Hey Tim, I think you missed my point, but I was probably not very clear. I was just trying to find out why *everything* I do on my Red Hat machine reminds me of those nightmares where you are being chased by something and your legs won't move.
My choice of applications was simply to give people an anecdotal feel for what I experienced. Perhaps I should have left my Windows 2000 computer out of the question. Looking solely at the Linux machine, it should not take 20+ seconds for a word processor or e-mail program to load! Something is wrong, seemingly. You might note that I included ethereal in the list of applications on both sides, and it took slightly longer to launch on my Linux box, despite running on a 140% faster processor. I was also pointing out that the out-of-box experience is important from the user's perspective, and that my Red Hat 9 installation failed this test. You're right, it is unscientific and unfair to match IE against Mozilla, Outlook against Evolution, MS Office against OpenOffice, but the existential fact is that I did it because, in this context, I am an average user. I chose programs that are closest, as far a I know, to the ones I know from the Windows world. These programs ran like dogs compared to similar programs on my Windows 2000 box, which was essentially running on three cylinders compared to my eight-cylinder Linux racer. Perception is important. Users are not scientific. The marketplace is not fair. :-) For the record, I have pro-Linux sentiments, but I have no axe to grind with regard to which OS is faster/better. >For a crash-course education in the intricacies of benchmarking, >go to any comp.lang.* newsgroup and mention data of any other >language performing "faster." Oh God, that takes me back. I remember the flame wars between Mac and PC enthusiasts in the late 80's as they strove to agree on fair and scientific benchmarks for their divergent platforms, the charts and graphs with which peppered eachother, the cries of foul play. Those were the days. Eventually everybody figured out that nobody knew what they were talking about, and thay all settled down to the only important question: does the computer make my programs feel snappy? Everybody on both sides answered, "the next chip improvement will do the job," and went home satisfied. _______________________________________________ RLUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.rlug.org/mailman/listinfo/rlug
