OVERVIEW
My newbie / Mac heads / Windoze losers tell me that 'Linux is
slow'. I tell them they are full of it. Then they show me.
Click on the Gnome foot icon (e.g., "Start" button). On a 233 MHz
box, it can take > 1 second for the menu to come up. On an AMD K6/2
450MHz, it can take .2-.4 seconds to come up, a noticable and distracting
delay. On a PIII 1 GHz, it can take .05 - .1 seconds to come up,
something that does NOT happen under Windows on the same box. Since this
is the most-used button, the entire desktop (and hence, 'Linux') seems
slow.
The cause? Gnome re-reads the menus from disk at every click.
WORKAROUND
Gnome Control Center -> Panel -> Menu -> "Keep menus in memory"
Since Red Hat set that to be the default setting, they have seen a
drastic decrease in the number of complaints about Gnome speed. Mandrake
should also make that the default.
[dereks@dev dereks]$ cat /etc/mandrake-release
Mandrake Linux release 8.1 (Vitamin) for i586
[dereks@dev dereks]$ rpm -q gnome-core gnome-libs
gnome-core-1.4.0.4-16mdk
gnome-libs-1.4.1.2-6mdk
--Derek
