Apps on Linux are too bloated

G

gizo

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
May 20, 2001
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I've been on a linux experience drought for over 4 years. I decided a week ago to try linux again. So i chose fedora 2 core to be my distro. After the install, I was pleasantly surprised that all of my components except for wifi were installed with out my intervention. But I am majorly disappointed with applications on linux. 4 years ago, when I first tried red hat linux, the software running on it was fast. I remember x starting up in less then 2 seconds on a p2 450 mhz machine. Today, I tried using kde and it took 10 seconds to load up on my 3 ghz hyper threaded machine. How can this be??? These 10 seconds does not even include the time it takes to get to the fedora 2 core session log on screen after the kernel initialization.

I'm not a MS advocate by any means, but is linux really still MS's competitor? I just don't see how linux can challenge windows when linux is so sluggish. I really hope the linux community will work out some of the kinks out of their software so that it is more efficient at what it does.
 
I agree with you...Most of the "user-friendly" Linux distributions are almost unbelievably bloated nowadays. We're finally squashing out the last of our Red Hat 7.x machines at work, generally moving the users to FC2. Most of them dislike the change, citing "it runs slower on the same hardware" as their reason.

I'll stick with FreeBSD, WindowMaker and other things that tend to work fast.
 
IMHO, much of the blame can lay on the fact that the there is an attemtped shift (at least somewhat) to get your average end-user into the market.

But, it's also my belief that the user-friendly distros are behind much of it. I have few problems with my Gentoo distribution, and I'm running a bloated KDE. X loads relatively quick, KDE is a little slower. But beyond that, other than some minor tweaking I could do, it runs beautifully. Whether it's the hardware I'm running, the fact that I compiled it rather than using a binary, or a variety of other factors, it beats me.

Of course, I'm still a command line junkie, so I'm never truly happy when it comes to GUI's. :)
 
blackedge said:
Of course, I'm still a command line junkie, so I'm never truly happy when it comes to GUI's. :)
Click to expand...
Agreed...I still run Windows on my desktop and FreeBSD for everything else that really matters. :)
 
Well they really just seem bloated when compared to Windows with your user friendly distros. A full install of Windows gets you the OS, notepad, solitaire, IE and a lot of useless stuff. A full install of say Fedora or SuSE gets you the OS, and just about every app you really need for a general use. I do agree that it's starting to hog more CPU time and RAM than it should, but that seems to be more of the GUI's fault and not the OS, all the newbs seem to need that easy point and click & drag and drop interface they're famaliar with. I still think Linux "feels" faster than Windows on any similiar hardware setup though.
 
Really you need to provide more info to really say what is going on.
1. What app is so slow? Is it something you can just do command line anyway like using some sort of gui editor when vi or emacs work just as well.
2. What WM are you using and how much crap do you have running on it. KDE for instance will install several toolbar tools with kontact and such
3. Are you running all kinds of server daemons as well on your desktop machine? It seems much more often linux installs include, apache/mysql/postgres/dns/mail/firewall/more and more and more that a windows system will not be running.
4. Think about it, most of the "Desktop" linux distros come with 3 cds of software, Windows one...how much more stuff are you installing on your Linux install than on the Windows?
 
Can you blame windows for being slow. They have the greatest device driver support and app compatibility and always every one rags on MS windows as being crap.
 
I'm mainly saying linux is getting so much slower when logging into a desktop environment from boot. I did not say the applications are running slow. From reading everyone's post, I see that most of you are command line junkies. I used to be one, but gui's are way more efficient for what I need to do now. Just because some of us prefer gui does not mean we are neubs. A lot of us prefer to program in an ide, and not emacs because it's really slow in a development sense.
 
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