On a sunny day (Wed, 11 Dec 2019 09:53:06 -0800) it happened Mike Easter
 wrote in :

>The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> Mike Easter wrote:
>>>
>>> Lighter weight distro/s such as Raspian and others should continue to
>>> get the most attention from ARM devices.
>>
>> It's not the distro that is lightweight: it is simply the lack of CPU
>> sucking javascript in a web browser.
>>
>
>Well, I would say that some distro/s and DEs and browsers focus more on
>being modest in their resource consumption than others.
>
>Ubuntu is 'based on' Debian, but it has its own repo/s; and Ub
>'generally' uses more resources than Debian.
>
>Historically, KDE has been considered a heavier DE, but recent versions
>have shown KDE to be /much/ more modest in resource use than Gnome,
>which doesn't seem to care a fig about how efficient it isn't.  A
>typical Gnome distro might use nearly twice as much resources live to
>the desktop than a typical KDE.
>
>When someone assembles a distro such as Raspbian, they make choices in
>which base, Debian, which DE/WM LXDE/OpenBox and which mail/news agent
>Claws; whereas other distro dev/s make much heavier choices.  The choice
>of Chromium for the default Raspbian browser was a choice leaning toward
>functionality rather than low resources.
>
>> Or X-windows.
>>
>> Ditch a GUI and you can run on a z80.
>
>Well, personally I'm more of a GUI person.  My computing days started w/
>an Atari TOS GUI, so I didn't 'grow up' using a command line.  Nowadays
>I DO use command lines when they do the job I want done more efficiently.
>
>The Raspbian choices for my RPi3B do just fine, resource-wise.  If I
>were a 4G RPi4, the resource management would be different; but I would
>likely use an XFCE Debian.  I'm not sure about the Claws vs Thunderbird
>issue; tho' Tb is VERY bloated, it has some features for news I like
>that Claws doesn't.

On EVERY computa I have, I run Linux and immediately replaced whatever desktop
it has by fvwm and xfm from the late last century.
This gives me 9 virtual desktops,
one has the web browser, one xfm (file manager with those icons ye know)
and the other ones all have a rxvt terminal full screen; foreground white, text
black
the reason for fg white is that with ever varying text the average brightness
does not change
so much and is much more pleasant to the eyes.
The middle xterm is black background and runs alsamixer.
But then I do a lot of programming, much of the stuff running here I wrote
myself.
KDE is out, is bloatware, and that gnome thing I stay clear off.
Most of the GUI programs I write use libforms, the rest writes directly to X.
So same user interface since 1998 or so for all computas I have.
As to libforms, the latest version on debian has been screwed up by the
maintainer
so I compile a very old (original) version from source.

Where I see debian go, and many good programs with it, is getting worse and
worse.
I once had an old Ubuntu on this laptop I use now, maybe I should try the
latest
because Ubuntu has much better support for some special hardware, am radio ham
too,
would be nice if some stuff worked out of the box and not have to spend days
porting things..

Speed? I do not have a problem with speed for the GUI code I write using
libforms.
It seems, and this is really funny, as we are getting to ever higher screen
resolutions,
speed suffers. There is normally NO NEED for those insane screen resolutions (4
k comes to mind)
I am also using a very old PC, using it every day, that runs Xfree86 (from
before that new crap)
has the X mode-lines, for some old programs I use written for 640x480 or
whatever it was,
I just use the ctlr alt backspace switch to switch screen resolution on the fly
so those apps that now become invisible on those screens with insane high
resolution all of the sudden
go fullscreen and can be read even by normal people of my age,
:-) :-)
Where it goes,?? Many times I have though about leaving Linux as it has
alienated itself from Unix so much.
Unix was written for efficiency when resources were expensive,,,
thought free BSD but no experience with that, write my own multitasker (did
that for Z80 once),
or as China is now introducing their own OS as reply to precedent duck's
tariffs, maybe the Chinese OS
Those guys are clever, but my Chinese sucks,
So.. anyways we need a change but that conspiracy between MS and hardware
sellers is the capitalist system self destructive?
OK 'nuf said'.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05