PC WORLD: XP vs Mac vs Linux

PC World New Zealand compares WinXP, MacOS X, and Linux/KDE2 and concludes that Linux/KDE2
offers the best usability, tieing XP in features/support. XP does win overall, but we should be proud that our little free operating system/environment built out of passion and dedication has come so far in so short a time.

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Comments

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

perhaps Qt is compiled with g++ exceptions and KDE is compiled with debug info. just a gues, but i find those two things alone can slow down KDE noticeably.

by not me (not verified)

Hm. Here, KMail takes 2.5-3 secs to load, and that's after it has already been started two or three times and all loaded into memory. Konq takes 3-4 secs also, very noticable. Most other apps take less time, typically .5-2 secs. Maybe the KDE developers should start looking at why some people have wildly varying start times, on comparable machines even with the same distro.

by Peter Simonsson (not verified)

At least Mandrake have KDE with debug compiled in.
And on my 8.1 the XFree version is 4.1.0.

by Danny (not verified)

At least for mandrake, your info was horribly incorrect:
it's X 4.1.0
it is _not_ objprelinked unless you use texstars rpms (and at least
some of the older ones were not objprelinked although it was claimed they were).
Also, compiler and kernel differences can play a role.

As for kmail: I think it is the size of the mailbox that matters a lot and accounts for variability.

Danny

by Joeri Sebrechts (not verified)

The kmail in kde 2.1 was too slow to handle my mailboxes with only a couple hundred messages in them. Contrast that with netscape 4.x on windows which was able to parse the exact same mailboxes immediately after the first time, because it made indexes, which kmail obviously doesn't do.

by Yama (not verified)

Sorry if the following sounds lke a troll - it really isn't.

Kmail is a total dog. I was a loyal Kmail user from KDE1 up to KDE 2.2. From that point, I became fed up with its slow speed and large memory usage. How can a simple mailer take up 30MB of memory? Since then, I have switched to Sylpheed (Claws edition), which is lightning-quick and only takes up 10MB of RAM.

by not me (not verified)

You have been misled about the memory usage of KMail.

First off, whoever compiled your KDE made some mistakes or something (left debugging info in?). On my system, top reports a value of ~15 MB for "size" for KMail. This doesn't tell the whole story, though. Much of that memory is not actually part of KMail. It includes all of the KDE shared libraries, which are shared among all KDE programs as their name implies. If you are running any other KDE program, these libraries are already in memory and don't contribute to KMail's memory usage in reality. top reports that KMail is using 11 MB of shared memory, which means that KMail's actual memory usage is 15-11 = 4 MB. That's much better, don't you think?

The numbers I get from KPM agree with top. KSysguard, on the other hand, reports totally different, wacko numbers. Maybe that's why you thought KMail was using 30 MB of RAM. Here's how to find out how much memory a KDE program is really using:

Run KPM or top, not KSysGuard.
Subtract the "share" column from the "size" column.

As for slow speed, see the other comments here about that. Debian sid seems to be the fastest. On my system, KMail takes almost exactly the same amount of time to start as Konqueror. It doesn't seem to depend on how many messages I have either. Kmail quite easily handles 2000+ messages in a folder with no noticable slowdown.

by kidcat (not verified)

I use Madrake 8.0.... on a Dual Celly 400@500 and 512MB RAM...

And if I could get *just konsole* up in less then 5-6secs i would give my left foot (otherwise no typing ;-). Kword is so slow to launch that I have forgotten what I wanted to write.... grip is there in a WIZZ (gnome app - uagh!)

