Sorry about that. I even re-read before posting and missed the size. I have a 200mb swap on my test machine - not 20. The reason I am trying to learn Linux is to see if I want to risk my GURU reputation to recommend it at work and for my friends. I do NOT want to spend my life running around cobbling up other peoples systems. I want a distro I can recommend right out of the box - that will do what "average" folks do. (surfing, e-mail, word processing) I gave the example of surfing the web because it is such a common task. Other areas of perceived slow speed are slow boot-ups and time to spawn new X window apps. These are apples to apples kind of comparisons. Windows does a windowing system and I am using the tools installed by default. I expect my test distribution to work the same way. Having to cherry pick and tune apps does not cut it. OK, X-windows is a resource pig. What else am I going to do to run a GUI on Linux? (see comment on running out of the box above) I don't see a lot of difference using Gnome. I will not recommend FWM to newbies, even if faster. They will not feel that it is something better. I am not going to switch people over to a text based system, no mater how well it runs SAMBA or Apache. Despite the bashing and crashing - for a lot of the folks I support- windows does just install and work. The default apps and setting are pretty reasonable. Windows does a fair job of tying all the little bits together for a nice responsive system. Sure they cheat - they don't have to do a modular system - they don't have to. Does it really come down to admitting that windows is really better for Joe-six-pack consumer computers? I hope not. Mark Browne ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Spinti" <jspinti at dart.dartdist.com> To: <tclug-list at mn-linux.org> Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 8:15 AM Subject: RE: [TCLUG] Linux vrs Windows speed - What gives? > Try Opera under Linux. It flies and doesn't crash the machine the way IE > does. > > Also, your swap is too small (windows dynamically manages swap, so it is > probably using 60-100 MB of swap, try system monitor to see). > > If you want to run X on that slow a machine, try a smaller window manager, > like fwm, etc. KDE is designed for faster machines. I don't run it on a > machine slower than 200 MHz. Anything slower, I run Linux without X and use > it for a server. I had a 486-100 under samba as my PDC until 2 months ago, > it would out perform a PII-233 with 4 times the RAM under NT. > > Thanks, > > James Spinti > jspinti at dartdist.com > 952-368-3278 x396 > fax 952-368-3255 > > | > |-----Original Message----- > |From: Mark Browne [mailto:markbrowne at mn.mediaone.net] > |Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 10:37 PM > |To: tclug-list at mn-linux.org > |Subject: [TCLUG] Linux vrs Windows speed - What gives? > | > | > |I am still geting used to Mandrake 8.0. > |My concern is that with a dual boot system Windows seems faster than Linux > |in KDE. > |Example: Explorer opening a web page 3x faster compared to KDE or netscape > |on same system. > |Is there some sort of speed tuning I should do? > |I am testing Linux primarily with a 133 MHz P1 with 64 mb with > |20mb of swap. > |Don't tell me to get a faster box - I have one. > |WIndows 98 runs OK with this hardware. > | > |I have tried several other distributions with much the same results. > |I fear that the claims of Linux speed in relation to Windoze may be just > |hype. > | > |Mark Browne > > _______________________________________________ > tclug-list mailing list > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > https://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list