4 ms·

> Windows 9x was slow because hard drives. Now we have SSDs and the desktop is slower than ever still.

squarefoot 3y ago
Desktop became slow when windows and widgets became objects, as in the OOP sense. The transition from hardcoded primitives to objects that would be created and destroyed on the fly slowed things down a lot, but that is the price to pay to have code that runs on very different platforms, also adapting itself to different screen sizes and resolutions, dynamic objects, etc.
- winrid 3y ago
  In C++ it would still be very fast. I doubt you'd notice the difference. The turning point was MS switching to C# for everything. Now built in apps load slow because the code is not JIT compiled yet, and I bet other issues...
- regularfry 3y ago
  So we should expect the introduction of MFC in 1992 to draw the dividing line between the halcyon "fast desktop" days and modern slowness?
- circuit10 3y ago
  I doubt it makes much difference. At least in C++ objects are just structs unless you’re using polymorphism, and tracking a few things like the position of a window can’t be very intensive anyway. It’s probably more things like loading assets and rendering effects and background tasks that slow it down
- nvm0n1 3y ago
  Has there ever been a non Oop GUI toolkit in those days? Even Win32 was kinda "c with objects".
  - bitwize 3y ago
    One of the interesting things about Apple vs. Microsoft in the early days was how differently the two companies handled the mindblow that was the GUI work at Xerox PARC. Apple adopted the UI conventions, and refined, polished, and extended them to create first the Lisa system and then the Mac. But early Mac OS ("System" in those days) was very much based on a procedural, Pascal-based API without much in the way of object orientation. Your app had to handle the close button and the resize grabber itself, for instance -- actually listen for mouse events, determine if there was a click in the appropriate region, and close the window or buzz in a loop drawing the resize rectangle. Utility functions were provided to help with this process, but it still had to be part of your main loop. Dialog boxes were defined with Pascal records. Microsoft, by contrast, hired some of the Xerox PARC engineers away -- guys like Charles Simonyi. The design of Windows reflects this, as Windows more closely reflects the Xerox PARC work at an architectural level. It had from the very earliest days something like an object system. A window belonged to a window class, which contained a single method (the window procedure or WndProc), that processed messages from a flexible and extensible message system. Windows could even be "subclassed" by substituting a different window procedure. This more flexible design allowed the system to provide the necessary decorations (minimize and maximize buttons, a system menu, resize grips and even scrollbars) and the client window would receive messages from them to let it know that, for example, it had been resized or scrolled. The actual mechanics of how these decorations worked could be delegated to the system. The API was still in C, not OO like we know it today, and was a bit cumbersome to use -- but it had more of those object-oriented ideas than early Mac did. Of course, Steve Jobs didn't make the same mistake twice, and for his first post-Mac system, NeXT, he had it based all around object orientation.
safety1st 3y ago
Chicago95 is a theme for XFCE. I run XFCE with i3wm on a SSD and it is insanely, perversely fast. Most of the default apps bundled with XFCE start instantly. The system boots within seconds, no need to consider any type of fast boot, hibernation etc. Native apps boot within seconds. Electron apps are slower, because Electron. A typical XFCE system on startup will allocate around 500MB of RAM, but with the way memory management works on Linux I think it doesn't really need all of that and lets go of it if something else does. It is kind of a barebones desktop environment, but certainly has a lot more stuff packed in than Win9x did and for a little extra disk space you can cherry pick whatever Gnome and KDE utilities you want anyway. So I think this phenomenon of slow modern desktops is a Windows/Mac problem, if you want one that's lightning fast, they're out there.
- stavros 3y ago
  I do want one that's lightning fast, thank you. If it launches a terminal and a browser, I'm good. I'll try this for my new NUC, thanks for the tip!
  - pocketarc 3y ago
    I'll second the parent's experience, it's actually kind of insane how fast XFCE is. With the Chicago95 theme, the feeling you end up with is: "how fast would Windows 95 be if you ran it on modern hardware" It is actually just astounding, to the point that you end up feeling "jesus is my hardware really that fast?".
    - stavros 3y ago
      Is it stock XFCE, or do I need anything else? Can I just install xubuntu-desktop and that's it?
      - KronisLV 3y ago
        Xubuntu was mentioned, which is nice. Some folks might also enjoy the Linux Mint XFCE version, which I personally run: https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=307 https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=307 (more or less Ubuntu sans snaps, though their Cinnamon desktop is also reasonably okay, even if not quite as snappy as XFCE)

