So I found myself sitting for an extended period of time with my wife’s iBook in my lap, setting up a new user (me) and setting up a workable environment. For me, this includes all sorts of things that she cares nothing about, such as the Apple Developer Tools, MySQL, Apache 2, Emacs, HTMLDoc, and a few other things.
In the process, I discovered, like many that came before me and no doubt many who will come after, that Mozilla on OS X is unbearably slow. I wish, I wish, I wish it were usable, because it’s free software, and I like free software, and I try to use free software whenever possible, and I use Mozilla on all my other machines. It’s usable on all my Windows machines. It’s usable on all my Linux machines. But it is unusably slow on a 600 Mhz G3 laptop with 256 MB of RAM running OS X 10.2.8.
I don’t mean to be mean. I know how much effort goes into a behemoth project like Mozilla. I’ve donated to the Mozilla Foundation and will no doubt contribute more in my lifetime. But sweet Jesus, Mozilla is all but unusable. Camino is also quite slow, and appears to be a dwindling but rabid fan club. Firebird on OS X has basic problems like redraw. Opera has no tabs. OmniWeb would be ideal (it uses WebCore now, so no more CSS compatibility problems) if I cared about its advanced features enough to pay for them, but I don’t. So Safari it is. With PithHelmet, of course. When in Rome.
Speaking of when in Rome
, I have removed contrib and non-free from my sources.list on my Debian server, and removed all pre-installed packages that were not in main. I was not at all surprised to learn (via apt-cache search non-free) that there is a Debian package named vrms that facilitates this. The only non-DFSG-approved software left on my server is Movable Type.
I received an email yesterday from someone @debian.org who would like to create a Debian package out of Dive Into Python. I am working on a few tweaks in my build scripts to facilitate this, and it should be accepted within a few days. Whether it will stay in Debian in anybody’s guess at this point, since debian-legal is currently in a blood feud with Richard Stallman over the meaning of the word free
as it relates to the GNU Free Documentation License. Dive Into Python does not avail itself of any of the objectionable provisions of the GFDL (specifically Invariant Sections and Front/Back-Cover Texts), but debian-legal may decide that the entire license is unacceptable for this or any number of other reasons, and that any document covered by the license has the potential to become non-free, and that that is enough to declare the entire document non-free. At which point I and several thousand other free documentation authors around the world will be left holding the bag with free documentation that we licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License specifically so it would be considered free, which isn’t considered free.
This is not terribly amusing.
I have a new life policy: All other things being equal, avoid empowering lunatics.
There are two difficult parts to this; one, that all other things are never actually equal, and two, that it’s harder than you might think to figure out who the lunatics are. I’ve read everything there is to read in the discussion between the debian-legal team and Richard Stallman, and I’m still undecided as to who is the bigger lunatic. (If you look around the poker table and can’t figure out who the sucker is, it’s you.)
When in Rome.
Still, if debian-legal decides the GFDL is non-free, I will look into relicensing Dive Into Python to a Debian-approved license.
On my Debian server, I run 100% Free Software except the one web application I use most. On Windows, I program in Visual Studio .NET but write a free book in Emacs. On Mac OS X, I run Safari.
When in Rome, do as the lunatics do.
What is “slow” about Camino? The nightly builds are fast for all thing but that evil initial launch.
Comment by James — Saturday, October 11, 2003 @ 3:34 am
I have had horrible luck in the past with the nightly builds. There has been no official point release in months, and every time I download a nightly build it seems there is a show-stopping bug. Maybe I just got lucky. I’ll give it another try.
Comment by Mark — Saturday, October 11, 2003 @ 3:39 am
Firebird is supposed to be “wicked fast”[1] under OS X. Why not use it?
[1] http://www.applelinks.com/articles/2003/08/20030804091825.shtml
Comment by Scott — Saturday, October 11, 2003 @ 4:05 am
I’m using the exact same iBook (600 Mhz G3, OS X 10.2.8) but I have stuffed it up to 640 MB of RAM. Mozilla is definiately usable on this. Maybe it helps to give it a _lot_ of memory on slower machines?
Comment by Thijs van der Vossen — Saturday, October 11, 2003 @ 4:41 am
Scott, re-read the text..he states why he isn’t using Firebird.
Comment by Hork — Saturday, October 11, 2003 @ 6:01 am
“Opera has no tabs”
But isn’t it supposed to be the first browser that implemented tabs?
Comment by riccard0 — Saturday, October 11, 2003 @ 6:21 am
This might be off topic, but I have a question: if the GFDL might not free, what is a good alternative? I’m in the process of moving a travel information site to free content and we’re just about to decide on the license.
Comment by Douwe Osinga — Saturday, October 11, 2003 @ 7:18 am
I have the same iBook with 384 MB of Ram, and Mozilla is still horrendously slow for me. The only time i whip it out is when I need to debug some javascript.
Camino is a little bit better, but still seems to suffer from general interface sluggishness (click on a tab, watch the tab highlight, then watch the page switch). I prefer Camino, but Safari reacts so much faster it’s become my default.
Comment by alan — Saturday, October 11, 2003 @ 9:47 am
I’ve used Mozilla 1.4 on the exact configuration you describe (600 Mhz G3 with 256 MB of RAM running OS X 10.2.8, except that it wasn’t a laptop but a desktop), no sooner than last thursday, and I didn’t find it slow at all. Strange. Maybe there are some obscure optimization parameters hidden somewhere.
Comment by David — Saturday, October 11, 2003 @ 9:50 am
MacOSX barely works at all in 256MB, and Mozilla (that behemoth) can hardly be expected to function.
For $82 (shipping included):
MacSeek
you can bump the memory configuration up to 640MB, which will be a *whole lot* nicer.
I don’t know about you, but for me the frustration and time wasted in trying to run MacOSX in your configuration would rapidly add up to the $82 required to fix it.
Comment by Jacques Distler — Saturday, October 11, 2003 @ 10:31 am
That URL again (for those with URL-impared comment sections — preview first and the “auto-linked” URLs disappear):
http://www.macseek.com/scripts/sortPriceShip.php?modelId=1&sortSize=512mb&shipping=true
Comment by Jacques Distler — Saturday, October 11, 2003 @ 10:33 am
Douwe: that’s not off-topic at all. Currently I believe debian-legal is recommending a dual license of GFDL/GPL, with a note on what you mean by “source code” in the context of your book. There is also the Creative Commons ShareAlike license, but I’m not sure it’s been vetted by debian-legal, and I know it hasn’t been vetted by my editor.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sa/1.0/
Comment by Mark — Saturday, October 11, 2003 @ 10:34 am
Mozilla and Firebird are unbearably slow on a Windows P3 650 with 128Mb of memory, too. Why?
Not enough memory.
M&F are both memory pigs, and because the UI is implemented in javascript, it tends to get paged out regularly.
I don’t buy the “throw more memory at it” solution. Sure memory is cheap, but that’s no excuse for inefficiency…
Comment by Harald — Saturday, October 11, 2003 @ 10:57 am
Jacques, I’ve taken your advice and ordered 512 MB memory chips for both my iMac and my wife’s iBook. Thanks.
Comment by Mark — Saturday, October 11, 2003 @ 11:01 am
It should be noted, however, that Safari runs perfectly fine on my 128 MB iMac and my wife’s 256 MB iBook, both running 10.2.8.
Comment by Mark — Saturday, October 11, 2003 @ 11:11 am