[rescue] Solaris on a PPC

[David Holland]

FWIW, I'd be inclined to agree as well

On Wed, 2003-02-05 at 20:58, Dave McGuire wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 5, 2003, at 07:54 PM, Frank Van Damme wrote:
> >>    Great...so while the rest of the computing world is moving forward
> >> (well, except for the possibility of Gnome and KDE) Microsoft is 
> >> moving
> >> *backward*.  Big surprise there.
> >
> > Heh... could you support your answer with proof? I mean about Gnome and
> > KDE... Being an opensource fanatic I can't let this one go :-p
> 
>    I'm an open source fanatic too...that has nothing to do with it.  
> Both Gnome and KDE are so UNBELIEVABLY slow and bloated that it's just 
> ridiculous.

Yup, certainly have to agree. (Sunblade 100 w/ 512MB of memory is my
reference point FYI)

FWIW, IMHO KDE is slightly better in the performance arena than Gnome
is. 

> 
>    For proof, compare the sit-down-and-use-it performance of ANY other 
> modern desktop platform (I said "modern", i.e. not Windows) with Gnome 
> or KDE.  I'm not even talking about minimalist stuff like X with 
> twm...Try, for example, X with CDE.
> 
>    Then, for added fun, try...just TRY...to compile Gnome from 
> distributed sources on anything but Linux on an x86.  If you don't give 
> up in frustration due to nonportable code and Linux/x86 assumptions, 
> just see how long it takes to build the huge fucking thing.  Then do a 
> "du" for added fun.

Neither is impossible to build on non-Linux/x86 platforms.  

I've built both KDE 3.1rc2, and Gnome (I forget which version -
1.something) at one point or another on Solaris 8/Sparc. 

Their "endianess" issues have gotten significantly better over the last
couple of years.  The only thing of significance they assume anymore is
GCC*.  (Never ever try building either with SunPRO)

They also have (um) slight stability issues on non Linux/x86 - but not
enough to make them un-usable. 

> 
>    There is no reason...ZERO...for this stuff to be this bloated.  It 
> has some great functionality, sure, but nowhere near enough to justify 
> hundreds of megabytes of disk space and a day-long compile.

You actually got it to compile in a day??!? On what? a 24 way 6800 w/
900Mhz processors? :-)   Took me most of a week by the time I got the
dependancies worked out. 

The only really USEFUL thing to come out of the whole lot is their
support for anti-aliased fonts.   (I've quickly gotten spoiled with
those on my RH8.0 system at home.)

I just wish Sun hadn't flucked up their implimentation of the necessary
extension (Xrender) in Sol9U2. :-? 

But I wonder why I spouted so much about a topic that isn't related to
the list.  Oh, yeah, its midnight and I should be in bed.  :-)

David

* - Not that I necessarily agree with this assumption, but as much as
I'd like to whack all the developers who can't figure out that "//" is
technically not a valid C comment delimiter w/ a hammer, I don't have
that much time left on the planet.

> 
>    This has nothing at all to do with Gnome or KDE being open source.
> 
>         -Dave
> 
> --
> Dave McGuire             "I've grown hair again, just
> St. Petersburg, FL           for the occasion."       -Doc Shipley
> _______________________________________________
> rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue