2010 February 17 archive at Robert Pogson

Archive for February 17th, 2010

Resource Hogs

Published by Robert Pogson February 17th, 2010 in technology. 1 Comment

I have always been amazed at how much memory XP needed to amuse one user. I can amuse sixty users in 4 gB RAM. “7″ needs that for one user… Wow! For a lean, mean OS, “7″ is a resource hog. I guess the 600 million XP PCs out there will not be migrating to “7″. They could switch to GNU/Linux instead of staying with obsolete XP.

Seriously. My people are running XP in 256MB with a serious over-commit to virtual memory. I can run 12 users at once and services in 1024 MB with GNU/Linux. That would explain a lot of the speed difference. My terminal server is not swapping.
Update: SJVN opines that “7″ is not a resource hog, but he does say, “Now, that’s not to say that Windows 7 doesn’t require a lot of memory real estate. It does. I recommend a minimum of 2GBs of RAM for 32-bit Windows 7 and 4GBs for 64-bit Windows 7. For choice, I like to give either version at least 6GBs.”

Ah,,, resource hogs are not resource hogs when you give them enough slop… . At least some good comes out of that other OS. The price of big RAM keeps going down because they keep thinking if they just produce more they could make some money, like all of M$’s partners.

- Robert Pogson

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.