chrisv <chr...@nospam.invalid> writes: > Erik Funkenbusch wrote: > >> On Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:01:48 -0500, chrisv wrote: >> >>> Erik Funkenbusch wrote: >>> >>>>On Thu, 30 Apr 2009 08:36:13 -0500, JEDIDIAH wrote: >>>> >>>>> The beauty of a gratis LiveCD is that you can "try before you buy" >>>>> with no muss, no fuss and no risk. >>>> >>>>Except that a LiveCD will boot slowly, run slowly, and generally give a bad >>>>impression of the speed of Linux to anyone who doesn't understand the >>>>issues with a LiveCD. >>>> >>>>It's really a dual-edged sword. >>> >>> Yeah, sure, Fuddie. It's really rocket science to figure that out, >>> assuming that you haven't already read it. "Gee, it seems that my CD >>> has to spin-up before things happen!" >>> >>> "Gosh, maybe there's a speed compromise to running off a CDROM!?!?!" >> >> Seriously. 99% of the computer using population would not know that, would >> not make the connection, or would simply not care. "It's too slow, it >> sucks!" > > Seriously. You're full of it, and you're wrong, Fuddie. As usual, your > FUD does not fly.
I don't think he is wrong here. Even if you know the details, you can't tell what ratio of the slowness is attributable to inherent CDROM access, what ratio is attributable to bad paging algorithms acerbated by the CDROM (which would still have an impact when using hard disk), what is attributable to a suboptimal storage layout and what is pure OS creep. I am not exactly unversed with computers (having written my own bootstrap loaders and BIOSes and target compilers and whatnot). And still I was quite unsure what difference to expect when installing Knoppix on hard disk as compared to running from CD. And yes, the impression "sluggish and basically not useful" can come from a live CD. It is nice for a look of _what_ you can do, but it is hard to judge whether you would _want_ to do it in a reasonable workflow. -- David Kastrup _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list gnu-misc-discuss@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss