "Don't throw out those Win98 and NT4 boxes, and don't
spend vast amounts of money on Win2k/XP. Put Linux on instead and save time
and money!".
But that opportunity has been destroyed. The average Win98 and NT4 box has
32 or 64M of RAM and CPUs in the range of 300 - 500 MHz -- in other words,
entirely unsuitable for modern desktop Linux distros. This gigantic market,
so full of potential to spread Linux adoption and curb the Microsoft
monopoly, has been eliminated by the massive bloat.
This should really get people thinking. A huge market we can't enter.
The possibility of stressing Linux's price benefits, stability and security,
all gone. Instead, businesses are now forced to buy new boxes if they are
even considering Linux, and if you're splashing out that much you may as
well stick with what you know OS-wise. Companies would LOVE to maintain
their current hardware investment with a secure, supported OS, but that
possibility has been ruined.
Impractical solutions
Now, at this point many of you will be saying "but there are alternatives".
And yes, you're right to say that, and yes, there are. But two difficulties
remain: firstly, why should we have to hack init scripts, change WMs to
something minimal, and throw out our most featureful apps? Why should
newcomers have to go through this trouble just to get an OS that gives them
some real performance boost over Windows?
Sure, you can just about get by with IceWM, Dillo, AbiWord, Sylpheed et al.
But let's face it, they don't rival Windows software in the same way as
GNOME/KDE, Moz/Konq, OpenOffice.org and Evolution. It's hard to get
newcomers using Linux with those limited and basic tools; new Linux
convertees need the powerful software that matches up to Windows. Linux
novices will get the idea that serious apps which rival Windows software are
far too bloated to use effectively.
Secondly, why should users have to install Slackware, Debian or Gentoo just
to get adequate speed? Those distros are primarily targeted at experienced
users -- the kind of people who know how to tweak for performance anyway.
The distros geared towards newcomers don't pay any attention to speed, and
it's giving a lot of people a very bad impression. Spend an hour or two
browsing first-timer Linux forums on the Net; you'll be dismayed by the
number of posts asking why it takes so long to boot, why it's slower to run,
why it's always swapping. Especially when they've been told that Linux is
better than Windows.
So telling newcomers to ditch their powerful apps, move to spartan desktops,
install tougher distros and hack startup scripts isn't the cure. In fact, it
proves just how bad the problem is getting.
Conclusion
So what can be done? We need to put a serious emphasis on elegant design,
careful coding and making the most of RAM, not throwing in hurried features
just because we can. Open source coders need to appreciate that not everyone
has 3 GHz boxes with 1G RAM -- and that the few who do want to get their
money's worth from their hardware investment. Typically, open source
hackers, being interested in tech, have very powerful boxes; as a result,
they never experience their apps running on moderate systems.
This has been particularly noticeable in GNOME development. On my box,
extracting a long tar file under GNOME-Terminal is a disaster -- and
reaffirms the problem. When extracting, GNOME-Terminal uses around 70% of
the CPU just to draw the text, leaving only 30% for the extraction itself.
That's pitifully poor. Metacity is hellishly slow over networked X, and,
curiously, these two offending apps were both written by the same guy (Havoc
Pennington). He may have talent in writing a lot of code quickly, but it's
not good code. We need programmers who appreciate performance, elegant
design and low overheads.
We need to understand that there are millions and millions of PCs out there
which could (and should) be running Linux, but can't because of the obscene
memory requirements. We need to admit that many home users are being turned
away because it offers no peformance boost over XP and its apps, and in most
cases it's even worse.
We're digging a big hole here -- a hole from which there may be no easy
escape. Linux needs as many tangible benefits over Windows as possible, and
we're losing them.
Losing performance, losing stability, losing things to advocate.
I look forward to reading your comments.
About the author
Bob Marr is a sysadmin and tech writer, and has used Linux for five years.
Currently, his favorite distribution is Arch Linux.
--
Hope this helps. Let us know.
_____________
Kenny S
www.computerboom.net
FREE programs and MORE!
Consider these memory requirements for Fedora Core 2, as specified by Red
Hat: Minimum for graphical: 192MB and Recommended for graphical: 256MB Does
that sound any alarm bells with you? 192MB minimum? I've been running Linux
for five years (and am a huge supporter), and have plenty of experience with
Windows, Mac OS X and others. And those numbers are shocking -- severely so.
