“Michael C. Barnes takes an in-depth look at desktop operating system options available on the market today in this exclusive article at DesktopLinux.com. Evaluating over 30 desktop options for this article, Barnes dissects Microsoft Windows XP, offers a perspective on the evolution of the desktop, and reviews popular Desktop Linux options including Red Hat, ELX, Debian, Slackware, Lycoris and more.” Read the article over at DesktopLinux.com.
Anyone else find this rambling and hard to read? Yes, those are my only thoughts about this article.
Sometimes I was wondering where the guy was going. There is some good info in there (especially some of the history behind X Windows, which I didn’t know), but only about half of it belongs in this article.
I am about to try ELX and already had the notion it would be good.
Nice pics, too. Those guys have good taste, too. And to me the article seemed quite easy to read… despite the fact that he recurringly raised his point that MS makes good software.
Oh, well…
He said he would let ELX have sex with his mother….maybe ill like it also. =]
why is he trying to make a gnu/linux to a winXP. if you don’t know what a theme-able desktop is perhaps okay, but so much screenshots of “different” gnu/linux-distributions with the same (bad) look? He could show the standard desktops from redhat, suse and mandrake… the way he did, it’s just a boring article.
one thing I got to know is that there is WinGimp for “the others”
Real world Windows boxes’ performance, or perceived performance, is usually handicapped by anti-virus software programs running at backgorund. Stopping those programs can often makes a dog slow windows desktop perform smoothly. To offset the “increased risk” after stopping anti-virus software, one can use the combination of the following on nt/win2k/xp:
1 Use NTFS
2 Log on as a USER, not a member of Administrator/or Power User
3 Stop IE’s scripting of ActiveX controls in IE’s Internet zone.
4 Set Outlook Express’ security zone to Restricted, or
5 With OE 6 SP1, set to view HTML email as text only.
Step 1 and 2 enable file level security and make system level directories/files, and system level registry entries read-only.
Step 3 makes the like of mass mailing virus, scripts that try to lock your home page, change/lock registry unlikely to work
Step 4 and 5 offer even more restrictions on one of virus’ primary entry point.
The performance penalty of using NTFS will be more than compensated by the increased security, quicker recovery from a sudden power lost, the ability to use directory/file level compression, encryption and big performance gains out of not using real-time virus monitoring software.
“I believe that for most users, leaving file system FAT32 is best. NTFS is suppose to be more stable and faster, but it is also very difficult to convert back to FAT32 in case you change your mind.”</>
Then in the next breath he talks about security.
[i]”Microsoft Windows is often attacked because of the amount of resources required”
But he goes on to say
“We successfully installed and used Windows 98 on computers with as little as 16 MB RAM”
I wish I had the exact numbers but I think my XP desktop boots using about 55 megs of RAM and Mandrake/KDE3 is closer to 240.
I see GNU/Linux as code that is is difficult to mantain. It is my opinion that at the rate it’s going will become very bloated as a desktop.
It is also my opinion that at the rate RPM based distros are going they are going to end up shipping 20 or so install disks per version.
The install methods are all badly broken for Linux. There is no backwards compatibility at all so almost every app has to be recompiled for every new distro release and minor library version incrament.
Ever wonder why there is such a huge lack of _closed_ source software for Linux? Well, because writing the app is near childs play compared to trying to distribute it over an OS base that is so badly splintered that even UNIX looks like a consolidated effort.
Hehe, it looks like linux/gnu should only be mentioned along with Windows when they gained M$’ turf, another security hole is found in M$ products etc – smell like a cult or the media in the North Korea.
In my experience Desktop Linux is also much less stable than desktop windows.
Real world Windows boxes’ performance, or perceived performance, is usually handicapped by anti-virus software programs running at backgorund.
I’m running Norton AntiVirus 2003 on an Athlon 1.2ghz, and unless it’s actually doing a full system scan, I don’t even notice it’s running.
3 Stop IE’s scripting of ActiveX controls in IE’s Internet zone.
Too limiting – I tried this and not even flash pages would come up anymore. (Though I use Phoenix for most things now, there are still a few pages that require IE.) That’s like telling people to disable Javascript to get rid of popup ads – it’s not very practical because it breaks too many web pages.
