> > lot faster. Yes, X+Linux is more complex but I think that the real
> > reason is that X is portable and written in C: windoze has probably
> > assembly-optimized VGA drivers.
>
> X has very optimised video drivers. Thats a good 250K of your X server.
> Unrolled loops tuned for old era CPU's like the 386. So no I don't think that
> is why. X is just a bit heavier and without the RAM for it your machine
> thrashes.
I agree that the issue is mostly size, not speed. What makes X large isn't
primarily the video drivers, it is the whole framework (server, xlib, toolkit,
wm). The core of Windows 3.1/9x is most if not all hand-written assembler
that is very tight. X is just much larger.
That said, I think you could get a 4MB system working acceptably well with X
if you used a small window manager and small apps. Something like GNOME or
KDE is out of the question.
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Feb 23 2000 - 21:00:17 EST