why is the Gnome desktop environment so slow!!!

[Armenteros Roberto]

Hi all,

All major distributions always refer to Gnome as the
Desktop environment of choice. I really cant
understand why this is so since this is such a slow
environment. Graphics are nice, but performance is
really bad. The drawing capabilities are so poor.
Windows take forever to open. Nautilius is just a
heavy old rino. "I have an NVidia GeForce 2 Ti which
is supposed to handle graphics like cake." If you guys
do anything to the gnome environment to make it faster
or have found a good alternative to Nautilius please
let me know. Not that I am going to abandon BlackBox
"I would never do so" but sometimes my sister wants to
use my computer and she needs an easy environment.
"When she uses Gnome she is always complaining..." I
already gave up with KDE by the way.

Thanks for your help...

Rob.

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[Erik Steffl]

Armenteros Roberto wrote:
... <about gnome> ...

Post by Armenteros Roberto
environment. Graphics are nice, but performance is
really bad. The drawing capabilities are so poor.
Windows take forever to open. Nautilius is just a
heavy old rino. "I have an NVidia GeForce 2 Ti which
is supposed to handle graphics like cake." If you guys

are you sure you are using right X server with all the optimisations
enabled?

are you sure you have enough memory? my guess is that not enough RAM
is the problem... use gkrellm or xosview or something like that to see
how much memory is used (and use top, press M (or lavaps or some other
program) to see who uses the memory)

Post by Armenteros Roberto
do anything to the gnome environment to make it faster
or have found a good alternative to Nautilius please
let me know. Not that I am going to abandon BlackBox
"I would never do so" but sometimes my sister wants to
use my computer and she needs an easy environment.
"When she uses Gnome she is always complaining..." I
already gave up with KDE by the way.

you can setup almost any WM to be easy to use (some obvious way to
launch common applications, easy access to menu, window
decoration/control that she understands etc.). so you might want to use
some other WM, fvwm is particularly flexible (not particularly easy to
configure but whatever she likes can probably be configured in fvwm) and
fairly light-weight...

erik

[Jamin W. Collins]

On Wed, 24 Jul 2002 07:29:32 -0700 (PDT) Armenteros Roberto

Post by Armenteros Roberto
Hi all,
All major distributions always refer to Gnome as the
Desktop environment of choice. I really cant
understand why this is so since this is such a slow
environment.

IMHO, this is because an amazing number of people want a Windows-like
interface on their Linux box. Just take a look at a default Gnome or KDE
configuration and you'll see what I mean. Personally, I couldn't get away
from that fast enough, but that's just me.

Post by Armenteros Roberto
Graphics are nice, but performance is
really bad. The drawing capabilities are so poor.
Windows take forever to open. Nautilius is just a
heavy old rino. "I have an NVidia GeForce 2 Ti which
is supposed to handle graphics like cake."

That is assuming that you are using the optimized driver from nVidia. I'm
guessing from your post that you're not.

Post by Armenteros Roberto
If you guys
do anything to the gnome environment to make it faster
or have found a good alternative to Nautilius please
let me know. Not that I am going to abandon BlackBox
"I would never do so" but sometimes my sister wants to
use my computer and she needs an easy environment.

What is it she's looking for:
- An easy menu to launch her applications from?
- A graphical file manager?
- A file manager that's also capable of browsing web pages?

There are many other possibilities, but without a clear definition of what
she's after, suggestions are just shots in the dark.

So, here's my shot in the dark, take a look at ROX (rox.sf.net).

[Ron Johnson]

Post by Jamin W. Collins
On Wed, 24 Jul 2002 07:29:32 -0700 (PDT) Armenteros Roberto

[snip]

Post by Jamin W. Collins
- An easy menu to launch her applications from?

The toolbar at the bottom of the screen works for me. You
can put ~13 icons down there...

Post by Jamin W. Collins
- A graphical file manager?

Do you _really_ need one? I find Windows Exploder (at work)
very useful, but don't see that same need in Linux.

Post by Jamin W. Collins
- A file manager that's also capable of browsing web pages?

Konqueor *rocks* at being a file manager, but is only a
so-so web browser. I say: use dedicated products.

Of course, these are all just MHOs
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| Jefferson, LA USA |
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| "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment |
| by men of zeal, well-meaning, but without understanding." |
| Justice Louis Brandeis, dissenting, Olmstead v US (1928) |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+

[Jamin W. Collins]

Post by Ron Johnson
Of course, these are all just MHOs

I agree with most of them. Personally, I've weened myself off almost all
eye-candy and GUI-crutches. I too prefer a very slim desktop and
applications, it's the reason I've selected the applications I have.
However, there are quite a few users out there that don't see things this
way. Gnome and KDE desktop environments (and others like them) wouldn't
be around if there weren't users/developers that wanted them.

