Re: [OT] Why does X need so much CPU power?
On Tuesday, September 02, 2003 12:02 AM CET, Neal Lippman wrote:
> So, my question is: Why does X seem to need so much more CPU power
> than windows - such that systems I have tried to use that worked fine
> with various windows flavors just were unusable with KDE loaded? I
> assume the problem isn't in Linux itself, since my old Pentium 133
> was just fine with X not running, and enough people have attested to
> the ability of systems with Pentium processors running Linux without
> X being able to handle massive firewall, router, web server duties,
> etc. Maybe the problem is KDE and not X - but I had similar trouble
> with Gnome, so it isn't just a KDE issue.
I'm not an expert on that but you might consider the 2 following points:
- X (graphic UIs in general) will take more CPU power (and so time) because
it's just more data to be processed. A window or a pixel image needs a lot
more processing than simple console outputs.
- It doesn't necessarily have to be plain X responsible for that. KDE and
Gnome are both quite advanced desktop environments. They really do a lot of
work in background, all those so-called shell extensions and so on. I'm sure
your slower PCs are faster with a WM like BlackBox or something similar
'simple'.
But why is Windows faster than KDE/Gnome? (Is it? I have no comparison on
that.) Hmm, maybe it's because Microsoft has a little more experience (not
only that XP one) in such things. I mean, they had a (simple) GUI for rather
inexperienced users before anyone would have thought to use Linux for that
task (right?). Who knows what's inside of the Windows source, maybe it's
full of assembler in its core?
But did you try a more recent Windows version of that computers? Maybe
KDE/Gnome had the latest state-of-the-art features some time before you
could find them in Windows (especially Win 95 and NT4 were rather - let's
say spartanic). I'm sure you'll get the same slowdowns with Win2000 or XP as
with KDE or Gnome.
--
Yves Goergen
nospam.list@unclassified.de
Please don't CC me (causes double mails)
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