
Review: Linux Mint 11 "Katya" LXDE - darkduck
http://dasublogbyprashanth.blogspot.com/2011/08/review-linux-mint-11-katya-lxde.html
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rjbond3rd
This review is seriously flawed. The author only reviews the Live USB version,
and is disappointed that the distro is using 320Mb of RAM (!). And claims it
doesn't feel faster than Gnome.

The distro will tend to use whatever RAM is available (as it should). LXDE is
-absolutely- much snappier than Gnome on an older system, but the reviewer is
presumably on a system that is "too fast" to show that.

The reviewer should have (a) installed it, (b) used a slow machine with a
couple different levels of RAM for fair comparisons (e.g., 512Mb and 1Gb --
while 256Mb will work, it will start swapping once Firefox is in use, and
256Mb of RAM is very rare even on very old machines like the one I'm using
now, which is 5 years old and has 512Mb of RAM soldered to the motherboard).

------
rkalla
I have such a problem getting excited about rewrapped Linux distribution
releases since these are all just recombinations of the same base software
with no new _core_ features.

A different theme? Sure... but is my 3D card supported any better? No. What
about printer? No. What about better 3D compositing? No. What about rendering
performance? No. What about runtime performance (excluding < 5% gains via GCC
args)? No. Better Office file support? No. Better/Different office apps or
computing utilities like CD/DVD burners? No. Blu-ray support? No.

I might be interested in a new Fedora release because RedHat writes a lot of
its own software. Ubuntu, same thing. Maybe seeing a new release of Gnome or
KDE in action in _any_ of these distros is nice... but once you get past that
I just don't care what new remixing of all the same ingredients is going to
give me. At some point they all just taste the same.

The only differentiator I see anymore is package management systems and that
is... probably one of the most uncompelling selling points for a desktop OS I
can think of.

Arch vs Apt vs RPM vs Portage vs... and which one makes my linux desktop more
functional, compatible and featureful?

Or right, none of them.

I dream sometimes about where the Linux Desktop scene would be if people were
capable of working together and not rewriting/replacing underlying frameworks
with "so much better" ones every 2 years.

Linux on the server is brilliant, I attribute the benevolent dictator Linus
with that; he forces backwards compatibility, consistency and good design into
the kernel. Linux on the desktop is passable, has always been just passable
and will likely always be passable when compared to other singularly visioned
efforts (Windows, Mac, Android eventually).

For those that have been around in Linux long enough, you remember the RedHat
5/Mandrake days when Linux on the desktop, relatively speaking, was exactly
where it is now. Always ALMOST "good", never great, and "the year of linux on
the desktop" was ALWAYS right around the corner. The next year, the year after
that, OH WAIT, right after we get this framework and X rewrite done. Woops,
well once dbus is in, MAN, it will definitely be ready then.

The idea that Linux on the tablet/portable computer will ever compete with
what iOS, Android or Windows eventually become is... infinitely optimistic.

Even Ubuntu with magnitudes times more resources, focus and vision than the
fractured Linux landscape was unable to create a cohesive desktop vision
without changing gears mid-stream to something totally new, disliked and
likely deprecated in 2 years (Unity).

Linux on the desktop is too big of a problem with too many moving parts. It is
more than a GUI, more than drivers, more than the X rendering framework (or
whatever replaces it eventually), more than package management and more than
3D acceleration.

It is all of it, plus polish plus apps plus stable APIs, plus support, plus
backward compatibility.

And that is never going to come out of the community on its own.

------
wyclif
Any thoughts on the "unholy mess" (e.g. Linus) front regarding XFCE/GNOME 2
vs. GNOME 3?

