Subject: Re: success on 386 (was: Re: Does anybody try to compile...)

[Jeffrey B. Siegal]

> > lot faster. Yes, X+Linux is more complex but I think that the real 
> > reason is that X is portable and written in C: windoze has probably
> > assembly-optimized VGA drivers.
>
> X has very optimised video drivers. Thats a good 250K of your X server. 
> Unrolled loops tuned for old era CPU's like the 386. So no I don't think that
> is why. X is just a bit heavier and without the RAM for it your machine
> thrashes.

I agree that the issue is mostly size, not speed.  What makes X large isn't
primarily the video drivers, it is the whole framework (server, xlib, toolkit,
wm).  The core of Windows 3.1/9x is most if not all hand-written assembler
that is very tight.  X is just much larger.

That said, I think you could get a 4MB system working acceptably well with X
if you used a small window manager and small apps.  Something like GNOME or
KDE is out of the question.