5 With OE 6 SP1, set to view HTML email as text only.
Ok, I’m running 6.0 SP1 – how do I do this ?
I’ve always liked the OE interface, but recently switched to The Bat because of OE’s inability to disable HTML. I really don’t like the look & feel of The Bat and would like to go back to OE if possible.
Mr Barnes hasn’t looked very much “in depth” at his most praised distro ELX.I have loaded ELX on several computers, most of them newer hardware. The install usually goes smooth and the looks of the basic install are good, but thats where the good about ELX ends. It’s a bloated distro in which a lot of the installed programs won’t run right. Some of the games just fail to open. It looses network connectivity for no reason at all. The Konqueror web browser lock up, requiring a reboot. I loaded a new PC with ELX and put it on display (I work in a PC shop), so all it had to do was start up in the morning and shut down at night. It crashed in less than 2 weeks. I agree, its a crap article written by someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. His article sounds alot like an ad for XP and ELX. No doubt he got compensated for his unrealistic and slanted views.
“I wish I had the exact numbers but I think my XP desktop boots using about 55 megs of RAM and Mandrake/KDE3 is closer to 240.”
For XP – Safe mode 31 MB, default install after boot 70 MB to 80 MB – provided no third party progams are started automatically, 37 MB to 45 MB if services to necessary for home/individual users are stopped, 34 to 35 MB if you dont need the desktop by killing Explorer (taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F – after that, apps and desktop can be restarted by using the taskmanager – hit CTRL+ALT+DEL).
“I see GNU/Linux as code that is is difficult to mantain. It is my opinion that at the rate it’s going will become very bloated as a desktop”
I figure 1) most people prefer adding new tricks to the game, few would like to enhance existing code 2) to speed up developemt, they have to use some tool kits, straight C/C++ would take a much longer period of time.
“The install methods are all badly broken for Linux. There is no backwards compatibility at all so almost every app has to be recompiled for every new distro release and minor library version incrament.”
Hehe, hit the nail right on – I want to update my redhat 7.2’s SSL library, only to find quite a few apps I use are hard coded to use Rh’s SSL lib – flip burgers in McDonald’s probably will get me an update faster 😎
“Ever wonder why there is such a huge lack of _closed_ source software for Linux? Well, because writing the app is near childs play compared to trying to distribute it over an OS base that is so badly splintered that even UNIX looks like a consolidated effort”
Hope *nix heads can realize that there are something as important as the “freedom”.
“3 Stop IE’s scripting of ActiveX controls in IE’s Internet zone.
Too limiting – I tried this and not even flash pages would come up anymore. (Though I use Phoenix for most things now, there are still a few pages that require IE.) That’s like telling people to disable Javascript to get rid of popup ads – it’s not very practical because it breaks too many web pages. ”
You dont want to disable ActiveX or you will be nagged every time there is an ActiveX in a web page.
THE TRICK here is to ONLY disable Active X scripting, but leave ActiveX enabled – this way, flash, media player/real player will still work, but virus can’t script ActiveX to send email to any one in your address book, install something to your computer or change your registry settings
Here are some key setting of my IE Internet Zone settings
Download signed/unsigned ActiveX control – disabled
Initialize and script ActiveX controls not marked as fafe – DISABLED
Run ActiveX controls and plus-ins – ENABLED
Script ActiveX controls marked safe for scripting – DISABLED
Download Files – Enabled
Font download – Prompt
MS JVM Java permissions – High safety
Scripting of Java applets – DISABLED
User Authentication – Prompt for username /passowrd
You have to test other settings for your particular needs
Peronally, I have also disabled javascript/active script and put only a handful of web sites into trusted zone – this way, I will see zero popup window, except the few in my trust list. If I have to use deault IE settings, I start IE using XP’s Run As service – right click IE’s icon on the quick lauch bar.
“5 With OE 6 SP1, set to view HTML email as text only.
Ok, I’m running 6.0 SP1 – how do I do this ?
