On Mon, Dec 17, 2001 at 06:39:53PM +0000, dg@stanwater.fsnet.co.uk wrote:
On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 14:57:21 +0000, Dave Smith wrote:
This is probably because there are many possible reasons:
o Slow applications - apps like StarOffice are not known for their speed (but then neither is M$-Word
I was really thinking about Kword & Abiword, though the latter is quicker to load. I still use Word 95 in preference to Word 97
I've not really used any WPs under Linux for quite a while, so I can't comment on their speed. Also, these apps are still under heavy development; they're unlikely to be optimised for speed.
o Poor swap configuration - try running 'top' and 'free' to see what sort of memory utilisation you're getting.
Tried those, but I don't know what I should be looking for
Then post the results and ask people for comments :-)
o Badly performing video drivers - if the drivers don't make full use of the acceleration features of the card, the machine is bound to run slow. I don't know about NVidia, but most manufacturers will concentrate much more effort on improving video drivers for Windows than Linux.
Don't know about that. I am running it out of the box. NVidia is meant to be the most compliant card to use.
As someone else mentioned, it might be worthwhile getting hold of an updated driver directly from NV, since it may be better.
o Running too many programs/services - if you're running services for www, ftp, ssh, abc, xyz, etc... you're going to be slowing the machine down
Not as far as I know. It is just a basic KDE install + a firewall.
'ps aux' will show you all the processes running on your machine, and it will help you to work out if you're running something that isn't really helpful.
o Windowing environment - all the windowing environment layers take memory - running KDE, gnome, etc... all at the same time is going to tax the machine.
That is quite true, but the fact is that Win 98 is doing all that, so can't Linux at least match it
Not necessarily - Windows only has one windowing 'environment', whereas Linux can have many - KDE and Gnome being two examples that can run at the same time. This is one of the advantages of Linux, but also one of the disadvantages - sometimes choice can be a bad thing :-) Also, the windowing environment and window managers under Linux tend to have many more features than Windows - virtual desktops for one. KWM can be a real memory hog; I tend to use fvwm myself, since it is small and fast, and I don't need the masses of features that KWM provides.
This will almost certainly be down to X setup - perhaps you need to revisit SaX to get a better resolution.
Not really the resolution, but the formation of the characters. Bit like an old dot matrix printer
Hmm, I'm not really up on fonts, so I don't know what the problem is. Sorry.
I'd be interested if you could expand on this - why does it not 'suit your way of working'? This is a serious request; I'm not being antagonistic...
No, and I hope you don't think I am.
No, I don't; it's just that sometimes when you say 'please justify that comment' (or something similar in less strong words), some people jump down your throat - I'm just trying to avoid that... :-) [snip comments on WP functions - replies below]
True. Again, most of the commercial CAD developers (at the low end, anyway) develop for Windows exclusively, so you're unlikely to find a Linux port of your particular CAD program - the market simply isn't big enough at the moment. The only Windows machine I have is just used to run CAD and EDA tools.
Sure of course. I am just making the point that Linux cannot compete on all fronts.
No, I agree, and not many (clueful) people will claim that it can. You have to realise that Linux didn't exist before 1991 - Windows has many years' head start on Linux, and has a much larger user base (on the desktop, at least) to support commercial developers. It's only over the past 3-4 years that people have been seriously developing WP-type applications for Linux; compare something like Kword against something like Word for Windows 2, and you have a fairer comparison. Linux is, IMHO, still a techies' (or hackers') environment. Part of me would like it to stay that way, but that's another thread entirely. Tools like WPs are still evolving as features are added; the usual response to requests for features like ones you were mentioning above would be "get involved" - get onto the team running the relevant project, and program in the features yourself. However, I realise that this is not an option for many users nowadays. The problem is that the people who were working on Free software projects in the earlier days of Linux were generally doing it because they wanted to use the final product, rather than through any contractual obligation. They didn't tend to have much use for a point-and-click style WP, when tools like LaTeX were around. The sort of people who would want to use a WP are generally not Linux hackers... Nowadays, though, the situation is changing, but Linux still has a bit of catching up to do. For the particular features you suggested, how about getting in contact with the relevant teams, and suggesting that they add the features? In many cases, the reason that a feature hasn't been added is that either (a) no-one has thought of it, or (b) no-one realised that people would want it. Feedback on bugs, missing features, etc. can be just as useful as writing code.
I agree with you. If that was my usage I think I would use Linux much more, except for the speed issue.
Unfortunately, speed problems are difficult to solve, as they have many possible causes. I hope you manage to resolve yours.
Have fun, and hope you don't think this all a wind up
No, of course not. -- David Smith Tel: +44 (0)1454 462380 (direct) STMicroelectronics Fax: +44 (0)1454 617910 1000 Aztec West TINA (ST only): (065) 2380 Almondsbury Home: 01454 616963 BRISTOL Mobile: 07932 642724 BS32 4SQ Work Email: Dave.Smith@st.com Home Email: David.Smith@ds-electronics.co.uk