Re: the same page

[Alan Cox <alan redhat com>]

> My personal feeling is that this will result in the same thing happening
> as happened to Cyrix. Targeting less visible/flashy markets and moving
> to more visible markets hasn't seemed to be a common phenomenuum in the
> computer industry. That's why, for example, while I think its great that
> Linux is getting embedded in all sorts of things I don't think it will
> have a profound impact on penetration into the desktop (since in
> embedded devices Linux is supposed to be invisible). Microsoft has
> partly been successful because they captured what became the most
> visible market, and has used that to move into other markets. Doing the
> reverse has tended to result in death, albeit slow.

The embedded world is over 90% of computing. 

> I also don't think its unreasonable to say "Use an older machine, use
> older software". If you're using a Pentium-200 you should probably
> consider using GNOME 1.4 or Windows98 instead of GNOME 2.0 or WindowsXP.

Or latest releases of Xfce, or KDE. KDE 2 is quite usable on a pentium.
The feature set is not that different - ok nautilus has more than kfm but
in general its the same stuff.

> Its true that you won't have the same features...but if you can always
> get the same features without any hardware upgrades why would anyone
> ever upgrade? Why aren't we still using Commodore64s or whatever?

There are people that do. They even have networking and a web browser. 


Gnome core components need to strive for efficiency. If I can run the same
desktop on my boxes great. I don't expect gimp to work well on a P90, but
my panel, file mangler and help have to.

My persnal belief is there are not _that_ many reasons why gnome is slow.
Those spots need finding and tackling.