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See the original image at kdedevelopers.org

KDE 4 works well with 256 MiB of memory and 1 GHz CPU

kdedevelopers.org — I decided to boot my Thinkpad X60 with "mem=256M maxcpus=1", logged into KDE 4 and set the power saving policy to "Powersave", which throttles the CPU to 1Ghz and locks it there. And then I used KDE 4 some, started Konqueror, browsed about a bit, configured a few things with System Settings, started Kopete and chatted a little.

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  • ptFoe, on 12/11/2007, -24/+32KDE4 is looking sweet hopefully Ubuntu will make it as default WM for Ubuntu and phase out Gnome which has become so archaic. The development of Gnome apps has stalled like Nautilus & Tracker. Then you have have the threat of Mono based apps.
    • HerbertScrunge, on 12/11/2007, -0/+24KDE will never be the default DE of Ubuntu for many reasons, just one of which is that they do not schedule their releases to match the 6-monthly cycle of Ubuntu.
    • dualscreenman, on 12/11/2007, -2/+48Plus they already have Kubuntu. (
    • tuxerware, on 12/11/2007, -5/+15Well your knowledge about gnome apps seems pretty poor, Tracker is undergoing heavy development and version 0.6.4 was released today. Nautilus has had it's plumbing reworked to use gio which should add support for many different file systems in the future.
      • TeacherOfHeroes, on 12/11/2007, -0/+5I'm not sure why your comment hasn't been dugg higher than it is, or why some people are digging you down - you're absolutely right. GNOME 2.22's roadmap has Nautilus-gIO scheduled for inclusion, and tracker is still maturing nicely.

        I'm not sure if its the lack of new buttons being stuffed into the toolbars that makes some people think that development has stopped, but a lot of the time, once you have the UI done, you can spend a lot of time adding new features under the hood without a lot of big honking changes to the UI. In fact, it's the mark of a good dev team that they can improve the programme and add features without making disruptive changes to the user's experience. Look at the search option added to the Gtk::FileChooserWidget in 2.20 - seamless. I think people who complain about Nautilus just want them to change the UI to suit them, and call it 'stalled' when they don't
    • Eldoo77, on 12/11/2007, -7/+9I really like Gnome. It feels more usable/integrated and the configuration is much easier than KDE. Plus, we already have Kubuntu for those who must have it... right?
      • Waterrat, on 12/11/2007, -0/+3 Interesting,cause I feel the same way about KDE...
        I guess it's just what you are used to using.
    • jrbrewin, on 12/11/2007, -1/+3whilst i don't doubt that it really is a dream, i do believe the article amounts to nothing more than anecdotal evidence. run some benchmarks against other hardware configurations, or other linux distros, or even windows, on the same config, and then report back with some hold card facts.
      • Zimmyzum, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1The average user isn't going to be running benchmarks during regular use. To me, real usage tests carry much more weight.
        • EtherGnat, on 12/11/2007, -0/+2That's great if you're the one doing the testing, but otherwise one person's opinion is entirely too subjective to be useful. I've seen people that claim Windows Vista runs great on old hardware with 512MB RAM. I've also seen people claim that Vista runs like crap with a quad core and 4GB. Benchmarks aren't perfect real world experience indicators, but at least they're reasonable consistent.
          • Buu700, on 12/11/2007, -2/+2Vista configured with vLite runs better than Linux ever could! And, it's easier to configure! However, if you want, you can use your command line installers, although we all know it's just a feeble attempt to try and prove that you're "1337er" than someone else :-)!
            Linux has no good applications and has, what, 1000 users, at most? There's no way Linux can ever compete with a real operating system like Windows. It's the chicken and egg problem. Why would developers work on Linux with no users to buy their programs, and why would users move to Linux with no decent applications. Besides, Linux is too hard to use. Windows is simply more productive. Deal with it.

            Come on, digg me down Linux fanbois, but you know it's true!
          • Buu700, on 12/12/2007, -0/+1I'm curious as to why only one person dugg down that blatant trolling...
            By the way, my previous comment was a joke...



            Personally, I prefer Xfce. My computer is decently fast (1GB RAM, 1.6 GHz Turion X2), and even though I CAN run KDE and GNOME, Xfce is pretty much the same as GNOME, but it's noticeably faster on my machine ("snappier" is the term usually used to describe it, I believe). However, KDE4 is looking REALLY nice, and I will probably recommend it to a few people.
    • rpgmaker, on 12/11/2007, -2/+6Wait.. KDE4 wasn't suppose to run just fine with 256 MB and a 1 GHZ CPU?
    • quenturi, on 12/11/2007, -0/+5>hopefully Ubuntu will make it as default WM for Ubuntu and phase out Gnome which has become so archaic<
      The 'Ubuntu project' doesn't give a ***** about the kubuntu project. They put most of their efforts on only one distro : Ubuntu/Gnome. There is no sign whatsoever this is going to change.
    • Ademan, on 12/11/2007, -0/+3KDE isn't even a window manager... KWin is... It doesn't really sound like you know wtf you're talking about...
  • schestowitz, on 12/11/2007, -4/+54That's roughly the type of box I run KDE4 on at home. KDE 4 isn't a case of adding 'fat'. It's not the Vistafication of XP.
    • piesforyou, on 12/11/2007, -0/+22Vistafication.... now that should go in the dictionary! Love it.
  • vln004, on 12/11/2007, -0/+32i remember when i was drooling over a 1gzh computer. Actually, i remember drooling over a 400mhz computer. it's amazing how much can change in so little time.
    • Murdats, on 12/11/2007, -5/+1I remember drooling over a 600mhz pda
      • Toshibi, on 12/11/2007, -0/+7I remember drooling over 128K ram. Seriously. That's K not M.
        • Waterrat, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1 I remember drooling over 60 MB ram!

      • richbradshaw, on 12/11/2007, -0/+13I remember drooling.
    • emehrkay, on 12/11/2007, -1/+5i remember seeing an ad for a liquid-cooled amd k6 that was 1ghz and I was like "that will never be necessary"
    • naich, on 12/11/2007, -1/+7Well, children, I remember getting my first 16MHz 286, and I thought that was awesomely fast compared to my ZX81.
      • DeathWearsAHat, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1I went from the 8088 to the 386. Playing solitaire on Windows 3.1 was like jumping into the Matrix.
    • gameforge, on 12/11/2007, -0/+7Bah. I remember drooling over a 286 when I was in high school. I had been asleep most of the class, hence the drool. Today we have Linux web servers that are smaller than my cell phone.

      It should be mentioned (and probably already has) that this submission isn't accurate whatsoever. He's not running KDE on a 1GHz CPU - he's running it on, perhaps, a 2.2GHz dual core CPU clocked at 1GHz and limited to one core. Same clock speed, *not* same execution speed. My 1.7GHz ThinkPad runs the GLXS demo pretty damn well at 200MHz under Windows XP - *many times* the speed it would run on a 200MHz Pentium Pro.

      Some years ago I went from a 750MHz Duron to a 2000MHz Athlon XP which resulted in a more than 6x speed increase in both CPU and FPU performance for the benchmark I used. More than double what you'd expect just given the clock rate.

      All of the parts of the computer in this test (bus, memory, GPU) are all more efficient than their 1GHz-era counterparts, and are likely still running much faster too. Sure they're being throttled down with the CPU speed, but with DDR/DDR2 devices, big caches with closer and on-chip memory controllers and ever-more-efficient chipsets, execution speed relative to clock speed starts to compound very quickly.

      Just within the CPU, if it takes a P-III 20 cycles to perform some function and it takes a Core2Duo 10 cycles to perform the same function, that would be a 100% increase in speed at the exact same clock rate, with respect to that one function, all other factors being equal.

