impleri

Since today marks the advent of Microsoft’s latest scheme, Vista, i thought i would post a short opinion on one of its latest “technologies.” Vista now has a feature called “Readyboost.” When your Vista system is low on memory (which seems easier now than ever), you can plug in a USB drive to use as additional cache. Yes, if the 1-2Gb of cache Windows has already allocated isn’t enough, you can add more. Now, that seems nifty at first glance, but when other systems (such as Linux) manage their resources well enough that this is never a problem, why would it be considered a “good” thing?
Take, for instance, my system. i decided to quickly take a snapshot of my desktop with a resource meter running (ksysguard). Like normal, i have multiple things running: a local Subversion repository, apache2 web server, MySQL database, KDE, gAIM (sorta like Trillian in that it accesses most, if not all, IM networks), Quanta+ (sorta like Dreamweaver), kdesvn (a graphical Subversion program to track changes in real-time to what i’m working on in Quanta), Iceweasel (a rebranded Firefox), Icedove (a rebranded Thunderbird), Amarok (a better-than-iTunes audio player), knotes (a sticky pad notes program), knewsticker (a scrolling RSS reader), akregator (a normal RSS reader), Liquid Weather++ (a weather widget on the desktop), Riding with Robots (another widget that gets an image from one of the various space exploration robots daily), conky (a desktop widget that reports system info). With all of that running, my simple 1 Gb of RAM is used up 70% (700Mb*), and 8 Mb of cache is used (out of 2 Gb). And just to be fair, i have a “start” menu application running that is more graphical (KBFX Spinx) as well as a taskbar that takes a snapshot of every program running and gives me a popup of the screen when i hover over the application (Taskbar v2, picture below). Oh, and to add one more thing: my uptime is currently 8 and a half days…and that was because i had a power outage last week.
So, why should someone fork out $200+ to run a system that hogs resources, wants you to add more cache space by using up your USB drive? Is it because of Office? That’s the only reason i can think of. Except that OpenOffice and KOffice both read and write in MS Office formats….as well as PDF. Internet browser? Try Firefox/Iceweasel/Flock (if you haven’t already), Konqueror, Galeon, or Opera. They all run in Linux. Oh, and you can also get Internet Explorer to work in Linux if you really want it. Instant messaging? AOL’s AIM has a Linux package, but there’s also gAIM and Kopete for Linux that handle all the platforms (i’m currently on MSN, Yahoo, AIM, Jabber, GoogleTalk, and ICQ). Email (Outlook)? Thunderbird/Icedove and Evolution both run in Linux and do as much–if not more–than Outlook. iTunes? Amarok, XMMS, JuK, kaboodle all run in Linux. Amarok syncs with iPods without a problem**. Video games? OK, you got me there…except that Doom3, Quake4, and others run in Linux. Oh, i get it, you really like Microsoft’s Age of Empires III. The interface? Well, both KDE and Gnome can be customized to look and feel just like Windows (i think the Ubuntu versions default to that). DVDs? xine plays DVDs without a problem. Burning CDs/DVDs? K3B does it better than Nero or Roxio. Photoshop? theGIMP does everything Photoshop can do (with a few exception in reading PSD layers). Your digital camera? Try digiKam or any of the Gphoto2 programs…they not only access your digital camera without a problem, but they can organize your photos in any way you want. Quicken? Look at GnuCash. Wireless card? Well, some cards are hard to get working, but the majority of them are now working fine from the kernel (i.e., they “just work”). Need help getting yours working? Most Linux geeks can walk you through ndiswrapper and getting it to work (including me). There is really no excuse for a normal desktop user. Heck, chances are, if there isn’t a Linux equivalent, you can still use your Windows version through Wine.

Photos:

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*: While the photo shows on 35Mb free, that is counting the programs actively running, which is not always the case.  The difference is in the “overhead” allowed for the change between a “sleep” state and an active state.  While in a “sleep” state, that overhead memory can be used by any program, including a new one.
**: The only problem is that you can’t access the iTunes Music Store in Linux because there isn’t a legal interface for it. There are some programs that still access it, though…