sarah
Group: Members
Posts: 73
Joined: Sep. 2005 |
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Posted: Dec. 15 2005,14:47 |
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| Quote (WDef @ Dec. 15 2005,18:31) | This caters for low ram users, who are a significant segment (but not all) of dsl users, and by all accounts this is very helpful indeed to them, so they need to be able to at very least switch it on.
The question I'm raising is: I'm not convinced this behavior should be on by default when, as time goes by, more users are bound to have adequate amounts of ram, and therefore not need this hack, which does seem to exact a performance penalty in the case I described? |
::Starting kind of tangential response::
I know this sounds like a strange question, but if a person has a reasonably well "endowed" machine, why would the average person choose DSL over one of the "flashier" Linux distrobutions (including Knoppix)? (Especially over those distrobutions with budget allocations for marketing...)
As an observation (and I will state up front that I have not been observing all that long!) there seems to be quite a few of DSL's users who are either fairly comfortable in Linux, or newbies with older -or just old- machines. In the former case, they are likely to be able to understand to use boot-time switches, and in the latter case, it's going to matter if their machine crashes because it's not well spec'ed and not using all the available resources. They (the people falling into the latter group) might not perceive it as a machine problem (ie a lack of hardware resources) if Win 95/98 ran "just fine" and DSL is supposed to be able to run on a machine with similar specifications to theirs.
As time goes by, it is also possible that there may be more people falling into the "inheritance group" - people who can't afford to buy a new machine and have to rely on what's been donated to them, or even those who have older hardware and can't justify an upgrade to support a new OS (I'm actually thinking of the pre-release suggested specifications for certain propriety OSs here..) and so are considering a switch to something less resource intensive. Of course there are other reasons, and I've just taken those as examples.
I haven't encountered your problem myself WDef, but you asked why the behaviour should be left on by default?
In response I ask if you were able to get your machine to run well enough that you could hook up to the Internet and come here and ask for a solution to your problem? I'm going to assume that you were. What happens if you were not able to get the system up and running well enough to come and ask for help? As someone new to DSL (and Linux too), I would not have known the commands to produce what you gave as supporting information in the search for a solution in your first post.
I realise some people might take my response the wrong way and that it's quite a bit off the original topic. But I've posted because the question was raised by the original poster and largely because I'm curious about the replies (no flames please ;o) ).
I guess what I was wondering was why an option that enables versatility and usefulness across a large range of machines should be switched off by default for the sake of performance on a percentage (even if it is on a growing number of machines)? I mean the question with sincerity and respect, and hope you won't mind answering so I (and others) can learn :o)
Cheers and beers,
Sarah
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I've been told the best way to learn is to explain it to someone else in front of "experts". People who are knowledgable (and sometimes even if they're not!) on a topic will soon tell you if you're wrong, and love you for the opportunity to either show their prowess or make jokes at your expense!
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