[ginoledesma]

I tried out Darwin on another PPC box (G4/400 256MB RAM) without Aqua and it was kinda fast. However, I wouldn't know how to rate speed on a pure CLI environment. I doubt SETI@Home would be a good benchmark.

Mac OS X's sluggishness is perhaps attributed to Aqua and other layers on top of Darwin, such as Quartz and Classic. I mention the latter since I've found that my Mac OS X system is "ok" without Classic loaded. However, surfing (using OmniWeb) isn't as snappy as it was in Mac OS 9.x.

I've run LinuxPPC 2000 before as well as YellowDog Linux. Working with GNOME was faster than working with Aqua. Unfortunately, I didn't stay long with Linux on PPC since the apps I needed to run wasn't available. There were other problems as well, such as the delay in updates for PPC packages. But the clincher was: why buy a Mac for Linux when I can get better performance, more hardware support, better support, and most of all, *cheaper prices* with Linux on Intel hardware.

I have two Linux boxes running RedHat. Both are Pentium II 450/192 MB RAM/S3 ViRGE systems. Working in xfce on those systems is just as fast as Aqua, although Aqua seems to slow down when I run more and more apps.

Overall, Mac OS X's speed is "kinda ok", although it could be much, much better. Surfing with a lot of windows and other apps open becomes a pain, though.