I’ve always liked the OE interface, but recently switched to The Bat because of OE’s inability to disable HTML. I really don’t like the look & feel of The Bat and would like to go back to OE if possible.”
Check “Read all messages in plain text” checkbox in OE’s Tools menu, Options … , Read tab.
Just asking about the caps..
Viruses attack Microsoft products because they are the most popular and any weaknesses are well documented.
While I believe Linux would get more viruses if it were more popular, but I wonder why is there more IIS viruses than Apache viruses, even though the latter is more used.
We tested Jarte with Windows 98 on a 100 Mhz 486 with 16 MB of RAM and found it to be quite useful.
I sincerely didn’t know Windows 98 ran on 486s..
I’m quite suprised by this review. On DesktopLinux.org. Wow.
“I sincerely didn’t know Windows 98 ran on 486s.. ”
In M$’ own words
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q182751
A personal computer with a 486DX 66 megahertz (MHz) or faster processor (Pentium central processing unit recommended).
16 megabytes (MB) of memory (24 MB recommended).
I used to run win98 on a 486 as a TV, watching on an ATI AIW Pro and surfing channels on a WinTV PCI tuner card.
“In my experience Desktop Linux is also much less stable than desktop windows.”
This is usually the fault of desktop applications though and not of Linux itself. Most desktop applications for Linux are either beta, very new, or just not very well tested due to lack of desktop user base. Netscape for example, is well known for seg faulting on Linux (the desktop symptom of this is that it just disappears. But if you look at the console window, you will see that it seg faulted.)
[“In my experience Desktop Linux is also much less stable than desktop windows.”
This is usually the fault of desktop applications though and not of Linux itself. ]
Hehe, how about claiming it is a M$ issue, where would be my unsaved file after a seg fault/broken pipe 😎
Read this fun piece:
http://www.glowingplate.com/dissent/
Regarding the memory usage. Windows XP Pro, un-modified, 80MB of memory, after the install of XP, there was a slight decrease in memory usage. For Windows 2000 Professional with SP3, the memory usage was around 45MB.
As for memory usage as Linux. Having actually run RedHat, it was around 68MB, with default services running (only Gnome2 installed). FreeBSD with GNOME 2.0.3 running is about the same as Windows 2000 Professional with SP3.
As for so-called “instability”, I’ve neither found Windows 2000/XP or *NIX unstable as a desktop. If you are experiencing crashing all the time, you obviously have crap hardware. Eugine proved it several times with her VIA/GeForce combo. Stick to quality hardware and you won’t experience a problem. Oh, and for the record, I have a Intel Motherboard with a BX440II chipset.
As for “backwards compatibility”, I have two things to say:
1) All libraries are backwards compatibility. Those applications that do break, break because they rely on a feature that either had a bug or security hole. What would you rather have, a holy API like the Win32 or one that is maintained, and no scared about breaking a few programs here and there.
2) Regarding SLL on Redhat, why didn’t you use the pre-packaged packages that Redhat provide, which would have included the appropriate dependencies as well?
“What is the difference between a seg fault and a GPF?”
A seg fault is basically the equivalent of an illegal operation error in Windows. This is usually application related and not OS related.
In a nutshell, a seg fault (or illegal operation) occurs when a program tries to access memory that isn’t allocated to it. If Linux (or Windows) allowed this to happen, the program could potentially overwrite something critical that was stored in that memory. This could cause the whole system to crash. Rather than let that happen, the operating systems kills the offending program.
As far as why programs seg fault, lots of things can cause it, but the most common thing is misuse of pointer arithmetic in C and C++. Basically, a pointer ends up pointing to a chunk of memory that is outside the are of memory allocated to the program. C and C++ requires programmers to manually manage memory, and that is an error prone process. Java, Python, and other newer languages automatically manage memory, so those kinds of problems are greatly reduced.
I worked for Sun Microsystems for 13 years. …For my first three years, I worked this way. I had to learn how to create tables and change fonts understanding what our Postscript printer would do with these commands. While the rest of the world was using Windows, I was using a dumb terminal and Unix.
