From: ins559n@aurora.cc.monash.edu.au (Andrew Bulhak) Subject: Re: From your friends at UNIXWorld Date: 15 Aug 1993 16:20:47 GMT
Kevin S Ho (ksh@prl.ufl.edu) wrote:
:
: |>
: |> >It literally has prolonged the
: |> >life of my machine. I don't use X, as I don't have quite the memory for it,
: |> >but if I got 8MB instead of 4, I'd be all set.
:
: ROTFL ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-)
: I have 8 megs, I'm choking back the tears. Try running X, emacs, a compile or 2
: and Xtank and watch it swap!
My apologies if I have already mentioned this; at the moment I am running
Linux, X386, XView, olvwm, an xterm, a clock and Seyon. I often run xv and
gcc. My computer: a 16MHz 386sx with 4 megabytes of RAM; Linux has 50Mb of
disk space plus 8Mb swap space.
Sure it isn't as zippy as, say, a DECStation, but it is very usable. OS/2 2.0,
by comparison, thrashed constantly, took 30 seconds to draw a window and
periodically switched into text mode to display the "No swap space; do not
ignore this message" error message.
OS/2 lasted a total of one day before I nuked it. Linux, however, appears to
be much more efficient and usable (perhaps it's because of the tried-and-tested
UNIX formula) than OS/2, and probably than Windows/NT. Once the DOS emulator
is improved a bit (I/O handling added, direct console I/O in text mode and
direct [as opposed to xterm-based] display in X) and the Windows emulator is
released (apparently they have it loading and relocating Windows binaries),
Linux will be able to give IBM and Microsoft a run for their money.
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Andrew Bulhak | |
| acb@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au | "I'm sorry Mr. Shergold, but you know the |
| Monash Uni, Clayton, | rules -- no can tabs, no dialysis." |
| Victoria, Australia | |
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