I am frustrated by this. So frustrated that when KDE 3.0, g++ 3.0 and the new linker is out I am going to try giving a handbuild LFS a shot (Linux From Scratch... www.lfs.org). If this doesn't work I'll ask my doctor for a huge glass of Valium!!! ;-)

/kidcat
--
hardtoreadbecauseitissolong

by maznio (not verified)

I`m using KDE 2.2.1 on a LFS system /3.0/ and so far I can say it`s much faster than it was on my old system Mandrake 8.1 ... You really should try it, you`ll be surprised ;)) There is a komplete hint how to kompile KDE 2.2.1 with objprelink...

by ik (not verified)

it could be mandrake and redhat have a 'fuller' kde install: more .desktop and rc files to parse -> slower. i don't know if this should effect speed, but i think it does.
i wonder if there is a speed difference when you do rm -rf .kde ...

by Rex Dieter (not verified)

> Redhat 7.1 (max 5 sec to load, min 3 sec to load)
> All are supposed to be compiled with object pre-linking.

I don't know about the others, but regarding redhat, I can tell you that their KDE rpms do NOT use pre-linking. I rebuilt them WITH prelinking, and achieved much better load times. YMMV.

by A Sad Person (not verified)

Neither do Mandrake's.
(8.2 ones likely will).

by Debian User (not verified)

Is there any documentation on why Red Hat and Mandrakesoft didn't use the object pre-linking patch? I thought it would make sense to make their distros as fast as possible.

What's the status of other distros?

by Peter Simonsson (not verified)

There have been mysterious crashes when using pre-link.

by A Sad Person (not verified)

For Mandrake, there have been some discussions on the Cooker list..
But basically, I belive they were simply worried about not having adequate
time to test it..

by Alain (not verified)

> k6 2- 500, 128MB Ram
> Debian Sid (Fast - max 1 sec to load)
> Redhat 7.1 (max 5 sec to load, min 3 sec to load)
> Mandrake 8.1 (Slow max 30 sec to load, min 5 sec to load)

With Mandrake 8.1, I changed from AMD k6 500 (416Mb Ram) to AMD Duron 850 (always 416 Mb Ram) and there was a great difference. Konqueror was 7 x quicker for opening a big Html page... 36 s --> 5 s ! (I also changed the mother board)

by David Johnson (not verified)

Your factors to consider and debug code, stripped binaries, exception handling, code optimization and machine configuration. The first three all contribute to executable size, and the difference between loading 300K and 3Megs is very noticable. Code optimization can speed things up considerably, but not much in the way of load time. Finally your machine configuration makes huge difference. ext2 vs ext3 vs reiserfs and ata33 vs ata100 all affect the time it takes to transfer the binary from harddisk to memory.

I don't think any of these have object pre-linking. IMHO, just wait until g++ gets the linking crap fixed and don't bother with hacks.

by Stefan Heimers (not verified)

Did you install all Systems in parallel in different partitions, or all sequentially in the same partitions?

If the first is true, which system was on which partition number / disk?

Stefan

by not me (not verified)

This guy's decisions seem pretty arbitrary. He doesn't like Linux installs because they lack "slickness," whatever that means. He prefers the KDE look but that's just personal opinion. He bashes the Mac's usability, saying it feels "awkward" and "like a throwback to the single-tasking 1980s," just because he isn't used to it. He hates the new XP Start menu without telling us why (personally, I think its an improvement). He doesn't even attempt to get equivelant systems to test the speed of the OSs. I think he's just spouting his pre-formed opinions.

by Alain (not verified)

Of course, such a comparison may only be subjective, so arbitrary. Not wholly, but in good part.

The first interest is the existence of this comparison. It is rare. Why ?

I think that it is done honestly, exposing clearly the reasons of the choice. The reader can feel whether it is objective or subjective, and whether the subjectivity is similar to it's own feeling.

The bigger lack is the comparison of the prices. Here Linux/KDE is the first, but I hope that anybody knows such a thing...

Me, I am glad to read that in XP "The new Start button is abominable". It needs more journalists to say such things about some ridiculous useless flashy "feature". What an improvement to put in 2 little columns the content of 1 greater ! And happily this "feature" may be disabled, but some ones, irritating as the half/full menus cannot be disabled, it seems... I still wait that some journalist say it is "abominable"...

