On Sun, 2005-11-27 at 11:42 +0000, Bob Dove wrote:
Hi Folks,
Multitasking in 'doze (or any other O/S); err, doesn't this sort of clog up memory? When, if ever, minimising but leave running an app free up the memory? I am a heavy duty user of Photoshop, working mainly on 20+ mB files. I need to close down everything else when working or one image may (and its parts in cache or on scratch disk) just uses up all memory and I go into an involuntary reboot. Which is of course a real pain!
The involuntary reboot is inexcusable.
What should happen is that idle applications should get swapped out of memory...I am almost positive OSX does this and (based on the performance of my Linux box) am pretty sure Linux does it. I frequently have *huge* uncompressed lumps of video loaded in Kino and have often worked on large images in Gimp whilst having a virtual machine running in the background because I simply didn't notice from the system performance.
That said I am sitting on a pretty reasonable machine here so perhaps it's just that I haven't hit it's limits yet.
I'm quite happy to have loads of shortcuts on my VDU virtual 'desktop' but don't allow for background running of other apps - even though 'doze frequently changes my prefs to suit itself. For instance, auto-hide task bar has to be reset daily, multiple windows that have been moved and sized via the very top left icon will revert to default. The dreaded MSM messenger 'service' keeps switching itself on again as does the auto-update routine. The desktop and pointy-clicky is fine, a computer that runs at the whim of BG isn't - hence my interest in Linux.
Yep my job is 80% dealing with Windows boxes and I hate them for the same reasons. Also I hate the way that XP isn't consistent in it's placement of various settings. For example in XP, you may or may not have access to Network Connections and/or Printers and Fax from the start menu depending on a set of hidden rules I am yet to completely fathom...The Control panel can be in brain dead or "classic" view each of which presents a completely different set of options....etc etc
These things make it very hard to direct someone else verbally on how to do something....The same of course is true for Linux due to the diversity of different interfaces, but at least one of the strengths of configuring via a command line is that excepting differences between shells it is pretty consistent.
I just can't wait for the reportedly massively multiple versions of Windows Vista...."Oh so you want to work with Video ?? Sorry you'll need to upgrade to the Vista Platinum Extreme Super Professional Version....You only have the Standard Enterprise Gold version, what the hell did you buy that for ?"
One of the great things about Linux is that things stay configured how you left them...I hope in the quest for ease of use and ease of installation that always remains the case.
However, having to type code on a command line to open OOo leaves me cold.
Me too, I understand what Brett is saying that sometimes it is quicker, but that's only true if you know the filename of the application you are want. To somebody who is using it for the first time what's intuitive about typing "oowriter" to launch a Word Processor ?, Even after the first time why should I have to remember that my Word Processor is called oowriter and not just writer or OOWriter ?
But as Brett has pointed out you can of course resort to using the launch menu (Applications, Office, OpenOffice2 Writer in my case) which is exactly why GUI's are handy sometimes, and whilst they are still handy lets keep developing the bells and whistles ones (Gnome and KDE) The simple and clean ones and experimenting with new ones. Because there is a place for all of them and if we didn't try to innovate past the point of them just being a convenient way of having a couple of windows visible at the same time then we may of well have stuck with a CDE workalike or something.
Actually wasn't that how KDE started ?