“While the rest of the world was using Windows???” When exactly was this? It isn’t the easiest thing to tell because he doesn’t give dates, but… In 1991 or 1992 I was using X on a workstation, and X wasn’t exactly new IIRC. Windows was at 3.1, where it was (still) essentially unusable, to say nothing of unstable (Windows networking being a classic example).
More to the point, Mac’s market share had not yet become insignificant, Commodore’s Amiga was still a player, NeXT had been in the market for some time with their remarkable system, &c.
It doesn’t seem correct in any possible way that “the rest of the world was using Windows” (capital W).
Eugenia rules.
A segmentation fault (SIGSEGV) is signaled to a UNIX process when it tries to access a memory address that is “invalid”. This often means that a processess tries to access a memory address that is 0 or lower but this could also be delivered on other types of addressing errors. Compare this the infamous bus error (SIGBUS) where the process tries to access a correct memory address but is not allowed to by the operating system.
A general protection fault (#GP) on the other hand is the name of a fault that is raised by x86 processors. This fault can be triggered by a number of different reasons but you should note that SIGSEGVs and #GPs are not interchangeable. #GPs are only available on x86 machines, SIGSEGVs are available on any operating system providing such a feature.
I thought it was quite a good article (rambling is fine by me), but why does the writer keep typing ICONS in CAPITALS?
“As for so-called “instability”, I’ve neither found Windows 2000/XP or *NIX unstable as a desktop. If you are experiencing crashing all the time, you obviously have crap hardware. Eugine proved it several times with her VIA/GeForce combo. Stick to quality hardware and you won’t experience a problem. Oh, and for the record, I have a Intel Motherboard with a BX440II chipset. ”
It could also be a not well written/tested device driver.
“1) All libraries are backwards compatibility. Those applications that do break, break because they rely on a feature that either had a bug or security hole.”
How about GLIBC 2.3 and GLIBC 2.2/2.1 ???
“2) Regarding SLL on Redhat, why didn’t you use the pre-packaged packages that Redhat provide, which would have included the appropriate dependencies as well?”
What I suppose to do between a security hole were found in that library and RedHat had an updated package ready ?
Ok, for all the people that think linux uses so much memory. Incase you didnt know. Linux caches as much as possible into RAM, however it removes as much as necessary when you start an application.
Here is the output of the free command on my machine and a list included with applications running. (this is a Redhat 8.0 install with a 2.4.20 kernel)
free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1033744 390828 642916 0 9540 252956
-/+ buffers/cache: 128332 905412
Swap: 522104 0 522104
As you can see, 390MB are used out of 1 GB however 252MB are cached. Now as for what is currently running: KDE 3, Mozilla 1.21, xmms,evolution,gftp and kopete.
One Side comment on the article. I think its 1)Biased, 2) very hard to read and 3) not researched enuff. I agree with the person that says its like an Ad for ELX linux and XP. an entire page for XP alone and another page for all distros etc together??…
Quick question to the people out there also: I have written several simple shell scripts to “automatically” on “afterboot” the likes of Java,flash, realplayer and Acrobat Reader (in Mozilla). Wouldnt it be a good idea to make some sort of collection of scripts and small things like that in order to make things easier for newbies to different distros?…
My 2c
[“What is the difference between a seg fault and a GPF?”
A seg fault is basically the equivalent of an illegal operation error in Windows. This is usually application related and not OS related. ]
To an end user, it means the same thing – a day’s work unsaved could be gone.
How can the author discuss alternatives to Windows and omit the best consumer UNIX operating system ever created: Mac OS X? Woefully inadequate article, and badly written to boot.
“While the rest of the world was using Windows???” When exactly was this? It isn’t the easiest thing to tell because he doesn’t give dates, but… In 1991 or 1992 I was using X on a workstation, and X wasn’t exactly new IIRC. Windows was at 3.1, where it was (still) essentially unusable, to say nothing of unstable (Windows networking being a classic example). ”
Anybody care to explain why Unix/X didn’t take the desktop while Windows, an add-on atop of DOS and GPFed/Bluse Screened all the time 10 years ago, becomes the OS on more than 90% of PCs today ?