And about the Mac, I am OK that the usability now feels old. Perhaps, the usability is in proportion with the number of buttons of the mouse, 1 for Mac OS, 2 for Windows XP, 3 for Linux/KDE (however, for KDE, it will be fully efficient only in version 3.0). When you are accustomed to use 3 buttons, it is a regression to use only two buttons, and worse to use only one... In the other way, when you are accustomed to use 2 buttons, you succeed easily to use 3 buttons, and you feel it is a progress...

by not me (not verified)

>What an improvement to put in 2 little columns the content of 1 greater!

The main improvement of the XP start menu is that the six most often used applications are automatically put in big giant buttons for easy access. This is a really nice feature once you get used to it. Also, the fact that they moved the programs menu down closer to the start button is nice, it means it's easier to hit with the mouse. They didn't just rearrange it randomly like you seem to think. I do agree that the menus that hide items are annoying, and I wish they could be disabled.

The Mac's usability is a matter of personal preference. Some people prefer it greatly. I don't think this guy can say absolutely that it is bad. He should have said that it is different and hard to adjust to if you've never used it before, which is true.

I doubt the usability is proportional to the number of mouse buttons. You would be surprised how many people use Windows without ever clicking the right mouse button. For some reason it is hard for some people to grasp.

by Erik Hill (not verified)

As for me, I have switched first from the Amiga, to Linux, and now to Mac OS X 10.1. I had no problem at all with usability with the Mac. In fact it seemed simpler and more user friendly than Linux/KDE 2. Though now I am building another box just for Linux/KDE 3 :) There is no sense of single-tasking at all, no idea what he's talking about. Anyway, I find both Linux/KDE and Mac OS X great for ex-Amiga fans, as they both are an integrated GUI with a lot of power "underneath". In fact I see some shared ideas. For example, this text I'm writing into a web browser text field is being spell-checked as I write. This is because (I'm sure) that all multi-line text fields used in this system go back to the same code, which is also true of KDE 3 (the new text widget) so therefore features on one can be used on every one. Anti-aliased text absolutely everywhere (beautiful fonts as well), and all running on BSD. Actually, (this may be of some interest to some) I have seen a project that proposes to port KOffice to Darwin (Mac OS X's core) such that KOffice will run just fine on Mac OS X. Since X runs XFree 4.1.0 just fine (and rootless!) and since KDE runs fine on BSD, I don't see this as too painful of a port. In fact, since QT is soon (or now?) ported to the Mac, one could go two different ways. First, get KDE to run under XFree on the Mac or get it to run more natively, depending only on the Mac QT. Wouldn't it be great to beat StarOffice to this platform! And the KDE environment would automatically inherit all those pretty fonts!

Erik

by Alain (not verified)

> The main improvement of the XP start menu is that the six most often used applications are automatically put in big giant buttons for easy access.

It is useless. My most often used applications are in a launch bar. 1 click instead of 2 clicks using the start menu.

> You would be surprised how many people use Windows without ever clicking the right mouse button.

I know. They have a lack of performance.

> For some reason it is hard for some people to grasp.

What is hard ? Only changing old habits. In the same way, how Windows users replace the double click by a simple click ? Few, although it is easier...

You know, it is possible to use Linux "a la Mac", with only one-click mouse and menus on top... If it were so peformant, there were many people working like that. They are very few... When you use 2 ou 3 times the third mouse click, you understand its importance and you use it... Yes, Linux/KDE is the most usable desktop.

by Travis Emslander (not verified)

Well I can't tell you why he said those things but I can offer some guesses based on my experience.

I think the linux installers are getting very good so it's hard to say what he didn't like about them. I think many are still revealing too much of the underlying process, which is fine for advanced users and should be an option to see at the beginning of the install. I think one of the best installers I've used is Progeny Debian's installer, of course I think it had some quirks for a lot of people.

