Re: Brainless Debian Stable installation and usage?
On Sat, 8 Mar 2014 00:04:48 +1300
Chris Bannister <cbannister@slingshot.co.nz> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 07, 2014 at 08:47:27AM +0000, Joe wrote:
> > On Fri, 7 Mar 2014 01:28:11 -0500
> > "Steve Litt of Troubleshooters.Com" <littdom@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > >
> > > What followed XP was Vista, and who would do that to themselves.
> > > In my opinion (not that I'm an expert on Windows), Windows 7
> > > wasn't much better. And Windows 8 is a confusing mess. I wouldn't
> > > upgrade from XP either, unless it was to Linux or BSD.
> >
> > In the interests of balance, most people get their ideas about new
> > Windows versions from 'journalists'. Vista has its problems, the
> > main one being its insistence on running with zero free memory,
> > filling the machine with anything it thinks you might want to use,
> > and therefore being slow to open new documents. Windows 7 is
> > enormously better and quicker, Vista was effectively a beta Windows
> > 7, released before it was ready.
>
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Linux also use all available
> memory?
>
Not that I've noticed. *Most*, not all. Like XP, Win 7 etc.
In Vista, free memory shows precisely zero most of the time, that nice
round number, and if you already have an application open, creating a
blank document takes the same sort of time that opening the application
would. This was fixed in Win 7. I am currently running Win 7 on
hardware that came with Vista, which was used for a year or so, and the
difference in apparent speed for normal tasks is quite noticeable. Yes,
even allowing for the famous silting-up of Windows. Win 7 is slower
now, years later, but was never as bad as Vista after a year.
Ironic, when Vista actually loads applications in the background without
being asked, because you used them at this time of day for the last few
days, or after using another application that you *are* using, in an
attempt to achieve a one-off increase in speed if you do indeed decide
to use one of these applications. If you want a new document for one of
the applications you *are* using, Vista then has to recover the
necessary RAM, and closing an application even if it was never used
takes longer than just flagging a chunk of data as 'non-resident'.
Madness. Probably Win 7 and now 8 still do this, but rather more
intelligently and less aggressively.
--
Joe
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