Quote:
Originally Posted by alex_d
I seriously doubt Ubuntu running firefox will be any faster or use less memore than windows xp doing the same thing. Linux isn't automatically and magically leaner, meaner, or better than windows! You need a special distribution that desn't use KDE/Gnome, runs an alternate browser like Dillo, and has other tweaks to actually get something that's fast.
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If the standard set of software for such machines is going to include Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice, then I'm not sure how much difference there would be between Linux and Windows XP - because these are all relatively heavy weight applications. But the important point is that heavy weight applications are ok. These are not low performing systems in the Linux world, they are definitely good enough for Gnome and KDE if you want to use them. They are probably good enough for full-up Windows XP as well (in fact 1st generation UMPC's are demonstrations of this).
I base this on my experience with a standard PepperPad 3 with 256 MB of memory and 20 GB of disk. I would not describe OpenOffice as snappy on a PP3, but it is acceptable and more memory (rather than more cpu power) helps a lot. This will be even less of an issue on devices with SSD for swap space. On the PP3 (which uses FireFox as its standard browser) I started out looking for "light weight" applications but it turns out that even a 533 MHz Geode is plenty fast enough for most Gnome and KDE applications. What you don't get is 3-D acceleration or much multi-tasking capability (don't run two or three memory and/or cpu hogs at once). On a small screen you don't need the full power of the Gnome or KDE desktop environment, but both are configurable enough to be used in a "every application runs full screen" mode. I also have a Nokia 770 and I actually prefer the PP3 with its Metacity window manager plus a single gnome-panel at the bottom of the screen to the 770 with Matchbox and Hildon. Even though the latter was designed for small screens and the former was not.