27 Sep 2008 JoeNotCharles   » (Journeyer)

Fresh data


So what runs better - OpenOffice or KOffice? Anecdotal evidence says KOffice is slimmer but OpenOffice works better, but it’s very hard to find actual hard numbers on memory and resource usage. And when you do find somebody who’s done a comparison, it invariably dates back to 1995 and it’s totally obsolete.

How about Evolution vs. KMail? Evolution’s much more popular, but there are a few blog posts that offhandedly mention it’s a huge hog compared to Kontact. Which is odd, because there are actual filed bug reports that claim Kontact leaks memory like a sieve. How can I find the truth without installing both and painstakingly testing them in a wide variety of common use cases?

Well, we know that Evolution’s more popular because of the Debian Popularity Contest, where Evolution has a commanding lead. (The “Vote” column is the useful one.) popularity-contest is a Debian (and Ubuntu) package which automatically collects stats on what software is installed and how often it’s used, and I urge everyone to install and enable it now so that it can give a more accurate picture of what’s popular and where developer resources are best spent.

It would be great to have a similar program that automatically collects resource usage statistics for all running programs. Suddenly we’ll have actual hard, fresh data to settle arguments about whether your favourite app is a bloated hog or no worse than everything else! This info would be invaluable for both developers and packagers.

      

Syndicated 2008-09-26 23:28:42 from I Am Not Charles

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