[Rule-list] (no subject)

[hairylarry at deltaboogie.com]

Hi,

Some tests of IceWM and BrowseX on my 486 33/66 with 16 meg 
ram 540 hd.

This is not a rule install. I don't know how to install X on top of rule 
yet. This is a redhat custom install with only XWindows and 
Networking selected. Then I had to delete a bunch a crap to make it 
fit. The install was done on a pentium and then the hard drive was 
swapped onto the 486 for these tests.

I will be happier when I can run these tests under a rule install 
instead of a kludge install.

I made timings on the pentium (PC 14) and the 486 (unnumbered). 
Attached via LAN to dialup free-bsd server using IP Masquerading.

test                   32M Pentium 166         16M 486DX 33/66
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ctrl-Alt-Del			115 sec 					335 sec
startx				10 sec						40 sec
BrowseX			8 sec						51 sec
Load google		5 sec						29 sec
Load search		5 sec						10 sec

Ok, Ctrl-Alt-Del includes shutdown and startup, login prompt to login 
prompt.

startx and BrowseX are load times.

I tried this install using the Classic X install option. It was much 
slower on the 486. Which leads me to think there may be an x server 
that is faster that XFree86. Any help here? I'll try anything once.

Now for the subjective internet experience.

The 10 second google search is a best case scenario. The same 
search on yahoo is much longer, loading yahoo is much longer. 
Pages with tables and mucho graphics load slowly. Some pages 
with many large graphics either will not load at all or will not load in 
the patience I have alotted for them.

Graphics can be turned off and on. In a pinch you could browse no 
graphics until you find the page that has the pic you got to see. 

If this were the only system I had I would find it useful however there 
would be many pages I regularly visit now that would soon lose their 
lustre. The most important pages, google, slashdot, freshmeat, etc 
would be available. Unfortunately blogger.com was really slow on the 
486.

The fact of the matter is we all browse small subsets of the internet 
and we all have systems that won't display some content that 
someone else would find important. For instance I would love to be 
able to download the redhat image files but because of my dialup 
connection it is impractical.

Students or others working on a system like this would soon find 
pages that meet their interests and load quickly. They would also 
learn to avoid graphics intensive pages the way I have learned to 
avoid flash.

As a side note links ran great on the 486. Very fast and responsive. I 
might browse in links in an xterm and then load pages into browsex if 
I wanted to see the pics.

In terms of rule applications we can have two sets of apps (menus). 
One text based the other, graphic, running under IceWM or some 
other small fast window manager. startx would be on the text based 
menu. The graphic apps can use the window manager for the menu.

IceWM configures with text files so I think installing the apps and 
copying in the text files would do this. Redhat has a directory for 
standard user installs so when new users were added they would 
automatically get their menu, .xinitrc, etc.

Graphical browsing on a 486 with 16 meg is real. I can do it.

Thanks,

Hairy Larry

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