Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?

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To: Debian-User <debian-user@lists.debian.org>
Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2003 14:49:12 -0400

On Mon, 2003-09-01 at 18:02, Neal Lippman wrote:
> I'm just wondering if anyone has any info on why X seems to need so much
> CPU power?

Nope, runs fine here and in production environments.

> Way back when, probably around 1996 or 1997, I first tried to install
> Linux. Back then, I tried distro's from Corel and Redhat. My system was
> a Pentium 133 with 48 (and then 96) MB Ram. This system ran both Win 95
> and Win NT 4.0 reasonably well, but when I made the switch and installed
> Linux, any sort of desktop - eg Gnome or KDE, not a vanilla WM) was just
> so slow as to be unusable. Eventually I gave up for a while and went
> back to WinNT for some time.

I started with RH5.2, Gnome and a P75 w/ 16M of ram. I didn't notice any
"real" ('Reality is relative...') performance difference between win95
and RH5.2 so I stuck with it. (Well at least until I was shown the light
of Debian's Potato :)

> For the past 3 years or so, my workstation has been exclusively Linux,
> first Mandrake on a PIII-800, and for the last year, I've been hooked on
> Debian on an Athlon XP 1700+, and on both of those systems performance
> has been just fine, so I didn't really think about the troubles I
> originally had, and when I did, I figured I must have done something
> wrong on my first install attempts on the Pentium system.

I ran a P3-800 and now run an Athalon XP 1700+ and things have only
gotten better.

> A few months ago, I decided to put debian on my old Laptop, an IBM
> Thinkpad 770ED (PII-266, 64MB Ram). Once again, with KDE running, the
> desktop was so slow and unresponsive as to be really unusable (except in
> an xterm window). This is a system that has run Win95, Win98, and WinNT
> just fine over the years.

I have personally never gotten KDE to run "nice" at any point in my
computing history. Gnome 2.2 on the other hand runs very nicely on my
Celeron 266 Toshiba w/ 64Mb ram (now upgraded to 196M and man it runs
snappy-fast).

> So, my question is: Why does X seem to need so much more CPU power than
> windows - such that systems I have tried to use that worked fine with
> various windows flavors just were unusable with KDE loaded? I assume the
> problem isn't in Linux itself, since my old Pentium 133 was just fine
> with X not running, and enough people have attested to the ability of
> systems with Pentium processors running Linux without X being able to
> handle massive firewall, router, web server duties, etc. Maybe the
> problem is KDE and not X - but I had similar trouble with Gnome, so it
> isn't just a KDE issue.

> I'm just curious and wonder if anyone has any thoughts.
>
> Thanks.
> nl

Here's a thought: Why does it seem that an orange takes more effort to
eat than a microwave dinner? The microwave dinner is so fast 'cause all
I do is throw it into the nuker, hit a preset and in no time my food's
ready, but that damnable orange just takes so much effort! And I know
it's not a problem with the orange peel 'cause I've tried different
types of oranges and it's still just as tiresome!

(Technically, the microwave dinner took more effort because someone had
to prefab the item first, then market it and sell it to the consumer.
The orange on the other hand didn't need manufacturing and instead only
needed harvesting etc.)

Now to complete the circle of dots...

Windows has it's GUI functions INSIDE the kernel itself, does not
partake in any extended functionality [that can rival XFree86]. Is very
much built for the primary purpose of looking good, and (possibly more
importantly), always looking (and feeling) as fast as possible. When you
want skin-deep responsiveness, _any_ version of windows is good enough.
Windows has baggage ("security" and "privacy" seem to me to be the top
issues amongst other things) that renders the benefits of speed useless
if not counter-productive ("...Look Ma! Outlook can send 6-Billion
emails per second with my new hardware and virii!...").

They have to look good, it's all they've got.

When you want a real solution; use the right tool for the right job. Use
GNU/Linux and all of it's feature-full baggage and do what I do; _Enjoy_
the [debatable] lag because it's FREE!

P.E.A.C.E.

-- 
Kevin C. Krinke <kckrinke@opendoorsoftware.com>
Open Door Software Inc.
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