Re: [SLUG] Re: OT: picked up a screw around rig today

From: Chad Perrin (perrin@apotheon.com)
Date: Sun Dec 05 2004 - 18:43:19 EST


jeff wrote:
> On Sunday 05 December 2004 1:10, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
>
>
>>But how my offering a _specific_ GUI that runs will in 64MB on ~200MHz
>>by installing Fedora Core 2 a "billboard for advertising [my] favorite
>>distribution" any more than your offer of Debian?
>
>
> I used to have an old 486-50 with 32MB of RAM that was quite happy with
> FVWM95. It was not noticeably any slower than it was with Windows. IceWM is
> also very easy on resources. I have used that on a few P-90 64MB machines
> with no problems. Distro shouldn't matter, as how much stuff you are loading
> seems to be the main factor for performance.

Agreed. Linux is linux is linux, once it has been sufficiently
customized. The only real differences, in the final analysis, are:

1. installation process (and what licensing issues might arise
depending on what is installed)

2. package management

3. kernel modifications

4. tech support (whether community or corporate, in English or Chinese,
et cetera)

Some of this has an effect on how easily a given distribution can be
customized to meet a particular person's needs. This is my biggest
reason for personally favoring Debian: it is the easiest, so far, OS for
me to customize to suit my needs. It also seems to install using the
default installation methods with less need for RAM than many other
distributions, which is why I brought it up in the first place in this
discussion.

I wasn't calling Bryan's reference to Fedora in this thread into
question. My comment about advertising his favorite distro was in
reference to common behavior of his, not his behavior in this particular
thread, in case anyone (besides Bryan) is confused on this matter. I
don't want to be misrepresented and misunderstood in this.

on the subject of GUI environments (since it was brought up):

I use WindowMaker as my favored window manager, by the way. I like the
fact that it doesn't suffer the weighty bloat of Gnome and KDE, nor the
cluttered interface. In fact, it's a less-cluttered interface than
basically every other window manager that isn't on the level of FVWM in
its lack (in my opinion) of smooth functionality. I don't know how it
compares to IceWM, Blackbox, and XFCE in terms of resource usage and the
like, but I don't favor those window managers' interfaces enough to make
the switch at this time anyway.

WindowMaker runs far more smoothly than Windows, and feels far less
heavy than Gnome and KDE. There are some excellent graphical tools for
configuring it available. Its interface is pleasant to me. Your
mileage may vary.

--
Chad
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