“How can the author discuss alternatives to Windows and omit the best consumer UNIX operating system ever created: Mac OS X? Woefully inadequate article, and badly written to boot.”
Because Mac/OS X doen’t sell and it is out of reach to many consumers out there.
$1500 to $1700 for a computer without a monitor was the situation 10 years ago on the PC side.
What are these scripts? Are you saying you have written scripts that setup all those plugins (Java,flash, realplayer and Acrobat Reader (in Mozilla).)?? i have never gotten these to work (or tried) in linux, and im not a newbie….so yes, those scripts sound good. So its free rather than Crossover Office? Remember the pain in the ass of it is all the different distros do it differently….Scripts cant always do it one way unfortunately.
OSNews Rules!
its interesting to see someone’s perspectives on gnu/linux when they don’t care about the whole freedom thing. his views were completely commercial (and in some cases clueless: he suggested that redhat PAY trolltech because Qt wasn’t free) and he wasn’t afraid to spend some money testing distros out.
i think his love of ELX is misplaced and that Mandrake (his second choice) is far superior for those wanting an alternative to Windows. for all my commercial work i have used Mandrake for desktop machines and Debian for servers, combining the best of both worlds: usability for users and stability for servers.
as for SIGSEGV its a hangover from Multics when programs accessed memory in a segment (hardware protected area of memory) which it didnt own. SIGSEGV is almost identical to a Windows GPF. Illegal Operation is SIGILL, sent when an error occurs accessing or executing an instruction (ie: a jump to memory which isn’t ok or an instruction that doesn’t exist). as for SIGBUS – its the old SysV name of SIGSEGV, but i think linux throws it when errors occur in IO space…?
ooops, i ought to clear up that SIGSEGV is a POSIX thing, its the name which is a hangover from multics – its short for ‘Signal: Segment Violation’.
the machines multics ran on were the first to have hardware segments.
It is quite evident that this clown knows how to use and configure Linux and would probably be considered somewhat a “Power User”, but what baffles me is why he came to the conclusion of ELX. He showed all these other desktop OS’s that he had made to look like Windows, then he takes ELX and makes it look different.. special you might say, why don’t you show us how “special” RH and Mandrake can look? Not just your ELX install, and does ELX with the XP themes look like other Distro’s? Yes, yes it does, but comparing this would show that ELX really isn’t very special.
So why did he choose ELX? I couldn’t tell you, but I can tell you that he obviously either jumped to his conclusion without consulting the knowledge that he has stored in that disturbed mind.
SIGBUS is given when you try to write to memory you are not allowed to write to or read from memory you are not allowed to read from even though these are “existing” memory addresses. For a SIGSEGV to generated the memory address should even “exist”.
SIGSEGV history dates back to the VAX machines which (like x86s) uses a segmented memory model. The segmentation fault indicates that your segment tables weren’t “acceptable”.
Multics is another operating system all together and has nothing to do with UNIX.
Windows #GPs is the DIRECT equivalent of x86 #GPs and as such can be triggered by a far broader range of errors than the SIGSEGV, hence the GENERAL protection fault.
i can collect the scripts i have made for redhat so far and eventually put them somewhere on the net, i jsut wanted to know if someone would actually be interested… the problem as stated by you is true though, they would have to be ported to other distros (shouldnt be TOOO big a problem)… but they MIGHt help other newbies…you can mail me directly, just remove the NOSPAM in the address
SIGSEGV history dates back to the VAX machines which (like x86s) uses a segmented memory model. The segmentation fault indicates that your segment tables weren’t “acceptable”.
Multics is another operating system all together and has nothing to do with UNIX.
you have the clue right there! which machine did multics first run on? anyone?
and multics was the inspiration for unix (even the name derives) because multics was large and bloated, but thompson decided to take the things he liked and make a small, fast OS which was unix.
having not done much x86 programming i don’t know what this #GP thing is. what else (apart from invalid memory accesses) is it generated for?
“having not done much x86 programming i don’t know what this #GP thing is. what else (apart from invalid memory accesses) is it generated for?”
