[Computerbank] Re: [cai-sa] Teen Challenge -Network

[Peter Gossner]

On Mon, 31 Mar 2003 09:10:51 +1000
Daniel Stone <dstone at trinity.unimelb.edu.au> scribed:

> On Mon, Mar 31, 2003 at 07:51:10AM +0930, Romana Challans scrawled:
> > Peter Gossner wrote:
> > >Mandrake has some (to a Debianite at least) quirks in some configs
> > >that I best leave to Mandrake people to explain,( best to use
> > >DrakeConf or whatever the thing is called) ..
> > >Both the Installer and desktop (KDE 3) are really slow on low RAM
> > >(< 64meg) boxen , does cheap  partitioning and strange things with
> > >groups / root that I didn't have the time to really investigate on
> > >site. I am not sure why it ignores /etc/hostname either but
> > >functionally that seemed to make no difference. 
> > >It would be great for 128meg boxes. 
> > >To my mind performance is way too slow even at 64meg (It's a shame
> > >but KDE 3 / QT3 is  still doing its usual ram suck).
> 
> Well, only if you leave everything disabled. Klipper, the clipboard
> daemon (clipboard icon, sits in the system tray) is a huge hit that
> almost no end-user will use. Disable it. Take out the organizer icon
> next to you, and make sure the alarm daemon isn't started on startup
> (it's an option when you right-click it). Make sure /tmp/.ICE-unix is
> always owned by root. There are a few tricks like this you can do to
> squeeze that extra little bit of performance out. Using this method of
> disabling what I didn't need, I had a perfectly working and complete
> KDE install, usable on a P100 with 64mb of RAM. This was with KDE2,
> mind, which was before the great speedup that was KDE3.
> 
> > >As an "office/ MS replacement" it probably rocks and of course that
> > >call is one that the end users should make.
> > >I would feel comfortable offering the default Mandrake to our end
> > >users as long as they could see it next to a proper Unix and
> > >probably without any "desktop environment" or at least Gnome 2 as a
> > >somewhat faster alternative. I guess Mandrake will offer Gnome2
> > >with their next release.
> > > (and yes I know that can be confusing).
> 
> While GNOME has its place, it does not belong on the desktops of
> Windows end-user refugees.
That fantastic ... um why not ...?  Or have I heard all this before..

In my opinion both are valid choices though I come down on the side of
Gnome2 ..

This is totally my own and probably bent opinion but KDE not only sucks
it's positively evil, just a free version of windows.
If you like that sort of thing well great go for it .. thats your
problem. 
To indoctrinate clean minds with that idiom should be , and in my
opinion, is a crime against choice, intelligence and diversity. I like
to use my computer not see how much RAM I can afford / fit in  my ageing
mother board.

NOTE : I think they both suck .

Gnome 2 sucks somewhat less . 
It uses XML for most things has multiple paths for development  etc
etc... i18N.
At least it leaves your system alone, runs faster and gives you real
choices. 
It also has a future. If you learn Gnome you can learn any desktop.
.. Still RAM is cheap processor speeds are high, support bad code I
don't care, just make sure they learn to fish beyond going to the Mall.
To totally bend a metaphore)
Gee one day with DSL and I get all grumpy :)


> 
> -- 
> Daniel Stone                                    
> <dstone at trinity.unimelb.edu.au> Developer, Trinity College, University
> of Melbourne
> 


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