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Linux with KDE/Gnome (and even XFCE 4 these days) are indeed generally slower in performance and responsiveness than ie. Windows XP.
However, it's not that big of a deal. Other major operating systems 'feel' slow too (OS X comes to mind), but somehow it never really gets that bad that it gets annoying. I sure have no problems with it using Ubuntu/Gnome and Tiger. And no, I don't have super-duper hardware (check http://thom.expert-zone.com for details on my hw).
A stock install of OS X does seem a tad sluggish on my 1.42 GHz Mac Mini, but a quick disabling of some animations/effects, and it's generally very fluid and responsive.
I can't say the same about GNOME/KDE on my 2.4 GHz Athlon 64/2 GB RAM. They feel jerky, like a n00bian driving standard.
Other major operating systems 'feel' slow too (OS X comes to mind)>>
And yet, I've yet to have the same experience with my PowerMac with 10.3 or 10.4 and I'm using the stock video card that shipped with my MDD.
The XP computer I'm writing this on has more UI slowness than Ubuntu 4.10 on my Pismo. I find that dedicated video ram makes a *huge* difference in resposiveness and crash resistance. (This work box has "vampire video" and no way to add a video card.)




Member since:
2005-07-06
I know what you're going to suggest ... You're going to suggest I use some window manager designed for a 386.
When I say "Linux" I refer to the specific distribution I've mentioned. ALL modern Linux distributions are fat and slow, with the possible exception of spartan stuff like Slackware, but even that I'm not sure about anymore.
The average user doesn't care whether they should refer to it as Linux, GNU/Linux, Redhat, or Fedora Core -- what matters is that it's slow on their system and they don't like it.