rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) (04/15/91)
(Whew! I was beginning to think we'd not see anyone defending fat software.) root@NEXTSERVER.CS.STTHOMAS.EDU (Max Tardiveau) writes: > This is obviously a matter of opinion. While I agree with you that > windowing systems take a large amount of power, I would argue that > it is not too much... We only agreed that X sucks up a lot of compute power; we didn't agree that a window system running on UNIX needed a lot of compute power (CPU or memory). I see no reason to believe that it does. Nothing I've ever read or heard of the work at Bell Labs suggests that window systems need a lot of power. >...I like having nice graphics on my workstation, > and I like to have responsive windows... Fine...but what does this (particularly the latter half) have to do with X??? There are other ways to get nice graphics, and X doesn't give you responsive windows. (See Doug Gwyn's earlier note.) >...And, like most people, I use > only a small portion of the processing power of my workstations > (show me a Sparcstation that's 100% busy 100% of the time. There > are probably a few, but not a whole lot). Show me a car that's driven at top speed (or even maximum legal speed) 100% of the time. The maximum compute power exists to serve your maximum needs; it's a peak (not-to-exceed:-) figure. Sure, most of the time the CPU is sitting idle...but when you get something that's heavy on computing going, you want the CPU available. If that compute-intensive task also does any significant amount of display, the cost of a fat window system drags you down. If you're saying that you've generally got more compute power than you need, that's still not a vindication of X; it just reinforces what other folks have said here: that software bloat serves hardware manufacturers by creating an artificial demand for faster CPUs and more memory. -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd Boulder, CO (303)449-2870 ...While you were reading this, Motif grew by another kilobyte.