Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Mon, 26 Dec 2005 3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:

> The fact is your user-friendly, point-and-click distribution
> (whether it comes from Bill Gates or Red Hat) eats resources.
> I'm now seeing reports on a Linux discussion group that a
> certain 2.6 kernel requires 32mb to boot.  That's just the
> kernel (not the filesystem).

Here's a point of reference for modern bloat.  One of my "new" machines 
has a 1.4 Ghz Celeron processor and 768MB RAM.  I run Debian unstable on 
it, with the 2.6.12 kernel.  It's true that I do some pretty heavy 
multi-tasking, and at any given time have something like 20-30 progs open, 
using 2 window managers (Gnome and ion3 for terminal progs).  When I do 
certain things on this system like burn a CD, install programs via apt or 
even just update apt, the system slows to an absolute crawl.  It really 
feels like I'm using an old 486: the cursor can't keep up with movements 
of the mouse, you can see the screen repaint when you switch tasks/WM's. 
The resources of a high-end machine (from a BL perspective) like this are 
pretty marginal for an up-to-date Linux.  I've been using Debian vanilla 
kernels for convenience sake, but I really think I'm going to have to 
custom compile one to see if I can get some better performance on this 
system.

James