No other general-purpose OS in existence has such high requirements. Linux
is getting very fat.
I appreciate that there are other distros; however, this is symptomatic of
what's happening to Linux in general. The other mainstream desktop distros
are equally demanding (even if not as much as Fedora, for example Arch Linux
or Slackware run Gnome on 128 MB, but not very comfortably when you load 2-3
apps at the same time), desktops and apps are bloating beyond control, and
it's starting to put Linux in a troublesome situation. Allow me to
elaborate.
A worrying tale
Recently, a friend of mine expressed an interest in running Linux on his
machine. Sick and tired of endless spyware and viruses, he wanted a way
out -- so I gave him a copy of Mandrake 10.0 Official. A couple of days
later, he got back to me with the sad news I was prepared for: it's just too
slow. His box, an 600 MHz 128MB RAM system, ran Windows XP happily, but with
Mandrake it was considerably slower. Not only did it take longer to boot up,
it crawled when running several major apps (Mozilla, OpenOffice.org and
Evolution on top of KDE) and suffered more desktop glitches and bugs.
Sigh. What could I do? I knew from my own experience that XP with Office and
IE is snappier and lighter on memory than GNOME/KDE with OOo and
Moz/Firefox, so I couldn't deny the problem. I couldn't tell him to switch
to Fluxbox, Dillo and AbiWord, as those apps wouldn't provide him with what
he needs. And I couldn't tell him to grudgingly install Slackware, Debian or
Gentoo; they may run a bit faster, but they're not really suitable for
newcomers.
Now, I'm not saying that modern desktop distros should work on a 286 with
1MB of RAM, or anything like that. I'm just being realistic -- they should
still run decently on hardware that's a mere three years old, like my
friend's machine. If he has to buy more RAM, upgrade his CPU or even buy a
whole new PC just to run desktop Linux adequately, how are we any better
than Microsoft?
Gone are the days when we could advocate Linux as a fast and light OS that
gives old machines a new boost. BeOS on an ancient box is still faster than
Linux on the latest kit. And to me, this is very sad. We need REAL reasons
to suggest Linux over Windows, and they're slowly being eroded -- bit by
bit. Linux used to be massively more stable than Windows, but XP was a great
improvement and meanwhile we have highly bug-ridden Mandrake and Fedora
releases. XP also shortened boot time considerably, whereas with Linux it's
just getting longer and longer and longer...
Computers getting faster?
At this rate, Linux could soon face major challenges by the upcoming
hobby/community OSes. There's Syllable, OpenBeOS, SkyOS, ReactOS and
MenuetOS -- all of which are orders of magnitude lighter and faster than
modern Linux distros, and make a fast machine actually feel FAST. Sure,
they're still in early stages of development, but they're already putting
emphasis on performance and elegant design. More speed means more
productivity.
To some people running 3 GHz 1G RAM boxes, this argument may not seem like
an issue at present; however, things will change. A 200 MHz box used to be
more than adequate for a spiffy Linux desktop, and now it's almost unusable
(unless you're willing to dump most apps and spend hours tweaking and
hacking). In those times, us Linux users were drooling over the prospect of
multi-GHz chips, expecting lightning-fast app startup and super-smooth
running. But no, instead, we're still waiting as the disk thrashes and
windows stutter to redraw and boot times grow.
So when people talk about 10 GHz CPUs with so much hope and optimism, I
cringe. We WON'T have the lightning-fast apps. We won't have near-instant
startup. We thought this would happen when chips hit 100 MHz, and 500 MHz,
and 1 GHz, and 3 GHz, and Linux is just bloating itself out to fill it. You
see, computers aren't getting any faster. CPUs, hard drives and RAM may be
improving, but the machines themselves are pretty much static. Why should a
1 GHz box with Fedora be so much slower than a 7 MHz Amiga? Sure, the PC
does more - a lot more - but not over 1000 times more (taking into account
RAM and HD power too). It doesn't make you 1000 times more productive.
It's a very sad state of affairs. Linux was supposed to be the liberating
OS, disruptive technology that would change the playing field for computing.
It was supposed to breathe new life into PCs and give third-world countries
new opportunities. It was supposed to avoid the Microsoftian upgrade
treadmill; instead, it's rushing after Moore's Law. Such a shame.