      Of course, KDE and Linux will still run great on old machines like that - I used to run KDE on that 750MHz Duron for my main computer. But this isn't how you test it. :)
  • yohnkrb, on 12/11/2007, -0/+8Great, now I can ditch the 20 CPUs in my basements as Christmas presents. Win-Win!
  • chingy1788, on 12/11/2007, -39/+5in other news, wireless is hopeless

    (ALP - Anti-Linux Party)
    • chingy1788, on 12/11/2007, -27/+3woo dugg down
      Windows ME > Linux
      • Coy0te, on 12/11/2007, -20/+2ALP? sign me up!
      • Philluminati, on 12/11/2007, -2/+5I dugg you down. Linux is much better than any variant of Windows. Since better means different things to other people there's no point arguing though. Linux Rocks, Windows ME sucks
    • gameforge, on 12/11/2007, -1/+9802.11b/g card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 ...
      Features: Has more under Linux than under Windows
      Price: $23

      WiFi worked on my IBM Thinkpad w/ Centrino the day it was new over three years ago. You must either be incredibly stupid or own the most cheese-dick WiFi card ever.
    • bashveank, on 12/11/2007, -1/+8Why would you be anti Linux? How does Linux hurt you if you don't use it?
    • simd, on 12/11/2007, -0/+6My Sony Vaio's wireless installed straight off the Ubuntu install CD, no configuration required. Which is more than I can say for Windows XP which didn't recognise it and took 3 reboots to get it to work.
    • Disfnord, on 12/11/2007, -0/+4I have an old laptop with a linksys pcmcia wireless card with a broadcom chipset, works fine with Linux, and with monitor mode to boot.
      • subgeniusd, on 12/11/2007, -1/+1Linux is renowned for working great on old hardware and poorly on bleeding edge stuff. The reasons are well known.
        • Buu700, on 12/12/2007, -0/+1Why would you say that? IMO almost any *nix system with compositing will own any version of Windows on the same machine.
    • bigsteve, on 12/11/2007, -0/+4Seems like someone is too ignorant to understand the dynamics of open source software trying to support a myriad of closed spec hardware in the face of lacking 3rd party cooperation, fake open-source drivers with binary firmware blobs, and well, ignorance from people who just don't get it who'd rather spread FUD and exaggeration than maybe pitch in and help the cause. Digg needs a big sign that reads "Don't feed the trolls". He's had his few seconds in the light, move on.

      ACP - Anti-clue party. Ignore facts else you'd have no reason to run your mouth.

    • chingy1788, on 12/11/2007, -2/+1***** Linux!!!

      actually I'm pretty sure a few diggers would
  • floridiot2, on 12/11/2007, -6/+39256 Men in Black??
    • Kratos76, on 12/11/2007, -0/+5Thank You! I was hoping someone would reference to that!
    • secleinteer, on 12/11/2007, -2/+16http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte
    • davidjunit, on 12/11/2007, -18/+3Clearly obscure terminology that only Linux nerds would use to make themselves feel smarter than the other guy that chooses to use two characters instead of three to abbreviate a unit of measure.
      • rpgmaker, on 12/11/2007, -1/+11MiB an obscure nerd terminology? Surely digg isn't what it use to be anymore...
        • suprchunk, on 12/11/2007, -0/+3Yes it is obscure terminology if it is a rarely used synonym for a common term used by millions, nay, billions of people.
          • GMorgan, on 12/11/2007, -1/+2MiB != MB

