[TriLUG] fedora 7 & 8 slowness?

[Maxwell Spangler]

On Sun, 30 Mar 2008, James c. Jones wrote:

> I appreciate your thoughts on adding ram to my old laptop.
> Unfortunately, My laptop can only hold 256mb more ( total of 512 ) which
> might improve it some, but I have a speedier desktop with 640mb running
> fedora 8 and it's sluggish as well.

I suggest asking on forums like this for free, spare memory.  I can't help you 
with the laptop but anybody that wants two sticks of PC133 memory for free can 
have it.  It wouldn't sell on Ebay for $0.95 and I'd hate to see it go into a 
landfill.  Free memory can make postponing a new purchase more cost effective.

> I may retreat to an earlier version of fedora and live with it. I don't
> see that I have gained a lot from fedora 7.
>
> My guess that as programmers upgrade their base machines, they don't
> recognize the bloat that appears on older pc's.

The complaint that developers write bigger, more demanding programs and don't 
consider the impact on older hardware is one that has been repeated in the 
Linux community for over 10 years.  There was a time when everyone was happy 
to see bigger programs because bigger programs meant stability and features 
(not seen on Linux before but seen on Unix) and Linux software requirements 
had not outpaced the hardware people typically have.

I'd guess that around the year 2001 developers made a big shift from providing 
basic functionality to more abstract ideas requiring plenty of infrastructure. 
GNOME and KDE, for example, may seem to do simple things on the screen, but 
the way they are implemented behind the scenes requires quite a bit.  This is 
the path we're on and we can't really stop it.  The only way around it for old 
hardware is to get off the path and claim some territory.  Your idea to go 
back to a previous Fedora and/or customize a distribution down to fit your 
needs is the best solution, IMHO.

Just don't blame the developers -- you'll need the features they're working on 
in the future and the infrastructure that's appearing to be "bloat" right now 
will make it possible.

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Maxwell Spangler
Research Triangle Park, North Carolina