The MacOS (we're talking about about 9.x right?) is very very screwy. I use them from time to time here at my college because I really like the interface and IE on the mac is actually pretty damn nice. The problem is definitely with the multi-tasking, or lack of. It feels like a dirty hack. When I scroll pages in the browser everthing else on the screen stops moving. When one program tries to do something it will often cause other programs to lock up. And trying to use java applets in the browser is one of the most frightening things I've ever done. The whole system would stall for about 30 seconds while it was loading the applet. You can argue that these are problems with IE but I'm pretty sure it's a problem with the way MacOS 9 tries to do multi-tasking.

As for the default XP start menu, I actually think it's a nice idea to have the most used programs available. Although I don't like how most of the menu is taken up for advertising microsoft services, like MSN. And it's very slow. I have a dual 400mhz celeron system which was fast as hell with linux but the menus in XP feel soooo damn slow. Even though it's probably just taking 1 or more seconds on average to show a menu that is really too long when you are trying to navigate through categories. I want them to zip up so I can whiz through them and start a program before I forget what I was trying to run :)

As for KDE I think it's very nice. I love the level of integration it has. It really shows what can be done with open source code. The only programs in Microsoft land that have anywhere close to that level of integration are microsoft programs. They don't seem to want anyone else to plug into their system. Whereas on KDE it's very open for people to integrate stuff right into the desktop, such as making KIO slaves and stuff. Very nice. For some reason though I keep coming back to GNOME even though it has pretty much no integration whatsoever, I think I just like the smooth alpha-blended gnome-canvas desktop that nautilus provides, hopefully KDE 3.0 can achieve a desktop like that without being slow as a dog like nautilus :)

by not me (not verified)

>The MacOS (we're talking about about 9.x right?)

No, OS X. OS X runs on a cousin of Linux, so it should have great multi-tasking.

I haven't found slowness of the XP start menu to be a problem, though I have noticed it being a little slower than the old one if you haven't used it in a while. I suppose on a slower system it could become a problem.

>I just like the smooth alpha-blended gnome-canvas desktop that nautilus provides

Huh? I didn't know the GNOME desktop had any special features. What's the difference?

by Bryan Feeney (not verified)

OS X has great multitasking alright, but it chews up memory alive. There's a load of stuff on ArsTechnica about it - basically the screen buffer alone comes to 200MB or greater on a reasonably busy session, and then you've got all the processing required for the effects. You basically need a small supercomputer to get it running smoothly, even with the improvements that 10.1 brought.

As for Gnome, if you run Nautilus you get anti-aliased fonts on your desktop (it looks a bit better than AA with XRender), with a nice rounded bounding box for the filenames, and a translucent blue selection square when you drag the mouse to select several icons at once. It's extremely purdy.

by Yama (not verified)

One reason why Nautilus is so slow is that it tries to do things that GNOME itself cannot do. Anti-aliasing, for example, is a Nautilus-only extension (I assume that other GNOME apps could use it if written to do so) that doesn't use the standard XRender (which would be faster).

Nautilus is getting faster with each new release. However, there are several other things that can be done to speed up GNOME (in order from slowest to fastest):

1. Turn off anti-aliasing in Nautilus.
2. Use GMC to manage your desktop instead of Nautilus (i.e. Nautilus isn't even running in the background).
3. Turn both GMC and Nautilus off. This will leave you with a bare desktop, but your system should be much quicker.

Speaking of turning off desktop managers, it would be nice if KDE could have the option to turn off Konqueror's desktop management.

by aleXXX (not verified)

simply dont start kdesktop

Alex

by not me (not verified)

Easier said than done, since we don't have any idea when or how kdesktop actually gets started. What is it you have to change to keep kdesktop from being started?

by Bryan Feeney (not verified)

If you create an exectuable via the right-click menu in ~/.kde/AutoStart/ and set it to execute "killall kdesktop" it'll shutdown the desktop when KDE finishes loading. A bit of a hack I know. Anyone got any better ideas?

by Erik Engheim (not verified)

I mostly agree.