            That was sort of the point. People use the term MB, I'm not sure if they know what it means.
  • SpickSlayer, on 12/11/2007, -44/+9Linux is for fags.
    • coollettuce, on 12/11/2007, -1/+11Well that makes me and thousands of other people on digg fags then.
    • sathia, on 12/11/2007, -1/+5that makes you an ultimate macho
    • tuxerware, on 12/11/2007, -2/+7So cigarette smokers should use Linux?
    • Philluminati, on 12/11/2007, -3/+11Windows is for consumers, not for I.T. professionals.
      • bigsteve, on 12/11/2007, -0/+4I'm just going to assume you're not speaking of servers, and instead of workstations, and allow you to explain.
        • GMorgan, on 12/11/2007, -1/+1Windows isn't suited for IT professionals either as a desktop or as a server. Most I know of get routinely annoyed by the lack of a decent CLI. Of course cygwin alleviates this problem to a fair extent but you can hardly say it looks good that you have to emulate Unix to make Windows usable.
    • orangefly, on 12/11/2007, -4/+3windows is for knuckle draggers....just like fox news....
    • bigsteve, on 12/11/2007, -0/+3He's just so cute when he's mad. Oh and that nickname? He sounds rough.
    • stmiller, on 12/11/2007, -0/+4Don't feed the trolls
  • sandygmaharaj, on 12/11/2007, -4/+6good to see KDE back in mainstream.
  • Monstradamus, on 12/11/2007, -4/+11Vista will run with these specs too :-P just turn off all the shiny components and set like 4 gigs virtual ram
    • Philluminati, on 12/11/2007, -0/+8The installer won't run if you have less than 512MB RAM I'm sure.
      • prophetpimp, on 12/11/2007, -1/+0Text based installer.
      • Buu700, on 12/12/2007, -1/+1vLite modified Vista can and has run on an EEE PC. IMO it owns anything the Linux community ever developed before 1984.
    • wookieface, on 12/11/2007, -1/+4But this runs WITHOUT 4 gigs of virtual ram 8)
  • seacaspian, on 12/11/2007, -0/+13It is great to see linux making strides in the desktop market - while Vista requires a mountain of resources, you can cobble together a system from virtually nothing and do fine with linux.
    • sat0shi, on 12/11/2007, -9/+1You can also do that with Windows 98 and maintain greater compatibility with the products out on today's market.
      • bigsteve, on 12/11/2007, -0/+3.NET 2.0, released in 2003, will be the last version supporting Windows 2000, let alone 98. Today's Microsoft market is going this way, so if you're speaking purely of the market, Windows XP will be the required norm soon.

        Overall user experience on an older machine, though, given configurability, security concerns, hardware compatibility, and yes, even the availability of software, I'd still argue Linux being the way to go.
        • DnasTheGreat, on 12/11/2007, -0/+4Not mention the fact that most programs from Win98 tend to run reasonably well under Wine anyway.
  • Tempest261, on 12/11/2007, -19/+7NOOOOOOOOOOO!! Every damn app appears to start with the letter K. It looks gorgeous, but I'm sorry guys- I just can't handle the totally stupid, backwards naming scheme. It's NOT clever. Gnome for me until they wake up and give everything a real name.
    • elfprince13, on 12/11/2007, -2/+15sort of like all those Gnome apps that begin with a g, which isn't backwards of all.
      • Tempest261, on 12/11/2007, -6/+6It's not nearly as prevalent! And trust me, I hate those too. But in KDE, navigating those application lists (for me at least) is damn near impossible. I'm sure I'm the minority here, but my brain just doesn't jive with it.
      • Buu700, on 12/12/2007, -0/+3He may have gone about complaining the wrong way, but it really is a legitimate problem. I've used KDE4 (beta 4), and it looks very nice, but i really truly do hate the naming trend. When I want to find an application, it's much harder to find it IMO, and when I want to search for an application, I have to type almost the entire name in order to narrow down the results enough, which really is annoying. Perhaps the applications could have alternate subtitles which could be searched in the main menu as well (e.g. Konqeror's subtitle could be "Web Browser," and one could alternatively start to type that into the search box, which would narrow down the results much faster). This would also make KDE much easier to use for people new to KDE who aren't familiar with KDE apps.

        As a side note, I use Xfce.
    • commentbot, on 12/11/2007, -9/+5I dislike this "K" naming scheme also.
    • Stalks, on 12/11/2007, -4/+10You're a tool. Base opinions on an applications merits, not their friggin' name. Besides, who cares if you pick Gnome over KDE; this doesn't even warrant fanboy-ism.
      • GMorgan, on 12/11/2007, -0/+3Actually there are usability issues with everything starting with k. Fortunately they are trying to encourage this to change by naming as many new apps with non-K* names as possible.
      • Tempest261, on 12/11/2007, -1/+2I *WANT* to use KDE 4. I think it it's gorgeous. The issue is that I simply can't navigate through those damn menus. And what the ***** does "Konqueror, Kompete, Korn" mean?

