[ltp] two questions -- 600E / X / RAM

[Tino Keitel]

On Thu, Apr 18, 2002 at 08:33:04 -0400, Tod Harter wrote:
> I think even on the fastest machines KDE can sometimes seem a bit slow. Same 
> for Gnome. The fact is, despite all RMS and these guys protestations to the 
> contrary, commercial software vendors like MS have a huge advantage in 
> performance tuning their stuff.
> 
> For instance MS VC++ 6.x generates machine code that is between 130% and 200% 
> more efficient than GCC 2.9.x does. That means that even with code that is 
> identical in basic efficiency, Windows will be almost 2x as zippy on any 
> given hardware. Drivers are almost always better for windws as well, since 
> vendors actually care about it. 

Forget about almost always stable drivers in Windows :), BUT: Yeah, we really
need a good optimizing multi-pass C/C++ compiler for Linux-x86, but GCC is
focussed on multi-platform compatibility. I read that the recently released
Intel C++ compiler produces code that is 300% faster on the
average. Unfortunately, the shared libraries compiled with the Intel compiler
won't work with executables compiled with GCC. You must recompile your whole
C++ stuff to use it, which is hard since there are source code
incompatibilties between GCC and Intel C++. So you can only dream of a KDE
that is three times faster. :-)

> In addition OSS projects just don't focus on speed and efficiency. KDE 3.0 
> has a more optimized startup sequence for instance, and it gains like 200% in 

I'm not shure if the majority of closed source software is heavily optimized
for speed or efficiency. It just uses the provided optimized libraries, which
are compiled with optimizing compilers.

> speed on startup over 2.2.2, with just minor optimization. MS can spend a 
> billion $ on optimizing how their desktop starts up. Its a sad fact, but KDE 
> is a bit slow, and a bit unstable, and so is Gnome, and its not likely ever 
> to change.
> 
> If you want a good small window manager, try ICEWM. It is pretty darn memory 
> efficient and it has most features you will really need. 

Regards,
Tino

-- 
tino.keitel@innominate.com
dipl.-inf.                        Innominate Security Technologies AG
software engineer                                   networking people
tel: +49.30.6392-3308                      http://www.innominate.com/

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