[KLUG Members] Re: RH 7.3...two more cents worth

[Adam Williams]

>>GNOME does not do this (or as bad).
>Ximian Gnome 1.4 has been rock stable for me.  I do everything in Linux,
>from development to gaming to general apps.  It stays up almost
>endlessless.  I even NFS mount my home directory from another system --
>although GConf _does_ seem to have an issue with logging into more than
>one system where the home directory is the same (e.g., NFS mounted).

This is true, multiple instances will confuse gconfd-1.  gconfd-2 is 
supposed to fix this (aka GNOME 2)
 
>The only "kicker" is that I recommend 192MB of RAM.  If you turn off a
>lot of junk, you can probably get down to 64-96MB.  But if you have
>256MB, just use it "as-is."  I have everything from an Athlon 650MHz
>w/256MB RAM to a dual-Athlon 1.4GHz w/1GB RAM and RAID-0 and both
>scream.

Yes,  I have a 256Mb LTSP server.  And it can handle easily three Open 
Office + GNOME + Evo + Galeon users.  After the first person logs in,  the 
other two log in, and memory utilization just doesn't change much... 
Amazing.
  
>>Ask over on the LTSP list about KDE.  It fumbles badly and
>>locks up in multi-user environments,  and several of its
>>subsystems leak memory like a sieve.
>Ouch, sorry to hear that.  Is that just KDE 3?  Or KDE 2.2.x as well?

These messages have been pretty recent.  So I'd guess KDE3. 

>I'm sure Gnome 2 is going to have some issues for awhile too.  In fact,
>Beta 5 is due out anyday and the formal release target has been pushed
>back to late June.  It was originally slated for a March 31st release.

They can take they're time. 1.4.x works,  I want 2.0.x to be solid. 

>>Using KDE for production work where one stays logged on, hammering
>>the system, for 8-10 hours straight is nearly impossible.  The
>>focus of GNOME is to share! share !share! which has the pleasent
>>affect of GNOME getting lighter (more or less) and definitely
>>faster as time goes on.
>A number of uses have said that GTK+ 2.x is a bit "bloated" in areas,
>although code review is improving that.

One must keep in mind that what some geeks consider bloat is too many 
comments in the source code.  I have full confidence in the GNOME people.
 
>>KDE seem (IMHO) to be getting slower and heavier as time goes on.
>>Of course, I'm a pro bonobo bigot... go see:
>>http://www.ph.unimelb.edu.au/~msevior/abiword/evolution-abi2.png
>>http://www.ph.unimelb.edu.au/~msevior/abiword/abi-in-gnumeric.png
>Ximian's been talking about how Bonobo isn't perfect and is considering
>using the "Mono" (Ximian's .NET) approach instead in a future Gnome 3 or
>4.  CORBA support will still be included, but Mono framework would be
>the preferred implementation.  It's just talk right now though, it
>really depends on how much of Mono is completed.  With help from Intel
>and HP, this is actually happening faster than Miguel planned.

Mono (SOAP) or CORBA,  don't much care.  Each seems better for some things 
than others.  I like XML-RPM,  it would be nice to have an API that 
unified all these things,  sort of like an in-GNOME XML-Blaster

>>I can't wait till the OpenOffice to Bonobo bridge is complete.
>I actually cannot wait until AbiWord can read/write Open/StarWriter. 
>Damn if AbiWord isn't becoming the best damn word processor, and I don't
>like word processors in general!  It does LaTeX, DocBook/XML, HTML/XHTML
>and other goodies.  I heard Vi/Emacs bindings are coming too.

Currently one can embed abiword documents in things,  but can't yet embded 
Bonobo objects in abiword,  which really limites usefulness,  especially 
since it doesn't have tables.  Also last I checked it didn't have 
foot-notes.  No foot notes!  Useless in my book. 

>GTK+ 2/Gnome 2 brings anti-aliasing to the table, finally.  I'll
>probably stop using pre-rendered PDFs as my primary presentation format
>and switch back to Open/StarImpress (which I used to use from 1996-2000
>for presentations).

Currently I use the gdkxft anti-alias module for 1.4.x and it works pretty 
well.