Re: Software For Book Writing
On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 11:15:46AM -0500, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > I use neither windows nor UTF. I purged all the UTF stuff from my
> > debian boxes. I don't need it slowing things down. What's the point of
>
> Have you noticed or even measured a difference?
Yes. I could run Sarge on my 486 but Etch was too slow (even if the
bash prompt didn't hit swap). I asked on this list and a DD (I forget
which one) helped me track it down. Removing the UTF stuff and going
with LANG=C helped, but he pointed out that the binaries on Debian are
compiled against the appropriate library so they are always checking the
LANG so that they know what to output. All that checking slowed the box
down. At the time, OpenBSD was not UTF enabled and it ran much faster.
I haven't checked the latest (4.4) which is UTF enabled to see if it has
the same problem now.
As for measuring speed, it was dramatic. From the bash prompt, hit
enter to get a new prompt thus
$ <enter>
$
On Debian with UTF enabled (and the box otherwise idle), it would take
more than one second, without the UTF stuff installed it was about half
a second. OpenBSD was as instantaneous as any other faster box.
Doug.
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