        If anyone is being a fanboy, it's you guys who are defending KDE's ridiculous naming scheme.
    • skywake, on 12/11/2007, -1/+8yeah damn them naming KDE apps using the letter K. I mean its not like we see stuff like that anywhere else at all..... and esp not from popular companies like say... Apple for instance *cough* *cough*
      • prophetpimp, on 12/11/2007, -2/+1But all us Windows Fan, Gnome Fan, KDE Fan Collectively agree that Apple sucks.
    • piesforyou, on 12/11/2007, -0/+2Isn't that actually.. um... quite, you know, useful? It tells you what it is at first glance.
    • gameforge, on 12/11/2007, -0/+4I like the K/g naming scheme. It's functional - it gives you information about the program without even reading anything other than the name.
    • Philluminati, on 12/11/2007, -0/+8The letter 'i' was taken by apple
  • elfprince13, on 12/11/2007, -0/+5excellent, because thats essentially what all 3 of my computers are.
  • Rezistik, on 12/11/2007, -6/+15Now if they could just make it look better, it looks like it was made for special kids with the big icons.
    • aywwts4, on 12/11/2007, -2/+8Before you dig this guy down could you post some screenshots that would change one's mind, because I haven't seen KDE lately, but I am agreeing with him from the screenshot in the article.
      • Zimmyzum, on 12/11/2007, -0/+2I use Kubuntu and the icons are not oversized, but I set up Linux Mint for my dad running Gnome. The Firefox icon takes up 1/8 of the desktop. He didn't seem to mind, so I left it, but that'd annoy me to no end.
    • TripinVA, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1I've been told that they use large icons in screenshots because otherwise people had trouble seeing them. I recall hearing this from a developer who heard a complaint like that; the icons should scale smaller by default from what I recall.
      • Waterrat, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1 You can change the icon size...In Klikit Linux you can hide all the icons in the "Start here" folder.
  • legendxx, on 12/11/2007, -20/+2sweet! You can search the net and use pidgin.. im ...shocked?
  • stupidStan, on 12/11/2007, -20/+2yaay... wait, mostly no one cares... yawn
  • commentbot, on 12/11/2007, -5/+12KDE doesn't please me visually. It's really dreary: http://www.kdedevelopers.org/files/images//kde_low ...
    • ProducedRaw, on 12/11/2007, -0/+8Keep in mind that any KDE4 screens you've seen so far are pre-release. The final version will get cleaned up.
    • Philluminati, on 12/11/2007, -1/+7That looks like just a poor theme to me. Those are changable
    • wookieface, on 12/11/2007, -1/+5I like it...
    • Rhino2, on 12/11/2007, -1/+7Your mom pleases me visually and in other ways too. What you want, Gnome with teh grey GTK widgets from 1994?

  • phragmatic, on 12/11/2007, -21/+0wow, for a nerd, he sure has lots of friends. i bet he merged his buddy list with his little sister's, then changed the aliases. ahh... the art of the screenshot.
  • neiltc13, on 12/11/2007, -23/+1Until you guys cut this crap from Linux and just make a system which actually works without having to install all these separate components, mainstream people will not look at Ubuntu or anything else for their computer.

    It's not more reliable if you can't get it up and running in the first place.
    • sx66gns, on 12/11/2007, -2/+22Your right , you don't have to install "separate components" in windows , your still in 1998 , I bet that's a more or less a default installation.

      New installation of xp requires:
      Firefox
      Codec pack
      Ccleaner
      Spybot
      Spyware blaster
      Anti-Virus
      Plugin's & WMV Codecs for Firefox
      A ***** load of drivers
      A ***** of painful updates
      Optimizations
      I'm forgetting a few I'm sure.