The new XP start button is better in many respects. Accessing common locations in the filehierarchy and launching frequently used apps is faster. I think many people simply dislike it because it is so big. That was my initial thought at least. I didn't see a point in it beeing so big but I quite like it now that I have used it for a while.

That Mac usability is a throwback to single-tasking in 1980s is plain stupid. It is different yes and takes some time getting used to but there are many benefits that can be pointed out.

1.Just having one menu saves screen realestate.
2.Through the famous Fitt's law it can be proven that it is faster to access the mac menu than in similar Windows menus.
3.You can use 2 button mouse with scrollwheel out of the box in OS X. Just plug in your Logitech USB PC mouse and it will work without the need to install any drivers.

As for OS installation. He does have a point allthough he maybe use the wrong words. OS X is easier than XP and XP is easier than Mandrake. Allthough they are all pretty close to each other. And for the fun of it BeOS is even easier than OS X.

by FooBar (not verified)

It's nice that KDE is finally getting some credit, especially in the software-dept. - what the author fails to point out, however, is that a Linux distribution comes with all these programs *for free* whereas the respective MS- and non-MS-products for Windows cost thousands of dollars. Because of that, and not because of "anti-Microsoft" attitudes, I would expect at least a tie between XP and KDE. OTOH, some Linux usability issues remain unaddressed (installing the boot-manager, detailed hardware config, configuration of XFree86, installation of software, lack of documentation, use of nonstandardized configuration files, ...). So I think the outcome remains fair, since KDE/Linux ;-) still lack a lot of the usability Windows has in many areas.

by AC (not verified)

> some Linux usability issues remain unaddressed (installing the boot-manager,
> detailed hardware config, configuration of XFree86, installation of software,
> lack of documentation, use of nonstandardized configuration files, ...)

What do you mean "unaddressed" ?
Have you ever used a distro (like Mandrake) ?

by Neotrode (not verified)

I have to agree with AC. Try using Mandrake 7.2, 8.0, or 8.1. They covered your "unaddressed" issues over a year ago. Some or it even earlier than that.

I am curious... When was the last time you installed or tried any distro of Linux? If your gonna compare Microsoft's latest OS, the least you can do is compare it to the latest and greatest distro of Linux.
I like the new Windows XP Gui enviornment, but that is all I like from it.

by Neotrode (not verified)

Let me correct my questions to:
When was the last time you UPDATED your Linux box?

by Albert Thuswaldner (not verified)

I recently got an old laptop (Compaq 5000LTE, P75, 16Mb RAM, 2.1Gb HD) for free.
Now, i would like to install linux/KDE on it(I run SuSE 7.1/KDE2.2.1 on my desktop machine). I know I can't install Xfree window system as it requires 32Mb
of RAM. So what are my alternatives, are there any other window systems that KDE would run on?

Graphics require alot of resorces from your computer by default, I know. But it would be nice to be able to scale down things to get them running on slow/old H/W too.

Don't say that I'm stuck with win95 currently installed on the laptop. Please give me suggestions on what to do. Another OS maybe? I'm open for anything as long as it isn't M$ and that it can be downloaded from somewhere for free.

Thanks for your help. Sorry that this comment is a bit off topic.

/Albert

by aleXXX (not verified)

Well, with 16 MB of RAM it's hard but possible.
Use kernel 2.0x., disable all daemons you don't need (crond, atd, portmapper, sshd, ....), compile the kernel yourself and exclude everything you don't need (do you have a printer on that laptop, no ? well, skip the parallel port, and so on). Reduce the number of terminals. Strip all binaries you have.
And then try X with xfce, KDE is too much.
Forget about staroffice or koffice, try wordperfect instead. I don't know about abiword.

All in all, it will work, but it won't fly ;-)
Put more memory in the box.

You could also have a look at AtheOS, don't know how much this requires.

