Re: FN-FORUM: 'best' linux distro for windows networks

date posted 13th January 2004 16:43

>
> On Tuesday 13 Jan 2004 4:17 pm, Liam Proven wrote:
>
> > On such old kit, forget about any mainline modern distro such as Red
> > Hat,
> > Fedora, Mandrake or SuSE.
>
> I've got Mandrake running on P2s, no probs. But I do choose a
> "lightweight" Window manager and make sure of plenty of RAM.

Oh, it'll run - I did say that it might be worth it if the machines' RAM
could be upgraded.

A lightweight WM kinda blows the direct-replacement-for-Windows
requirement out of the water, though, doesn't it? It's KDE or GNOME or
nothing, really. Fvwm95 is NOT going to cut the mustard and neither is
XPde.

> It's not like Windows, is it? Is the kernel slower than it was five
> years ago?

Well, *yes, it is,* inasmuch as it's MUCH bigger and has higher RAM
requirements and so on.

> Is X slower than it was five years ago?

No, not directly, but two things:
- firstly, XFree86 4 drops accelerated support for lots of older graphics
cards that were accelerated under XFree86 3.
- secondly, modern GUI themes use things like solid-dragging, alpha-
blending of icons and labels, stuff like that. That makes the GUI a LOT
slower and requires both a powerful CPU and a powerful graphics card.

So, in summary, *yes,* X *is* slower than it used to be.

Next questions? :¬)

--
Liam Proven • http://lproven.livejournal.com