      A Clean Ubuntu install:
      Gfx Driver (Which it does for you)
      Codecs , again from add/remove.
      • Mtown, on 12/11/2007, -1/+0Ubuntu installs your graphics driver for you? That is a utter lie. My roommate dual-boots with Ubuntu and has a common Nvidia graphics card, but it took him over 25 minutes to get it installed. Installing it requires entering the Ubuntu-version of the command prompt and entering a bunch of filepaths and commands. It was extremely complicated and not automatic at all.

        At least xp lists all the drivers/updates that are available and you can just click "go!" and leave the room for an hour. When you come back everything is done. You make it sound like installing things on windows is a slow, frustrating process while it's a automatic and simple on Ubuntu. It's actually the other way around.
        • GMorgan, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1That was the way, about a year ago. The restricted manager now installs all that stuff automagically.
    • orangefly, on 12/11/2007, -0/+4i get new people every week using ubuntu....i have had no one ask me to put them back on windows....and these are not geeks....
    • bigsteve, on 12/11/2007, -0/+3Someone's completely missing the point. We have servers here that don't even use a graphical environment. Just a web server, PHP module, boom. 12 minutes to build from scratch, uptime measured in years. Linux' strength, in part, is in it's modularity and customizability... install only what you need.

      Complete systems, like Ubuntu, come with all this installed already, and what, install off of the disk with maybe 6 clicks? Next, next, Ok, next, here's my name, here's a password I wanna use, Finish.. You have the option to upgrade to something different from your working install, or you have an option to leave it be.

      Get a clue and come on back.
  • spookthehamster, on 12/11/2007, -13/+31GHz? So what? People run Leopard on processors under 867MHz, I've seen XP and running on less than 1GHz and I run Ubuntu on a 500MHz processor.

    Maybe in 5 years 1GHz will be unfathomably small, but not yet.
    • elfprince13, on 12/11/2007, -0/+7I think its more the 256MB ram part, but thats still fairly standard for a lot of people.

      and I run Ubuntu on a 300MHz processor with 160MB of RAM (which is a huge upgrade from the 96 it was using a couple months ago.
    • neiltc13, on 12/11/2007, -6/+2I ran Windows XP on a 750MHz Athlon with 128MB ram and it looks a LOT better than Ubuntu.
      • bigsteve, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1I'd say it probably ran a lot better than Linux with GNOME, which is what Ubuntu (out of the box) is. Linux with XFCE or say Fluxbox, you'd be in much better shape. I do agree that these two, GNOME and KDE are a bit heavy-weight considering this is what the next generation of Linux users will see first most likely. Especially considering that if someone's going to try Ubuntu, they'll most likely do it on an older, decommissioned machine.
      • gameforge, on 12/11/2007, -0/+2Interesting. I ran XP Pro (no SP2 yet) and SuSE side by side on a 750 Duron with 512MB of RAM and (brace yourself) a PCI64 SATA hardware RAID controller (a $350 card) with a 4-drive RAID 5 array, and while the system bus was just barely fast enough to record live TV, Windows just can't help but interrupt whatever you're doing periodically with background tasks - paging operations, registry maintenance/backups, checking for unused icons on your desktop, discovering new network nodes, phoning home to Microsoft, etc. - which would turn into jitters and skips in anything I recorded, sometimes distorting up to 10 minutes of my favorite show.

        Linux can be locked into a room in your computer somewhere while you use your computer to do what you need to do - that's what made all the difference for me. Being able to wine GTA3 under Linux better than under XP with that particular GPU was the reason I finally built a new system way back when.

        Maybe you should have tried Xubuntu or something that's not setup for a modern computer.
    • ucg1, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1Yeah, I think CPU clock rate is absolutely irrelevant. I run the latest Ubuntu on a 700MHz laptop and its just fine (XP was also quite snappy on it). Granted, I have 512MB of RAM on it.

