The Linux Platform is Getting Fat

[Nomad559]

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=7324

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Consider these memory requirements for Fedora Core 2, as specified by Red Hat: Minimum for graphical: 192MB and Recommended for graphical: 256MB Does that sound any alarm bells with you? 192MB minimum? I've been running Linux for five years (and am a huge supporter), and have plenty of experience with Windows, Mac OS X and others. And those numbers are shocking -- severely so. No other general-purpose OS in existence has such high requirements. Linux is getting very fat.

I appreciate that there are other distros; however, this is symptomatic of what's happening to Linux in general. The other mainstream desktop distros are equally demanding (even if not as much as Fedora, for example Arch Linux or Slackware run Gnome on 128 MB, but not very comfortably when you load 2-3 apps at the same time), desktops and apps are bloating beyond control, and it's starting to put Linux in a troublesome situation. Allow me to elaborate

Recently, a friend of mine expressed an interest in running Linux on his machine. Sick and tired of endless spyware and viruses, he wanted a way out -- so I gave him a copy of Mandrake 10.0 Official. A couple of days later, he got back to me with the sad news I was prepared for: it's just too slow. His box, an 600 MHz 128MB RAM system, ran Windows XP happily, but with Mandrake it was considerably slower. Not only did it take longer to boot up, it crawled when running several major apps (Mozilla, OpenOffice.org and Evolution on top of KDE) and suffered more desktop glitches and bugs.

Sigh. What could I do? I knew from my own experience that XP with Office and IE is snappier and lighter on memory than GNOME/KDE with OOo and Moz/Firefox, so I couldn't deny the problem. I couldn't tell him to switch to Fluxbox, Dillo and AbiWord, as those apps wouldn't provide him with what he needs. And I couldn't tell him to grudgingly install Slackware, Debian or Gentoo; they may run a bit faster, but they're not really suitable for newcomers.

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Giving Linux a Lead Role at Home

http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/34382.html

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It doesn't seem realistic to think Linux's free, open-source operating system will knock Microsoft Windows off its throne any time soon. Indisputably, though, Linux and the vast array of free software surrounding it have emerged as a viable desktop computing alternative -- for those willing to dig into the installation instructions and tackle the odd setup puzzle.

There was a time when switching to Linux, exclusively, exacted a heavy price. Programs written for Linux were buggy. The documentation often read as if it were written by someone from a parallel universe. Getting a Linux system running required endless hours of fiddling. When one did get a Linux system up and running, the thing paled compared to Microsoft Windows or the Apple Macintosh when it came to ease of use and the number of software programs available

Despite its improvements over the years, Linux remains, for now, mostly a geek's choice.

I expect this to change rapidly. A large cadre of software developers is devoting a lot of time and energy to getting Linux and free/open-source software ready for "Aunt Tillie," the hypothetical user who just wants to be able to click a mouse and have computing happen -- no muss, no fuss, no configuration.

[classics]

1. Linux has been bloating for some time now.

The penguin heads favorite attack on microsoft software was that it was all 'bloatware'. 'oooh look how big that exe file is!'

Havent been hearing that so much in the past few years. I think its a result of them clinging to X, which IMHO needs to be completely replaced with a new effort.

As for your friend you might consider introducing him to and older but perfectly usable distro, like RedHat 6. Just disable all the servers, update it to the last stable versions of all the applications and he might enjoy it.

[cprise]

3. That's not our favorite attack

We prefer to criticize Windows for its virus and spyware infestation.

The new distros are still faster than the older ones; you just need to make careful choices (desktop, etc.) on older hardware.

[Liberal Veteran]

2. And yet they still don't have a decent installer for various software...

...that is uniform and YOU CAN ACTUALLY FIND AFTER INSTALLING!!!!!

That's my biggest gripe about Linux.