Bye
Alex

by Debian GNU/Linu... (not verified)

Yes! XFCE is great! I like GNOME, KDE etc., but I choose XFCE + GNOME panel (not all the time - just running it occasionally) + some KDE apps. Works great, looks great, does not use tons of RAM, and it is really fast. Perhaps you should give it a try.
P.S. I have installed XFCE (pure - no GNOME or KDE) on my old laptop (p60, 16MB RAM, 80MB hdd (sic!)), so it is not a problem.

by ik (not verified)

xfce + gnome + kde apps makes you load
- the gnome libs
- the kde libs
- some gnome & kde specific daemons
- xfce specific stuff ?

looks like something that uses a lot of ram to me

by balor (not verified)

I have a P75 laptop with 16MB ram. Because it's sooooo old I can afford to run XFree Version 3.something. I run Windowmaker on top of it. Although it's not as nice as KDE2 it does seem to be a lot quicker. The advice on recompiling your kernel is good. Take a note of what gcc libs you are using (eg: I use glibc 2.2) go to the XFree website and download the Linux binaries of your chosen XFree version for your libc libraries. Compile kernel, strip out all unnecessary carp, install Xfree binaries, and compile Window maker sources. I recommend installing XFree binaries as compiling from source is tricky unless you read the documentation THOUROUGHLY!!!

by b (not verified)

If you can let the framebuffer work with your vga card, you cant try the Q palmtop environment.

by Scott Patterson (not verified)

I prefer IceWM for low memory situations.

http://www.icewm.org

by Tomislav Lukman (not verified)

I'd have to agree with the people responding here. I absolutely love using KDE, and hope to soon be able to help develop it. The only thing that bothers me is that it's kinda slow. You can specialy see this when launching applications. If I compare this to launching for exp. Gnome applications, there is a big difference. KDE is more friendly to its users than any other desktop for Linux, expecialy for Central European users like myself (localisation, keyboard layout etc) and is nicer with all the themes and stuff. But it would benefit from more speed in general and I think it can be done with some code optimisation. Anyway, congratulations to the KDE team on a job well done and keep it up. Hope to see KDE 3 in lightnig speed.

by off (not verified)

KDE itself is as fast/if not faster than GNOME in launching apps. However, in some compilers (particarily g++), a number of relocations must be done in C++ programs. This is what you are probably noticing. Until this problem with g++ is fixed, you can try using objprelink, which should reduce the number of relocations done. This should, in turn, make apps launch around 30% faster.

by Tomislav Lukman (not verified)

I thought there had to be a catch. Does anyone know where one could find documentation about tuning KDE performance?
THX

by Xanadu (not verified)

Is anyone else seeing things like this:

Nov 6 13:37:33 aragorn kernel: FireWall (Invalid): IN=ppp0 OUT= MAC= SRC=213.203.58.36 DST=[my IP] LEN=40 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=239 ID=43179 PROTO=TCP SPT=80 DPT=32858 WINDOW=0 RES=0x00 RST URGP=0

And just to say it:

[root@set /]# host 213.203.58.36
[my IP].in-addr.arpa domain name pointer www.kde.org.

On top of that, I'm not even at home (which this log paste is coming from), I'm at work tailing my log at home, so I'm browsing the Web or anything. My box is just sitting there.

Anyone?

by Joe Schmoe (not verified)

You probably have the kNewsTicker running and configured to check www.kde.org for new announcements or some stuff like that.

by Xanadu (not verified)

Geeze, I can be such a dolt sometimes. You are correct, I am running KNewsTicker. I was thinking of not since it's not clickable anymore, but it's still handy to have running.

Thanx man!

by Tomislav Lukman (not verified)

Seeing all the talk about KDE speed made me ask - Where could one find documentation about tuning KDE performance?

by Malcolm Street (not verified)

There is an excellent guide to recompiling KDE and other components for performance at http://hints.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/kde.txt. I'm part-way through this procedure at home (currently recompiling QT with objprelink included).