Re: swap

[Douglas Allan Tutty <dtutty@porchlight.ca>]

On Tue, May 08, 2007 at 10:33:26AM -0400, Celejar wrote:
> On Tue, 8 May 2007 10:28:02 -0400
> Douglas Allan Tutty <dtutty@porchlight.ca> wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> 
> > In fact, it was poor browser performance (read inability to view some
> > sites) that was the drive to buy my new box.  For everything else, my
> > IBM 486 was more than adequate.  It annoyed me that I had to buy a new
> > box to do something as simple as look at a weather map or satelite photo
> > but onwards and upwards...
> 
> You're probably more technically adept than I, but even on my k6, lots
> of things other than web browsers are unpleasant. X startup is very
> slow, and aptitude is unbearable, for example. 
> 

Isn't it sad that aptitude wasn't written to be easier on old hardware?
I've written python apps that parse files bigger than aptitude does, I
just don't try to pull the whole file into memory to do it; I trust the
kernel and C libs to provide adequate buffering without impacting the
whole system.  

X started up in about 30 seconds; not a big deal if its solid and I only
have to do it once a day.  A huge deal if I have to do it every 20
minutes.  

My PII isn't much faster than my 486 thanks to 1) good design on IBM's
part [better IDE hardware caching for example] and 2) poorer design on
Asus's part for the PII.

Doug.