Overhead
Overhead
Posted May 21, 2005 16:44 UTC (Sat) by tjc (guest, #137)In reply to: Overhead by eru
Parent article: What the Linux Desktop Needs (OS Views)
Even today I feel that at some point the X11-based GUIs have taken a seriously wrong turn. The exes of single apps take up more space than, say, the entire version 2 of MS Windows, and run more slowly than it on hardware hundreds of times more powerful than what was available in 1980's.
Yes, I think you are right. There's very little work in progress on simpler alternatives, probably because there's very little motivation for such a thing. There's certainly no motivation on the part of commercial vendors.
Most larger free/open source software projects tend to get out of control after a while. I think about how nice KDE 1.x was, and how big and complicated 2.x/3.x became. Gnome tried to reign this in with version 2.x, but they somehow managed to eliminate a lot of features without reducing size or complexity.
Most small, simple applications tend to be written by single individuals, or small groups, but a lot of these are old and semi-maintained, or have bizarre user interfaces or other usability problems.
I think it's (past) time to embrace the "Third System Effect" in software design.