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anybody notice linux + Xwindows has a slower GUI than XP?

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Mike Chambers

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i love linux, but i've always noticed that the xorg gui is slow compared to XP. anybody else notice this or am i nuts?

i am thinking it might be because the GUI is actually a part of the kernel itself in windows, where in linux its another program thrown on top of the kernel. or am i misguided here?

it just seems that if i'm screwing around with an old machine like a pentium 1, it runs about twice as fast in GUI mode in XP than it does with a linux distro.
 
I think the reason is spelled framebuffer acceleration. Almost all (?) graphic cards come with closed sources. Either they write their own Windows drivers, or a 3rd party software company does. A few may offer Linux compatible drivers, depending on your X version and so on. On the other hand, those drivers would most probably not be included in your standard distribution, so you would have to locate, download and install them yourself.

Linux developers make open source drivers, based on whichever docs they can find, or trial and error - operating a black box if you like. Therefore some hardware features may be unused or misused, features that would result in a much smoother, faster operation if they had access to them.

Or at least it is how I understand it.
 
Perhaps it's faster than Windows Vista which has a horrible interface and it wants to do what you don't want it to do! :-(

Vista is a joke, the computer I've seen it run on only has 1Gb! Sure base minimum they recommend is 512Mb, though I reckon you need 2Gb perhaps 4Gb, though who really knows how much memory is enough for Visa? Perhaps the Hard Disk it's on is lousy and needs more RPM?

If I ever get another machine it'll have an Apple Logo on it!
 
KDE is pretty resource heavy, but with the specs you mentioned, it should have ran just fine. On board graphics might struggle a little with it but even then, it should be responsive. They way you mentioned it the first time, I thought you meant just X11 alone, which X by itself can run on a 486. (Never tried lower) The only thing I can think of off hand is either low video memory or Debian didn't configure something correctly.
 
Vlad said:
KDE is pretty resource heavy, but with the specs you mentioned, it should have ran just fine. On board graphics might struggle a little with it but even then, it should be responsive. They way you mentioned it the first time, I thought you meant just X11 alone, which X by itself can run on a 486. (Never tried lower) The only thing I can think of off hand is either low video memory or Debian didn't configure something correctly.
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well it's not like it was unbearable. it was just noticeably slower than XP. you might be right about debian not configuring something correctly. the system had a voodoo 3 graphics card, and i was using the "nv" driver.
 
I have been having fun with Xubuntu. I love the mouse on the logo. The xfce4 interface that comes with it is very light on the resources.

I knew Windoze was bad. Comparing XP with Xubuntu and Mandriva, it is glaringly CLEAR just how bad. I have 4 desktops going, 4 Mozillas, a OpenOffice powerpoint slide show, downloading and updating RPMS and I still have over 250 megs of memory left unused WITH NO SWAP USAGE AT ALL, out of the 1 gig available.

Same thing on XP would have about the same unused memory but it would have 350 MB of swap file in use. It really is unbelievable how bloat-o-matic Windows has become.
 
Yeah, I use a pretty heavy Distro and it barely uses swap with a gig of ram. But Drivers for older video cards are a lot more picky than new vid cards. Thats probably what it is best guess. XFCE and other light weight ones like Flux Box are really good for older machines. They fly with older hardware.
 
late reply, but....

You also have to remember, X is a distributed platform.
You could actually run the executable on one *nix box, and have it display on a second machine. That was the super cool thinkg about it. So, you have to account for the communication.

Shame it never caught on - I've always thought X was heads and tails above just about any other GUI out there.


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Mike Chambers said:
well it's not like it was unbearable. it was just noticeably slower than XP. you might be right about debian not configuring something correctly. the system had a voodoo 3 graphics card, and i was using the "nv" driver.
Click to expand...
oh oh oh, I'm a Voodoo 3 expert, more particuliariliy the 3000 AGP series.

Set it to 16-bit color, these cards had very bad 24-bit/32-bit support and were not so good.
 
I think all VooDoos had sucky over-16-bit graphics, even dating to the VooDoo2's, and even in SLI (I still have my two Diamond Monsted 3D-II 12MB PCI VooDoo2 cards).

I won;t even discuss the VooDoo1, as that was the first gen, and I don;t know WHAT was capable of proper 24/32-bit graphics back that far...


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