On Sunday 07 August 2005 08:32 pm, Andrew Baudouin wrote: > ... > I've tried running OpenOffice on twice to 3x the hardware you have > (Celeron 533 with 192 MB of RAM) and I consider it unusable. Your > definition of "unusable" and mine seem to be vastly different. > ... > Gimp takes about 30 seconds to even start on a 3Ghz Pentium 4. I can't > imagine how it would run on a PII-233. >...
Gimp starts in less than 5 seconds. Open Office takes longer, but it works. When someone sends me a power point or Word thingy, I can read it. > Noatun is a command line music player, incidentally. Fire up a modern > desktop environment(GNOME) and a modern video player (TOTEM) and let me > know how that runs. Noatun is a KDE applet. Once you start it, it lives as a button on the kicker which expands into a full GUI player interface, complete with playlist, shuffle volume control and all of that. It and the kicker both run as I said, without many skips, when using the Enlightenment window manager. Totem uses libxine and works well too, but I prefer Xine's simple front end with the "player" interface turned off. Noatun will also play movies and I put avi's of my 3 year old into my playlist for fun. > Just stick with "I hate Windows because it isn't free". That's the only > argument against that actually holds water. I'm sick of this LUG > mindlessly bashing Microsoft instead of promoting its own product. Freedom is important, but ease of use and economy are too and both hold water. I just told you how Linux runs better and does more on older hardware (the laptop is stamped 1999) than XP. I named several things that are difficult or impossible to do with the spiffiest of hardware using Windows. It's not hard to do and I help teach newbies how once a month. If you've got a better way to promote free software, I'd like to hear about it. > >... I can run Debian Sarge on a 133 MHz P1 with 24MB of RAM. > > Congratulations. ?You win the "I can, but why would I want to" award. > Hardly anyone uses 13 year old hardware. If you want to know what runs fast on nice hardware, just try making it work on older hardware. My point was to illustrate how well free software works with skimpy hardware. You used a 533MHz Celeron in much the same way to tell me that my lesser hardware could not possibly do what I said it does. I'm less convinced by the above mistakes than I am by my own eyes, so I'll imagine that there's something wrong with the setup on your Celeron before I conclude that my laptops have any special hardware or system settings that make them above average. While most people might not really want to run software on a P1 laptop, they might want to use a palmtop with similar or lesser specs or a laptop with better specs. GPE and Opie are very nice on palmtops. Doing more with less is a strength that works beyond the x86 world. Because I have a better laptop now, I consider the P1s toys. Before I got that laptop, I considered them tools and used them in ways that winblows won't. Most people who want a laptop but don't have much money would consider a PII with Sarge an excellent bargain. If they have the money for a nice new machine, Mepis is a much better choice than XP. >It's not a joke. ?An 850 Mhz Pentium III is 6-year old hardware. ?It >predated the actual Windows XP OS by 2 years. Are you trying to tell me that "just fine" is not really useful performance? I consider that very bloated.
