[mdlug] What Intel Giveth, Microsoft Taketh Away

[Robert Adkins]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mdlug-bounces at mdlug.org 
> [mailto:mdlug-bounces at mdlug.org] On Behalf Of Brian Hurley
> Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2007 9:05 AM
> To: mdlug at mdlug.org
> Cc: linux-user at egr.msu.edu; The WFTL LUG
> Subject: Re: [mdlug] What Intel Giveth, Microsoft Taketh Away
> 
> On Saturday 17 November 2007, Michael Rudas wrote:
> > LOL
> >
> > I mention this kind of thing on a Linux list because most peoples'
> > perceptions of what a computer IS are so heavily influence by 
> > Microsoft software, so it impacts us all -- and MS has become an 
> > anchor, dragging all computer users to the briny depths of Trojans, 
> > spyware, and wasted computer power...
> >
> > "Case in point: Microsoft Office 2007 which, when deployed 
> on Windows  
> >Vista, consumes over 12x as much memory and nearly 3x as much  
> >processing power as the version that graced PCs just 7 short 
> years ago  
> >(Office 2000)."
> > 
> ><http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2007/09/what-intel-giveth-micro
> soft-taket
> >h-aw
> >ay.html>
> 
> I wonder how many X memory and processing power KDE or GNOME 
> system using Star/Open Office has increased since 2000. 
> Bloatware isn't a MS-only phenomenon.
> 
> --
> Brian Hurley
> Detroit Industrial Underground
> www.detroitindustrial.org
> 

	I'm taking a DBA course in which we are using Oracle 10g running on
a VMWare Player ran Windows Server 2003.

	The classroom is decked out with brand spanking new dual-core
workstations with 1GB of RAM, Windows Vista and all other other latest bells
and whistles. The default setup on these machines are pretty lean and thus
should run pretty mean.

	As a test for personal interest, I upgrade the HD on my laptop for
the space, tossed OpenSuSe 10.3 and VMWare Player and pulled up the VM
Windows 2003 Server. While hardly a rigorous scientific test, I can say that
the VM (on my single core 4+ year old laptop, also with 1GB of RAM) performs
roughly 3 times faster under OpenSuSe 10.3 than is does under Windows Vista
on a brand spanking new dual-core system. (Not that this should matter, both
the laptop and the workstation at the school are Dell systems.)

	Oracle 10g uses a number of Java programs for GUI access to the DBMS
and under OpenSuSe10.3, those open up within 30 seconds. Under the VM on
WinVista, they can take upwards of 3 minutes to launch.

	I am running KDE as my primary desktop and while I was also running
OpenOffice2.x while running the VM to cut/paste elements into the VM that
were needed for populating a table within the DB and also to answer the
provided questions for the lab work.

	Anyway, the sigficant difference in bloat between Microsoft products
and Open Source products has a great deal more to do with the underlying
development model than anything else.

	Open Source software isn't designed to force users into a corner by
tying everything together in a way that makes picking and choosing elements
to run difficult to impossible. Open Source software is very modular,
OpenOffice, for example, doesn't give a rat's behind what you are running it
on top of. It isn't looking for secret hooks in the file browser, it isn't
seeking special options specific to it buried within the kernel, it just
does it's job, which is to run as an office application suite.

	Microsoft software, as found in the "Findings of Fact" from the
trial that convicted them of abusing monopoly powers, is written with secret
hooks and undocumented elements in otherwise completely unrelated libraries
to tie all of their software together. This has added unnecssary complexity
to the software development process.

	As myself and many others have speculated, since the "Findings of
Fact" and prior to that documents existnece, this development model was
destined to bite Microsoft on the ass harder then anything. It appears, with
Windows Vista, that this is happening.

	Perhaps the only interesting thing to come out of the Vista
development process is that Microsoft is "seeing the light" and with their
next edition of Windows has been currently claiming to be following a
significantly more modular design model. From what I have seen, they are
even going so far as to claim that this development model is new and novel.
As if the entire history of the development of UNIX and Linux as well as
many other truly modular development models simply never existed.

	Sorry for rambling,
	Rob