A general protection fault has to do with the 80386 CPU protected mode. As you may know (or not if you don’t work with x86 much), when your super fast Pentium IV starts up, it is basically nothing more than a very fast 8086. It can’t access more than 640K of RAM, etc. Special instructions are sent to the CPU by the OS as it loads which kicks the CPU into protected mode. This allow things like multitasking, accessing RAM above 640K, etc.
General protection faults are not nearly as common in Windows 95 as they were in in Windows 3.1 In Windows 3.1, almost anything could cause a GPF. Running out of memory was one thing that often caused them. But if I remember correctly, Windows 3.1 also had a shared heap that was fixed in size. So you could get a GPF by running out of heap space even if you had tons of RAM left. Thats why Windows 3.1 caused GPFs if you had much more than 3 or 4 programs open at the same time, even if you had tons of RAM available.
x86 GP errors I think can also be caused by attempting to execute an illegal instruction on the CPU while it is in protected mode. But those errors are a lot less common.
“ooops, i ought to clear up that SIGSEGV is a POSIX thing, its the name which is a hangover from multics – its short fr ‘Signal: Segment Violation’.”
Just an interesting side note. In FreeBSD 5.0, the segmentation fault has been changed to “memory fault” it seems.
Windows 3.1 wasn’t that bad, after i installed norton desktop for windows on it anyway
Norton desktop for windows was ahead of its time, i wonder why no one bothered to clone to linux….
RedHat 8.1 beta
KDE 3.1
GNOME 2.2
mplayer
konqueror
Total Memory: 256MB RAM, 512MB swap (because I like to run LOTS of applications at the same time)
Total Memory Usage: 101MB RAM, 70MB swap, uptime 3d20h7m
The largest process in memory is X at 39.7MB, then a multitabbed konqueror webbrowser at 34.2MB which I’m writing this on, then comes the kicker at 15.1MB, and the KDE desktop at 14.9MB, then some konqueror file browsers at 14.2MB and 13.4MB and gnome-panel and gmplayer both at 9.7MB each. I also have the gnome-system-monitor running, telling me these numbers, taking up 9.4MB. And gkrellm at 7.2MB.
Then there are a bunch of threads, daemons and small processes taking between 8 and 1MB each: kded, kio_uiserver, knotify, ksmserver, klauncher, kwrited, kalarmd, dcopserver, kdeinit, konsole (multitabbed terminal), konqueror slave process, artsd, xfs, metacity, gconfd, ntpd, mixer_applet, gnome-settings-daemon, and magicdev.
Then there are a few sub 1MB processes: nmbd, smbmount, dhclient, sshd, xinetd, cupsd, rpc.statd, syslogd, a couple gdm processes and an ssh-agent, a bunch of bash shells and virtual terminals, smbd, portmap, init, klogd, bonobo-activation-server, atd, kwrapper, crond, gpm, mingetty, mountd, rquotad, rpciod, lockd, nfsd, kjournald, mdrecoveryd, kupdated, kscand, kswapd, bdflush, ksoftirqd, and last but not least keventd.
But I don’t know what yer all complainin about, if I got 256MB of memory I would want my OS to take advantage of it, even if all I do is play an occational Movie or listen to an ogg or browse the web and organize my data. When you see that your system is using 240MB of memory what you are seeing is all the space the kernel has allocated for applications that may ask for it, disk cache, etc. It is not actually using all that memory and it is not preventing your email application from claiming it. Furthermore if you got swap it can dump all those processes you aren’t using into it when it needs to grab more memory for your active applications.
I’m using 70MB of RAM with GNOME 2.2, nautilus and Mozilla 1.2.1 on top of a typical RedHat system. I’m sure it would work just fine with 64MB of RAM, but it wouldn’t like me switching between applications much.
Nobody clones Norton Desktop for the same reason why nobody clones Windows 3.1’s desktop.
It’s suprising that OSN would publish this article, considering it’s content. It clearly shows Mr. Barnes is a complete idiot. Lots of his claims are outright lies, others are his own opinions, often going against test results and REAL DATA. Just opinions formed in his empty head. The Ed Wood of IT.