[James Hughes]

Post by Armenteros Roberto
Hi all,
All major distributions always refer to Gnome as the
Desktop environment of choice. I really cant
understand why this is so since this is such a slow
environment. Graphics are nice, but performance is
really bad. The drawing capabilities are so poor.
Windows take forever to open. Nautilius is just a
heavy old rino. "I have an NVidia GeForce 2 Ti which
is supposed to handle graphics like cake." If you guys
do anything to the gnome environment to make it faster
or have found a good alternative to Nautilius please
let me know. Not that I am going to abandon BlackBox
"I would never do so" but sometimes my sister wants to
use my computer and she needs an easy environment.
"When she uses Gnome she is always complaining..." I
already gave up with KDE by the way.
Thanks for your help...

I love Gnome, but I agree it's slow. I have a 500MHz Celeron laptop
with 128 megs RAM: not exactly a dream system, but still...
I can (and do) use Gnome without too much annoyance, but for a
while I was trying to use things like Nautilus and Evolution--once they
fired up (with Galeon running) the system was basically unusable.

A file manager I like quite a bit is gentoo (no, not the distro).
It's lightweight, and very configurable. The UI is a lot different
from the Nautilus/Explorer way of looking at the filesystem, but is way
more powerful IMO.

James

[Michael P. Soulier]

I can't stand Gnome, for the most part. It's slow, the software is buggy,
it ignores X resources, and in many ways it recreates much of what I dislike
about windows. As I spend most of my time in xterms and editors, my desktop
environment requirements are quite small. Personally I think sawfish rocks all
by itself, as does IceWM.

Mike

Post by Armenteros Roberto
Hi all,
All major distributions always refer to Gnome as the
Desktop environment of choice. I really cant
understand why this is so since this is such a slow
environment. Graphics are nice, but performance is
really bad. The drawing capabilities are so poor.
Windows take forever to open. Nautilius is just a
heavy old rino. "I have an NVidia GeForce 2 Ti which
is supposed to handle graphics like cake." If you guys
do anything to the gnome environment to make it faster
or have found a good alternative to Nautilius please
let me know. Not that I am going to abandon BlackBox
"I would never do so" but sometimes my sister wants to
use my computer and she needs an easy environment.
"When she uses Gnome she is always complaining..." I
already gave up with KDE by the way.
Thanks for your help...
Rob.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Health - Feel better, live better
http://health.yahoo.com
--

[Paul Johnson]

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Post by Armenteros Roberto
All major distributions always refer to Gnome as the
Desktop environment of choice. I really cant
understand why this is so since this is such a slow
environment. Graphics are nice, but performance is

Desktop environments (oppose Window manager) tend to be slow in
general no matter what platform. Windows9x is slow compared to
Windows <3.11, KDE is slow compared to flat window manager, Gnome is
slow compared to a flat window manager, CDE is just plain slow.

Post by Armenteros Roberto
let me know. Not that I am going to abandon BlackBox
"I would never do so" but sometimes my sister wants to
use my computer and she needs an easy environment.
"When she uses Gnome she is always complaining..." I
already gave up with KDE by the way.

Does she have her own login, I hope?

I'm sure there might be some ways of getting epsilon improvements out
of it, but realise trying to make a desktop environment run quickly
tends to be roughly as successful as putting a polished shine on a
lump of shit. Good luck!

- --
Baloo


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[Larry Smith]

Dunno.

But it's one of the reasons I use FVMW2 or FVMW95

Post by Armenteros Roberto
Hi all,
All major distributions always refer to Gnome as the
Desktop environment of choice. I really cant
understand why this is so since this is such a slow
environment. Graphics are nice, but performance is
really bad. The drawing capabilities are so poor.
Windows take forever to open. Nautilius is just a
heavy old rino. "I have an NVidia GeForce 2 Ti which
is supposed to handle graphics like cake." If you
guys
do anything to the gnome environment to make it
faster
or have found a good alternative to Nautilius please
let me know. Not that I am going to abandon BlackBox
"I would never do so" but sometimes my sister wants
to
use my computer and she needs an easy environment.
"When she uses Gnome she is always complaining..." I
already gave up with KDE by the way.
Thanks for your help...
Rob.
__________________________________________________
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Yahoo! Health - Feel better, live better
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[Sam Williams]

Post by Armenteros Roberto
Hi all,
All major distributions always refer to Gnome as the
Desktop environment of choice. I really cant
understand why this is so since this is such a slow
environment.

I agree that it is not the fastest environment. However, I find that if
I run a light gtk theme, use fluxbox as wm and load only the panel &
session manager at login, it's speed is ok on my laptop (P4 500 /
128MB).

I use rox (http://rox.sourceforge.net/rox_filer.php3) as a file manager
- very fast, easy to configure and simple to use. I quite like some of
the nautilus themes, so I configured rox to use the nautilus icons. Now
it looks almost as good and operates about 10 times faster than
nautilus. You might find that rox is powerfull enough to do away with
the gnome environment completely - run it in pinboard mode when you log
in and it will draw the root window like nautilus does. Then just
provide icons for all the stuff your sister uses. Hey presto, a drag and
drop desktop environment.

Using a light weight gtk theme seems to make a huge difference to the
performance of Evolution, my PIM software of choice. If you want a quick
and intuitive email client, try slypheed. IMHO galeon is the best web
browser on the planet - it's interface is fast and light, plus it uses
the excellent mozilla "gecko" engine to render pages.

Sam

Post by Armenteros Roberto
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