      The CPU hasn't been a performance bottleneck for general computer usage in a long time. Hard drive speed is the major bottleneck, and more RAM helps by preventing swap from being used and providing another layer of cache for the hard drive (if you have enough free RAM).
    • lilrabbit129, on 12/11/2007, -0/+2My gf runs Ubuntu on a dual 750MHz PIII with 256MB of RDRAM. Its plenty fast for what she needs. ( web, email, watching tv shows, occasional code compilation ).
  • IonicHero, on 12/11/2007, -2/+3Hey PtFoe

    They do make a KDE windows managed Ubuntu, it's called Kubuntu.

    I like what KDE 4 has done, it's smaller, but quite a nice bit with plasma and oxygen. I'm waiting for the official Kubuntu distro before I throw it on for good.
  • momsshizzle, on 12/11/2007, -34/+1Linsux is still ***** no matter what PC you put it on.
  • Fredtheviking, on 12/11/2007, -17/+1So, does Windows 98... what's your point?
    • sx66gns, on 12/11/2007, -1/+15Windows 98/98se is no longer supported by any hardware manufacturer or software manufacturer for that matter , 98se has been officially phased out , try again.
      • th0r0n, on 12/11/2007, -8/+1"no longer supported by any hardware manufacturer or software manufacturer for that matter"

        Oh, you mean pretty much like Linux then? Ever tried getting a Creative Soundcard working?
        • Nosferax, on 12/11/2007, -0/+5I'm using an audigy 2 in ubuntu right now. It's natively supported
        • condeh, on 12/11/2007, -4/+1native support is different to the OS not being supported by HW/SW Manufacturers. Win 98 natively supports HW, so basically ubuntu = win 98 ??
        • SteveMax, on 12/11/2007, -0/+4Yes. It works (on amd64), while they don't work under Vista amd64. Your point?
  • SirZRX, on 12/11/2007, -7/+3i still cant understand why KDE or gnome looks so cheap!
    • burjzyntski, on 12/11/2007, -1/+3partially because it's made by people in their spare time who don't always get paid for it? maybe, because you know how it's all open-source, you should make it look expensive?

      you have everything available to you that you need in order to customize your window manager to your preferences. personally, i like the simplicity of the (what you might call) "cheap" looking window managers such as gnome, flux/blackbox, xfce, jwm, etc. they get the job done fast and how you want it. KDE, IMO, is too "bubbly", reminiscent of XP in some ways that I do not like.

      now do you understand?
    • bigsteve, on 12/11/2007, -0/+4Ironically, the open source window managers end up being far more customizable, if you'd ever bothered to try. Check out http://www.lynucs.org/ ... pretty awesome screenshot archive of open source setups.
      • Waterrat, on 12/11/2007, -0/+2 That's what I like about KDE..I can do things with it I never could do with the Windows desktop.
    • Ademan, on 12/11/2007, -0/+2They don't? There are a ton of Gtk+ themes out there that are miles ahead of aqua and/or carbon and definitely ahead of Win32, at least in my opinion.
    • oobuntu, on 12/11/2007, -0/+2because kde4 isn't ready yet.
  • sx66gns, on 12/11/2007, -0/+9Also to the windows 98 does! people , We are talking about a modern OS that's running on older hardware , retards. Vista won't install on anything less than 512mb unless hacked and runs like ***** on that.
  • bsmang, on 12/11/2007, -4/+4what the hell is a "MiB"?
    • SirTwitchALot, on 12/11/2007, -0/+3Mebibyte:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte

      I think he meant megabyte though.
    • comradeTJH, on 12/11/2007, -0/+4Men in Black
    • commentbot, on 12/11/2007, -0/+0It's Maybe Byte?
    • blipblopblip, on 12/11/2007, -0/+4It's SI notation for what we all used to call a Megabyte (MB) - it means powers of two rather than powers of 10. For example, 1MB = 1000KB now, whereas 1 MiB = 1024KiB

      Stupid, I know. It looks stupid too xD
      • tempusrob, on 12/11/2007, -0/+5Well, if the HDD manufacturers hadn't hijacked GB to mean 1000 MB instead of 1024 MB we wouldn't have to use the "stupid" proper suffixes.
  • BurtCokain, on 12/11/2007, -0/+8To be fair, I run OS X 10.4 on a 400 Mhz G4 with 384 Mb RAM, it wasn't that usable for web stuff (i.e. Mail and Web at the same time) with 256 Mb. I have XP running on an old pentium 4 with 256 Mb RAM, and it does the web/chat/dvds etc perfectly well.

