Date: Sat, 19 Aug 1995 10:56:21 -0800 From: "Jim Howard" <jiho@sierra.net> To: freebsd-questions@freefall.FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: 2.0.5 Eager to go into swap Message-ID: <199508191925.AA14684@diamond.sierra.net>
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An ancient exchange between David Greenman and myself went as follows: > >I remember reading a gripe column in BYTE, where a networking support > >guy at Cray was complaining because customers wanted to run X on > >laptops and he couldn't do it for them. He recalled a time when X ran fine > >on Suns with 4 MB of RAM. Now we have a user who likes FreeBSD > >because it runs X fine with 16 MB (although others dispute that even with > >32 MB). I don't see where the basic server (extensions aside) has acquired > >much new functionality to account for the difference. It's just quadrupled > >in size and extrapolated its RAM requirements. > > > >Maybe that's why nobody wants to deal with this issue--it collapses into a > >flame war and nobody can do anything about it anyway! > > There are different levels of "fine"ness. I had a VAXstation-2000 here for > awhile. It runs a version of X11R3...and has only 6MB of RAM. It is absolutely > DOG slow...and not because the CPU is slow, but because it thrashes > constantly. Using it was an absolute pain. Similarly, a MicroVAX with 16MB of > memory also paged a little when running X - especially once you start using > things like gcc which is a complete memory pig (needing >3MB of memory). I finally looked up the original piece in BYTE. It was the February 1993 Stop Bit (page 286) titled "Software Gluttony," by Andy Nicholson, "a senior programmer/analyst working in network software development at Cray Research," and subtitled "A new world of bloated software threatens to consume all computing resources in its path". These are my favorite excerpts: "If users considered notebook computers ineffective because they lack the capacity to run big software, they might be less likely to buy one. But the truth is that users are more willing to buy a notebook computer than to upgrade an existing desktop computer. Thus, a huge new market is caught in a software catch-22, where buyers wait for notebook computers that are powerful enough to run their new software while software developers bog down hardware with ever-larger applications. Programmers must analyze their audience and the limitations of their preferred hardware..... "Some programmers consider this approach to be an unnecessary limitation on their creative abilities..... "Good programmers should always follow the principles of elegance, simplicity, economy, and effectiveness in their work. The aesthetics of quality programming require economical use of resources..... "Big resource-hogging programs are easy to find. The X Window System once ran fine on a 4-MB Sun-3/50 workstation, but the latest version doesn't perk up until you upgrade to an 8-MB Sparcstation. And you better have 16 MB if you want to run programs using boated X toolkits like OpenWindows or Motif....." Greenman refers to a couple of DEC workstations using the VAX architecture. Nicholson was talking about Suns. The hardware was different, and they ran different operating systems underneath X.
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