> The "processing overhead" of one desktop environment vs. another is > negligible on a modern system. a minimal de like fluxbox/pek written in raw xlib has much less overhead. WinXP properly trimmed also has much less overhead than either Gnome or KDE, as evidenced in how fast it can zip along on a Celeron 500 whereas Gnome or KDE are both unusable slow due to intractible 'lag' for basic operations like window/tab switching, app-launching, etc. kde/gnomelibs->gtk/qt->xlib->xserver->videodriver where windows is just explorer.exe->GDI++ or something.. the 'pulsing' of amarok's 'currently playing' highlight or flickering meters in echomixer are enough to chew 27% of the CPU on my 2ghz a64's - imo this is pretty bad, hopefully some GL replacement for X that is robust enough that it doesnt require 3 layers of libs plus a scripting language binding on top to easily build usable apps..along with drivers that dont suck..can hopefully save me from wanting to install XP or OSX almost every other day.. > On a correctly set up system with > properly written RT apps the desktop won't be able to interfere with the > RT stuff anyway. yep, i can cause dropouts just as easy with fluxbox as kwin, so i use kwin, since easy right-click options to disable borders or enable default geometry is preferable to editing random dubiously formatted textfiles strewn across /etc/ and ~/.de/blah