    However, this is a current Linux system that is in development and has support. The systems i use are 2 years old, and 5 years old (i think) and support for them is being phased out. (I wouldn't want to put Leopard on the mac, and I wouldn't want to put Vista on the PC). Linux will hopefully keep these systems in use in a few more years. KDE is also free, so this is great news! I'll probably make the P4 dual boot at some point, and I think this will be going on it.
    • veriix, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1Umm, I don't know about os x 10.4 but microsoft said xp will be supported past 2010.
    • condeh, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1but if XP works perfectly well, why install a newer OS? simply because its newer? Thats what I don't get about this. If i had an old PC (i.e 1Ghz,256MB) it would _already_ have an OS on it that works, otherwise I wouldn't keep the PC.
    • DnasTheGreat, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1Look up Megahertz myth. A 400 Mhz G4 isn't necessarily comparable to a 400 Mhz Intel processor. Things like pipelining, RISC vs CISC (especially on older machines... nowadays RISC-like stuff is in Intel's processors), instructions per cycle, etc. make a difference as well --- not just the clock rate.
      • BurtCokain, on 01/21/2008, -0/+1Yep, for sure. I've tried running 2k with Firefox/Thunderbird on a 350 Mhz K6, with 256 Mb RAM (A system I gave to a friend). It's very slow, and this was the (short) era where mac's actually had faster processors than PCs. The mac gets blown away by a 1 Ghz PIII though.- it's possibly equivalent to a PIII-600 running 2k in terms of app responsiveness/usability for basic stuff.
  • bigsteve, on 12/11/2007, -0/+11I don't know how complete of a test this is. The title is a bit misleading. He's no running KDE4 on a machine with these specs, he's using software to throttle his IBM Thinkpad T60 down to these specs. This doesn't account for the faster bus speeds, better graphics card, and probably larger processor cache in play here. I also don't know if KDE takes advantage of SSE2 or 3, but this may factor in as well.

    One of the comments on the page was about someone running this same setup on a real 900mhz / 256mb RAM computer, an IBM Thinkpad T22. He seemed to describe it as fair-good but with an obvious disadvantage of the T22's anemic graphics chip.
    • HonoredMule, on 12/11/2007, -0/+2Even without addon instruction sets factoring in, a 1ghz pIII isn't going to come close to the performance of a core/core2/recent Athlon throttled to 1ghz, and cpu shouldn't even be the majority factor in a composited desktop environment with multimedia/hardware access underpinnings.
      • GMorgan, on 12/11/2007, -0/+2Precisely, back when Intel made 1ghz chips they were still pushing the clock speed == power lie. Now the instructions take far, far, fewer clock cycles as Intel have actually focused on making good CPU's rather than marketable ones.
  • slundal, on 12/11/2007, -6/+1What the hell is MiB? And Mac OS X tiger works "well" on my 400mhz G3. So how is this news?
    • Mtown, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1Here's some "news" for you. 400mhz is pathetic, get a new computer.
  • grimward, on 12/11/2007, -14/+1Buried: linux spam
  • kelt65, on 12/11/2007, -1/+1it's a good thing too, since firefox will happily take up the slack in memory and cpu usage.
  • happysong, on 03/21/2008, -0/+0i remember when i was drooling over a 1gzh computer. Actually, i remember drooling over a 400mhz computer. it's amazing how much can change in so little time.
    http://download.paramegsoft.com/
    http://www.paramegsoft.com/forum/
  •  

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