[vox] SuSE Bloat

[jim stockford]

    if you strip out a lot of what SUSE provides out of
the can, what's the point of using SUSE? This is a
question unless there's no good answer.



On Feb 2, 2006, at 1:11 PM, Bill Kendrick wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 02, 2006 at 12:57:42PM -0800, Bob Scofield wrote:
>> Last night I read that SuSE 10.0 requires 256 megs, and that 510 megs 
>> is
>> recommended.  Isn't this a bit much?  How do other distros stack up in
>> comparison?  Do people think SuSE is getting out of hand here, or is 
>> this the
>> norm for any contemporary desktop whether it be Windows or Linux?
>
> Well, I think the issue is that SUSE is saying what your full desktop
> environment might require.  That's not "Linux", though.  That's Linux 
> plus
> whatever desktop and desktop apps (and perhaps related 
> services/servers)
> are running.
>
> I'd imaging it'd be possible to strip down SUSE and make it into a nice
> server-only environment, or something that runs TWM + Rox(?) + Xterm,
> instead of GNOME + Nautilus + everything else + GNOME Terminal,
> or KDE + Konqueror + everything else + Konsole.  And it would certainly
> not require 256-512MB of RAM.
>
> My wife recently (in the last year?) upgraded her Thinkpad T20 from 
> 128MB
> to 512MB.  She's running Debian, KDE 3 and Firefox.  Her main problem 
> was
> that she had insanely complicated graphics she was trying to manipulate
> using Inkscape.  And large scanned pictures she was editing (with lots 
> of
> layers) in The Gimp.
>
> So in the end, it depends on what you want to do with it.  If you're 
> going
> to stick with whatever default config. SUSE puts in front of you, then
> a 256-512MB RAM requirement makes sense.  But you probably don't need 
> to
> _live_ with SUSE's default config., and can likely scale down your UI
> (and shut down services that you don't use) to make it fit your 
> hardware's
> capabilities...
>
>
> (Ob disclaimer: This is coming from someone who's never used SUSE or 
> SuSE.
> ;^) )
>
> -- 
> -bill!                                    Tux Paint 2006 wall calendar,
> bill at newbreedsoftware.com                CDROM, bumper sticker & 
> apparel
> http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/       
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