Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2005 22:07:46 -0500 (EST) From: Tom Huppi <thuppi@huppi.com> To: Cesar Mello <cmello@gmail.com> Cc: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Discovered a new browser... Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.58.0501232132010.62842@nuumen.pair.com> In-Reply-To: <c0ee48c50501231737767a674@mail.gmail.com> References: <Pine.BSF.4.58.0501220328220.12163@nuumen.pair.com> <Pine.BSF.4.58.0501220504340.12163@nuumen.pair.com> <41F273B1.8080108@gmx.at> <f686a68a05012300114e3ea8c3@mail.gmail.com> <41F37A75.9020208@gmx.at> <c0ee48c50501231737767a674@mail.gmail.com>
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On Sun, 23 Jan 2005, Cesar Mello wrote: > I use fluxbox and micq. I don't do much web browsing on this machine, > because I vnc to a desktop quite often. But when I have to, I use > dillo. Unfortunatelly xorg, Firefox and OpenOffice are very bad to > memory. :-) > > My view is that fat applications are bad. You can run Microsoft > Windows 95/98/NT, Internet Explorer 6 and Microsoft Office in the same > machine with 32 MB of RAM and it's quite acceptable. It's simply not > possible to even run xorg with Firefox or OpenOffice on this hardware. When I first played wit FreeBSD it was 2.2.6 on an old 486-40/16 (or maybe it was 32MB) which was being thrown out by a relative. I was blown away by how well it worked. I switched my main machine over to FreeBSD a month afterwords and have never looked back. It has been a disappointment to me to come to the realization that it's now a hardship to come up with a workable open-source solution for a P200/32MB system. > I believe there is still chance for ligheweight applications, and as a > software developer I'll ever try to make lightweight apps. Take a look > at third-world countries and you'll see this old hardware simply can't > go to trash. Even here in the so-called 'land of milk and honey' (one of the quaint names we in the US use to describe our nation) there are plenty of folks who just want to e-mail their grandkids now and then and really can't afford to upgrade their hardware and software every three years. > FreeBSD is an excellent OS, I just dream with a GUI that's not as > heavy as currently xorg is. Xorg seems to be the real sticking point. FreeBSD's virtual memory subsystem has long been very good at adjusting to limited resources (dunno if Linux has caught up in this respect yet.) Matt Dillon wrote a nice technical description of how the VM subsystem takes a certain number of page hits in order to gage usage and adjust. It was quite noticeable in terms of responsiveness back in the old days. Thanks, - Tom
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