Desktop became slow when windows and widgets became objects, as in the OOP sense. The transition from hardcoded primitives to objects that would be created and destroyed on the fly slowed things down a lot, but that is the price to pay to have code that runs on very different platforms, also adapting itself to different screen sizes and resolutions, dynamic objects, etc.

winrid 3y ago
In C++ it would still be very fast. I doubt you'd notice the difference. The turning point was MS switching to C# for everything. Now built in apps load slow because the code is not JIT compiled yet, and I bet other issues...
regularfry 3y ago
So we should expect the introduction of MFC in 1992 to draw the dividing line between the halcyon "fast desktop" days and modern slowness?
circuit10 3y ago
I doubt it makes much difference. At least in C++ objects are just structs unless you’re using polymorphism, and tracking a few things like the position of a window can’t be very intensive anyway. It’s probably more things like loading assets and rendering effects and background tasks that slow it down
nvm0n1 3y ago
Has there ever been a non Oop GUI toolkit in those days? Even Win32 was kinda "c with objects".
- bitwize 3y ago
  One of the interesting things about Apple vs. Microsoft in the early days was how differently the two companies handled the mindblow that was the GUI work at Xerox PARC. Apple adopted the UI conventions, and refined, polished, and extended them to create first the Lisa system and then the Mac. But early Mac OS ("System" in those days) was very much based on a procedural, Pascal-based API without much in the way of object orientation. Your app had to handle the close button and the resize grabber itself, for instance -- actually listen for mouse events, determine if there was a click in the appropriate region, and close the window or buzz in a loop drawing the resize rectangle. Utility functions were provided to help with this process, but it still had to be part of your main loop. Dialog boxes were defined with Pascal records. Microsoft, by contrast, hired some of the Xerox PARC engineers away -- guys like Charles Simonyi. The design of Windows reflects this, as Windows more closely reflects the Xerox PARC work at an architectural level. It had from the very earliest days something like an object system. A window belonged to a window class, which contained a single method (the window procedure or WndProc), that processed messages from a flexible and extensible message system. Windows could even be "subclassed" by substituting a different window procedure. This more flexible design allowed the system to provide the necessary decorations (minimize and maximize buttons, a system menu, resize grips and even scrollbars) and the client window would receive messages from them to let it know that, for example, it had been resized or scrolled. The actual mechanics of how these decorations worked could be delegated to the system. The API was still in C, not OO like we know it today, and was a bit cumbersome to use -- but it had more of those object-oriented ideas than early Mac did. Of course, Steve Jobs didn't make the same mistake twice, and for his first post-Mac system, NeXT, he had it based all around object orientation.

safety1st 3y ago

Chicago95 is a theme for XFCE. I run XFCE with i3wm on a SSD and it is insanely, perversely fast. Most of the default apps bundled with XFCE start instantly. The system boots within seconds, no need to consider any type of fast boot, hibernation etc. Native apps boot within seconds. Electron apps are slower, because Electron. A typical XFCE system on startup will allocate around 500MB of RAM, but with the way memory management works on Linux I think it doesn't really need all of that and lets go of it if something else does. It is kind of a barebones desktop environment, but certainly has a lot more stuff packed in than Win9x did and for a little extra disk space you can cherry pick whatever Gnome and KDE utilities you want anyway. So I think this phenomenon of slow modern desktops is a Windows/Mac problem, if you want one that's lightning fast, they're out there.

stavros 3y ago
I do want one that's lightning fast, thank you. If it launches a terminal and a browser, I'm good. I'll try this for my new NUC, thanks for the tip!
- pocketarc 3y ago
  I'll second the parent's experience, it's actually kind of insane how fast XFCE is. With the Chicago95 theme, the feeling you end up with is: "how fast would Windows 95 be if you ran it on modern hardware" It is actually just astounding, to the point that you end up feeling "jesus is my hardware really that fast?".
  - stavros 3y ago
    Is it stock XFCE, or do I need anything else? Can I just install xubuntu-desktop and that's it?
    - KronisLV 3y ago
      Xubuntu was mentioned, which is nice. Some folks might also enjoy the Linux Mint XFCE version, which I personally run: https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=307 https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=307 (more or less Ubuntu sans snaps, though their Cinnamon desktop is also reasonably okay, even if not quite as snappy as XFCE)