Linux Is Not Ready For the Enterprise (Opinion) (TechWeb)

Posted Jun 21, 2003 22:49 UTC (Sat) by tjc (guest, #137)
In reply to: Linux Is Not Ready For the Enterprise (Opinion) (TechWeb) by wweber
Parent article: Linux Is Not Ready For the Enterprise (Opinion) (TechWeb)

I am familar with the problems you are describing, since one of my systems is a P2-300 with 128 Mb RAM. I used to be able to play Quake 2 on the internet with this system, but now it's not fast enough to redraw my desktop! But I keep it around, despite the fact that it's value has fallen from $3000 the day I bought it to less than $100 today. Every good programmer needs a slow system to remind them how to write good code; sort of a personal PDP-7.

I don't think the problem is with XFree86, since I can run a window manager like Blackbox and everything is fast. I haven't done any profiling, but I suspect the problem is with Gnome and KDE libs, and perhaps GTK+ and Qt. The GIMP has so much latency on this system that it's nearly unusable, and moving/resizing windows with Metacity is slide show. Konqueor takes ~40 seconds to start the first time! This is the same hardware that used to run Quake 2 over a 28k dial-up connection at ~24 fps. Hmmm...

Linux Is Not Ready For the Enterprise (Opinion) (TechWeb)

Posted Jun 23, 2003 14:57 UTC (Mon) by w-ber (guest, #12329) [Link]

Yes, these things do happen... The main reason is that as the source is free,
you can download any version of the program anytime you like. This has
nothing to do with how much of the features have been implemented or how good
it has been optimized. This rarely happens with closed-source programs,
because the company can release the binaries when they are ready, or
otherwise cool-looking. I'd expect GNOME and KDE developers to optimize for
performance after they have nearly all neat features implemented, and are
otherwise "ready" to release the "final" product (there's never a final
product :). Maybe, if enough end-users start complaining about it, the focus
will shift to make the windows move swiftly and without lag...

All of my computers could be considered nearly obsolete these days. The
fastest one is AMD K6-2/500, and several of them are 486's. They would be
obsolete if I tried to run any modern enough OS from Microsoft (anything
after Windows 2000, or Windows 95 on the 486's). With free software I can
extend their lifetime many years still to come. That's far more ecological
than having to buy a new computer every two or three years when you want to
upgrade your OS and then ditching the old computers. Besides, I love
installing the old computers hardware that would have cost heaps of money
years ago. (Now I get off-topic, but I have a 80486 DX4/100 with 64 MB ram
and 2x 2 GB SCSI-2 disks, and a 10/100 PCI network adapter. The parts
have cost me about 80 euros, the most expensive parts having been the SCSI
disks. In 1995 a computer that fast cost over 5000 euros (in modern
currency).)

Thanks to davidl for making some extremely good comments! It's difficult to
add anything new to them, but I'd like to point out that you can't buy
Microsoft products - you just buy the permit to use them.