Yet Another reason to use linux...

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, Apr 03, 2007 at 01:30:14AM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> Most mainline Linux distros seem to be roughly as piggy as WinXP.
> Luckilly Vista has come out, so the bar has moved (the wrong way).

Debian only installs what you ask for.  Still runs on my 486/66, so it
can't be too bloated (not that I want to run X on the 486, it never was
particularly good at that).

> I wonder why there isn't a mainline distro that is reasonably
> functional and yet "parties like it's 1999".  If you know what you are
> doing, you can slim some distros down or pick slim off-beat ones, but
> the "know what you are doing" is the catch.
> 
> Open Office is reputed to be piggier than MS Office, an amazing
> accomplishment.

There is java involved.  Not that big an accomplishment then.

> My laptop (Celeron M CPU) takes less power under WinXP than Linux.  I
> measured it.  My guess: the Linux clock interrupt coming in at 1KHz,
> whether it is needed or not, is burning power.

In the future that is changing.  Dynamic ticks is being worked on right
now.  It has been noted to make a measurable difference in power
savings.

> At OLS last year there was a talk by an Intel guy about only having
> clock interrupts when there was something scheduled for that tick.
> Great talk.  The feature is coming, but I'm impatient.

2.6.20 has some support I believe, but I don't think it works fully yet.

--
Len Sorensen
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