[GRLUG] Bodhi Linux

[Bob Kline]

On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 1:14 PM, John-Thomas Richards <jtr at jrichards.org>wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 01:09:14PM -0400, John-Thomas Richards wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 12:31:43PM -0400, Bob Kline wrote:
> >
> > > Anyway care to provide a small word salad about what e17 is?
> >
> > e17 is the in-development replacement for e16.  e16 is a window manager
> > whereas e17 will be a desktop environment (like GNOME or KDE, but
> > better).  The Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (which are stable and
> > have been released) are stupid fast and can be used on phones with
> > incredible speed.  (They handle the behind-the-scenes graphics stuff.)
> >
> > http://enlightenment.org
>
> This is from the website:
>
> "We have run and tested on x86-32, x86-64, Atom, Power-PC, ARM (ARM9,
> ARM11, Cortex-A8 and more), MIPS, Sparc, and many other architectures.
> The suggested minimum RAM required for a full Linux system + EFL
> application is 16MB, but you may be able to get by on 8MB. For full
> functionality 64MB or more is suggested. As little as a 200Mhz ARM core
> will provide sufficient processing power (depending on needs).
>
> "Screens from even less than QVGA (320x240 or 240x320) screens all the
> way up to and beyond full-HD (1920x1080) are covered by EFL. It has the
> ability to scale user interfaces to almost any sane resolution, as well
> as adapt to differing input device resolutions, from mouse and stylus to
> fat fingers. It can draw displays from e-paper through 8-bit paletted
> displays, 16bit beautifully dithered ones all the way to full 24/32bit
> OLED beauties."
>
> Notice the recommended RAM.  Sixty-four megabytes.  For a full desktop
> environment.
>

I think this group has kicked around the
notion of the virtues of minimalist systems
before.  The fact is that hardware is cheap
now, including memory.  Software bloat is
an issue, but not one to one with hardware
cost.  e.g., a large software package can
have large numbers of features no one
ever uses.  And the unused features do
take up memory space.  But does that in
any meaningful way slow down the portion
people use?

Somehow, I doubt it. 25 years ago the
Russians were very good at squeezing
every last ounce of performance out of
the silly old computers they had, but
they had to.

And there's long been some kind of
notion of wasted CPU cycles.  But
you could work for a year getting 50%
more performance out of an old CPU,
and the easy and cost effective answer
is simply to buy a multi-CPU processor,
or one that's 5X as fast as the 10 year
old clunker you now have.

I'd say the more important cycles are
heartbeats.  How many do you want
to spend to keep that old stuff afloat?
For some it's a challenge, and the
software streamlining might mean that
even a newer processor will produce
better performance.  But except for
core OS software, is it usually worth it?
Unless you have some kind of real
time need?

   -- Bob

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://shinobu.grlug.org/pipermail/grlug/attachments/20110831/d1f55fea/attachment-0001.html>