rephrase: clicking the icon many times to open an app will make the GUI hang (what's the term for this?). This is the most common scenario of a first-touch user who is used to faster loading in Windows XP. Most students do not look at the hard disk indicators winking.
Linux makes everything utopian: We don't have to pay licenses anymore and I have the opportunity of sending more bug watches, plus I don't have to worry about viruses eating up one semester of a student's thesis that apparently disappeared from his diskette. =) On Mon, 05 Jul 2004 04:00:33 +0800, Andy Sy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I get to observe lots of boxes running Linux: mandrake, fedora. About > > 50 computers, all running new releases of mdk. I work as an SA in a > > inet cafe so the number 1 observation is the dead slow GUI. > > So it is your confirmed observation that a Mandrake desktop is really > more sluggish than an XP one (you can always console yourself with the > fact that at >P10K a pop, 50 licenses of XP is infinitely more expensive > than 50 FREE mandrake installs :-D )? I'm wondering if this is mainly due > to Mandrake's bloat or if it is due to Qt/Gtk being less efficient than > the Win32 widgets or worse, XFree 2D drivers being inferior to GDI > drivers... (which I would really hate to think is the case and I don't > believe to be so). > > I noticed on my PIII-400Mhz Slackware machine, WindowMaker itself is > very very responsive, but Mozilla 1.5 (or was it 1.6) is dog-slow. > > As Mozilla 1.6 performance under Windows XP is adequate on my Athlon > 2400XP, I really should be installing Slackware on the same machine > and comparing it there to be fair. > > > People who are used to fast XP boxes tend to hasten things and they > > get the so-called GUI hangs. Of course I teach the kill and explain > > that it's just the GUI. > > Woah... are you saying that the Mandrake desktop hangs on you if you > click on stuff too quickly?!? That is surprising and shocking. Fwiw, > I have never really remembered an X-Window desktop ever hanging on me > on any of the *nixes I've tried (mainly Slackware and Irix) and I'm one > impatient person... :-) > > It is so disappointing to hear of a *nix desktop regressing to the > quality of a Win 9x one. > > > Most people with their looks seem to ask: what's the difference > > anyway? XP looks smooth, KDE or GNOME looks so scattered, very > > disoriented (microcosm of the Linux desktop blueprint). Don't mention > > the fonts and the colors--they are so rough, most people don't like > > KDE (that's a fact). Personally, I hate galaxy. > > > So what's the difference anyway between the blue screens and the GUI > > hangs? > > When NT/2K/XP gets a blue screen, that is absolutely the end of your session, > you have to reboot (unlike 9x where you still get a chance to recover and > save). Like an X Window hang (which I honestly have never remembered > experiencing) you would completely lose access to what you were doing on > your desktop and are not even able to save. But one impt. difference is > with an X Window hang, you can kill X Window and restart it again much > quicker without needing to reboot. > > Even if the console hangs and you can't do the ctrl-backspace-backspace > thingy, the kernel is still alive and you can restart both the console > and X Window remotely without rebooting. (Something similar to this is > actually possible with Windoze, but Windoze's GUI being more tightly > coupled and not as modular, the success rate for GUI recovery without > rebooting is a lot lower than in Linux.) Now, I'm not sure how fast startx > operates in Mandrake, but in non-GUIfied distros like Debian and Slackware, > startx should be nearly instantaneous. > > Of course the thing is that Windows XP boots surprisingly fast if you don't > have much installed (I think I'm getting a tad less than 20 seconds on these > office machines!!) > > -- > reply-to: a n d y @ n e t f x p h . c o m > > -- > Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List > [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) > Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph > Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph > . > To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug > . > Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to > http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie > -- I eat freedom. http://premrara.com -- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
