I have been using Linux on the desktop at work and home for the past 18 months and I really like it. However, at times it is woefully slow to do anything.
==================================================================== Current work PC specification: Duron 1.3 256Mb RAM 512Mb swap space 30Gb 5400RPM IDE HDD with no slave device Red Hat 9 (Shrike) Workstation installation and all current updates 2.4.20-18.9 kernel Time comparisons are between the Red Hat box and another PC on my desk running Win2K with Celeron 900, 256K RAM and 5400RPM 30Gb HDD and no slave device. No performance tweaking of either OS has been performed. Typical usage has 4 or 5 windows open running Galeon, Gnome-terminal, Xchat, gFTP etc, and I have timed the following. Note: these are typically "cold-load" times and are not cached due to a recent load action. Starting OpenOffice Writer 1.02 on Shrike can sometimes take OVER A MINUTE, which is ridiculous. Word97 on Win2K takes around 5 seconds to start. Evolution (my chosen email client, running imap) on Shrike takes nearly 40 seconds to start and become usable, and often up to 15 seconds to close. I have not been able to compare to Outlook, but Evolution seems to cause serious havoc with Red Hat as it consumes a lot of resources and causes large slow-downs at times. I have a suspicion that the imap server/mail protocol may be at fault as POP does seem a little happier. Kmail 1.5 on Shrike takes around 50 seconds from start to becoming usable. Outlook Express 6 on Win2K takes about 6 seconds to become usable. Mozilla 1.2.1 on Shrike takes 23 seconds to start and become usable. Mozilla 1.3a on Win2K takes less than 10 seconds. This is a new startup and not using the preload of Mozilla under Windows. Mozilla Mail 1.21 on Shrike takes about 13 seconds. Mozilla Mail 1.3a on Win2K takes about 6 seconds. This is a new startup and not using the preload of Mozilla under Windows. Nautilus 2.2.1 on Shrike takes around 30 seconds to become usable. Windows Explorer on Win2K takes around 4 seconds to load and be usable. ==================================================================== The HD light is usually on hard as applications load, indicating heavy use of the swap file. These are fairly typical figures and you can see a clear and consistant speed difference between the two systems. At times, if I have a few extra windows open, Linux is just unusable as it swaps heavily to the hard disk. At these times, I often just go and get a coffee as it can sometimes take MINUTES to recover. Yes, it is a very stable OS and basically never actually "crashes" - at least not in the Windows sense. But I have found that applications like Evolution do crash and/or become unusable far too often, and this constant HD swapping is VERY wearisome, as I often have to wait until the system catches up with me before I can go on. By comparison, the other PC on my desk running Win2K doesn't suffer from these annoying lags AT ALL in my experience so far (~12 months). With the exception of Evolution, once these applications are cached the system does run a little better, but still not quite as well as Win2K with cached applications. Evolution with imap doesn't run "easily" any time from my experience. I have read of some application loading speed improvements in the Linux 2.6 kernel, so perhaps that may make a difference. It will need to, as I have been trying to get Linux into my workplace, but I know that the majority of the staff will be unhappy with the performance as it currently stands. My desktop experience extends from 7.2, 7.3, 8.0 and now 9. They have all been pretty standard Workstation installlations with no tweaking at all, and they have all been patched with the current updates, and they have all exhibited the same slow-speed problem. The above times are taken on my work PC. At home I have an XP2000/512Mb/Voodoo III 3500 and it is a little better, but still somewhat slower than my wife's Win98/256K/Duron 1300 PC. >From my viewpoint, Linux may be ready for the desktop from an application support/availability perspective, but it is certainly not ready from a speed perspective. The server is a much different story, and I have been installing it since 5.1. Without the overhead of a GUI, it is an EXCELLENT platform and why anyone would choose Windows over Linux on the server is a mystery to me. I would welcome any comments/advice/hints as I am really committed to Linux and Red Hat and *really* don't like Windows any more as it's so limiting. Regards, Brad -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
