[geeks] musings

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Sat, 19 May 2001, Bill Bradford wrote:

> On Sat, May 19, 2001 at 04:09:35PM -0500, Tugrul Galatali wrote:
> Software will expand to take up all available RAM and CPU processing
> power.  MP3s and net pron will expand to take up all available HD space.

What peeves me is that in the MS world, software expands without giving me
anything in return.  Solaris sorta seems to do the same.  I used to use a
Sun 4/330 and a powered up IPX.  The 4/330 had SunOS for compatibility
with a video card (or the framegrabber /video processing sort), and it
always felt worlds faster than the IPX.  Now, it also had more memory (72
megs versus 32), but it also had a number of telnet users at any given
time.

Linux has been fairly good in the respect to me.  New kernels don't seem
to leech more CPU than older ones did (I've been around since 1.2.13).
Userland is another matter.  GTK is decent.  Mozilla is a pig.  Gnome has
some piggish tendencies, but can be kept in check easily, and it seems to
be improving.  Gnome applications can be reall bad though.

Most video programs (like xine, xmps, etc) are especially hogs.  But, this
is justifiable considering their imaturity.

BTW, I think that one of the things that linux needs more is for more
people to use the profiling tools on popular applications.  Linux's
application space is really sloppy here, even when the programs aren't
terrible hogs.

That said, CPU cycles are getting cheaper.  But wouldn't you rather use
your newfound wealth of CPU cycles to do cool things like facial
recognition and perhaps run a "personal" digital assistant (think holo
Lily)?

--
Joshua Boyd