Denying ourselves a chance
But let's think about some of the real-world implications of Linux's bloat.
Around the world in thousands of companies are millions upon millions of
Win98 and WinNT4 systems. These boxes are being prepared for retirement as
Microsoft ends the lifespan for the OSes, and this should be a wonderful
opportunity for Linux. Imagine if Linux vendors and advocates could go into
businesses and say: "Don't throw out those Win98 and NT4 boxes, and don't
spend vast amounts of money on Win2k/XP. Put Linux on instead and save time
and money!".
But that opportunity has been destroyed. The average Win98 and NT4 box has
32 or 64M of RAM and CPUs in the range of 300 - 500 MHz -- in other words,
entirely unsuitable for modern desktop Linux distros. This gigantic market,
so full of potential to spread Linux adoption and curb the Microsoft
monopoly, has been eliminated by the massive bloat.
This should really get people thinking. A huge market we can't enter.
The possibility of stressing Linux's price benefits, stability and security,
all gone. Instead, businesses are now forced to buy new boxes if they are
even considering Linux, and if you're splashing out that much you may as
well stick with what you know OS-wise. Companies would LOVE to maintain
their current hardware investment with a secure, supported OS, but that
possibility has been ruined.
Impractical solutions
Now, at this point many of you will be saying "but there are alternatives".
And yes, you're right to say that, and yes, there are. But two difficulties
remain: firstly, why should we have to hack init scripts, change WMs to
something minimal, and throw out our most featureful apps? Why should
newcomers have to go through this trouble just to get an OS that gives them
some real performance boost over Windows?
Sure, you can just about get by with IceWM, Dillo, AbiWord, Sylpheed et al.
But let's face it, they don't rival Windows software in the same way as
GNOME/KDE, Moz/Konq, OpenOffice.org and Evolution. It's hard to get
newcomers using Linux with those limited and basic tools; new Linux
convertees need the powerful software that matches up to Windows. Linux
novices will get the idea that serious apps which rival Windows software are
far too bloated to use effectively.
Secondly, why should users have to install Slackware, Debian or Gentoo just
to get adequate speed? Those distros are primarily targeted at experienced
users -- the kind of people who know how to tweak for performance anyway.
The distros geared towards newcomers don't pay any attention to speed, and
it's giving a lot of people a very bad impression. Spend an hour or two
browsing first-timer Linux forums on the Net; you'll be dismayed by the
number of posts asking why it takes so long to boot, why it's slower to run,
why it's always swapping. Especially when they've been told that Linux is
better than Windows.
So telling newcomers to ditch their powerful apps, move to spartan desktops,
install tougher distros and hack startup scripts isn't the cure. In fact, it
proves just how bad the problem is getting.
Conclusion
So what can be done? We need to put a serious emphasis on elegant design,
careful coding and making the most of RAM, not throwing in hurried features
just because we can. Open source coders need to appreciate that not everyone
has 3 GHz boxes with 1G RAM -- and that the few who do want to get their
money's worth from their hardware investment. Typically, open source
hackers, being interested in tech, have very powerful boxes; as a result,
they never experience their apps running on moderate systems.
This has been particularly noticeable in GNOME development. On my box,
extracting a long tar file under GNOME-Terminal is a disaster -- and
reaffirms the problem. When extracting, GNOME-Terminal uses around 70% of
the CPU just to draw the text, leaving only 30% for the extraction itself.
That's pitifully poor. Metacity is hellishly slow over networked X, and,
curiously, these two offending apps were both written by the same guy (Havoc
Pennington). He may have talent in writing a lot of code quickly, but it's
not good code. We need programmers who appreciate performance, elegant
design and low overheads.
We need to understand that there are millions and millions of PCs out there
which could (and should) be running Linux, but can't because of the obscene
memory requirements. We need to admit that many home users are being turned
away because it offers no peformance boost over XP and its apps, and in most
cases it's even worse.
We're digging a big hole here -- a hole from which there may be no easy
escape. Linux needs as many tangible benefits over Windows as possible, and
we're losing them.
Losing performance, losing stability, losing things to advocate.
I look forward to reading your comments.
About the author
Bob Marr is a sysadmin and tech writer, and has used Linux for five years.
Currently, his favorite distribution is Arch Linux.
--
Hope this helps. Let us know.
_____________
Kenny S
www.computerboom.net
FREE programs and MORE!
