Tag Archives: DRI

Linux

What makes a “lightweight” desktop environment lightweight?

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Over the last few days I was wondering what is a “lightweight” desktop. And I must say I couldn’t come up with an answer to that question.

I was considering various things like “being memory efficient” which I discarded for obvious reasons. First of all it’s difficult to measure memory usage correctly (I haven’t seen anyone, who provides numbers, doing it correctly, this includes especially Phoronix). And then it’s comparing mostly apples to oranges. Loading a high-resolution wallpaper might make all the difference in the memory usage. Also if desktop environment Foo provides features which are not provided by Bar it’s obvious that Foo uses more memory. But still it’s apples vs oranges. It’s not a comparison on memory, it’s a comparison of features. And of course one might consider the Time-memory-tradeoff.

So is it all about features? Obviously not. If there is a feature a user needs and uses it cannot be bloat. The fact that a desktop environment has only few features cannot be the key to being lightweight. Being evil now: many people say GNOME is removing features, but nobody would say that GNOME is lightweight.

What about support for old systems? That’s not lightweight, that’s support for old hardware. And it’s something which doesn’t make any sense given Moore’s law. Which raises the first question: what is old hardware? One year, two years, ten years? Is it a moving target or is a Pentium III for all time the reference? Optimizing for old hardware means not making use of modern hardware capabilities. But does that make sense to not use modern hardware if it is available? Using the GPU for things the GPU can do better than the CPU is a good thing, isn’t it? Parallelize a computation on multi-core if possible is a good thing, isn’t it? But if you do so, you are optimizing for modern hardware and not for old hardware. So saying you are good for old hardware, implies you are bad on new hardware? Also I’m wondering how one can optimize for old hardware? Developers tend to have new hardware to not have problems like this. And how can one keep support for old hardware when the complete stack is moving towards new hardware? Who tests the kernel against old hardware? Who provides DRI drivers for obsoleted hardware which doesn’t fit into modern mainboards (who remembers AGP or PCI)? Who ensures that software is still working on 32 bit systems, who would notice such a breakage for example in the X-Server? So lightweight cannot be fit for old hardware. And remember: optimizing for old hardware is not the same as optimizing for modern low-end hardware. Even the Raspberry Pi has a stronger CPU (700 MHz) than the oldest Pentium III (450 MHz) – not to mention things like OpenGL…

What’s it then? Let’s ask Wikipedia. For Xfce it tells us, that “it aims to be fast and lightweight, while still being visually appealing and easy to use”. Unfortunately there’s no

From: http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/04/what-makes-a-lightweight-desktop-environment-lightweight/

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

3 Companies That Could Be Hurt by Rising Natural Gas Prices

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By Matthew DiLallo, The Motley Fool

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Winter just doesn’t seem to want to give way to spring this year. Where I live, we’ve been hit with more snow and a continuation of this cold winter. Frustrations with the late spring are beginning to boil over and cabin fever has gotten so bad that our beloved Punxsutawney Phil has been indicted after a botched forecast of an early spring.

Not only has the late spring caused a lot of ire among those ready for winter’s end, it’s also causing natural gas prices to head higher. While that’s a welcome sight for producers, heavy users of natural gas are not as thrilled. While these companies have enjoyed the profits made while using cheap natural gas, if prices keep going higher the situation will reverse. Here are three companies that could feel an impact if natural gas prices keep going higher.

CF Industries
The fertilizer maker is a heavy user of natural gas as a feedstock in fertilizer production. It has benefited handsomely from cheap natural gas, which drove record sales and earnings last year. It’s also betting big that natural gas prices will stay low by investing $3.8 billion to expand its operations.

The company is anticipating a very positive operating environment for the year ahead, highlighted by favorable natural gas costs. However, as of its last earnings report it had only hedged its natural gas needs through April of this year. A steady rise in price could affect its bottom line, and the same can be said for its publicly traded subsidiary Terra Nitrogen . The volatility of natural gas prices is a big risk to its results and has a real effect on the bottom line: The company’s net earnings last year jumped to $560.8 million from $508 million in 2011, with a 23% realized decrease in natural gas prices. 

Dow Chemical
Dow also has big plans for cheap natural gas. The company has committed more than $4 billion to expand nat-gas use as a feedstock for the production of chemicals and plastics. Among its planned expenditures is a world-scale ethane cracker plant that comes with a $1.7 billion price tag.

For Dow, it sees the potential for these projects to deliver $2.5 billion in annual EBITDA when everything is up and running in 2017. The key to hitting that target is continued low natural gas prices. While Dow has been vocal in its disapproval of increased liquefied natural gas exports, which would raise gas prices, there’s not much it can do to stop Mother Nature from driving prices higher. 

Nucor
Steelmaker Nucor will see a big increase in its use of natural gas when it completes construction of its direct reduced iron, or DRI, facility. The company also uses a lot of gas throughout its U.S. steel manufacturing operations. Low natural gas prices are critical to its success; if they continue to stay low, the company could add to …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Soft Sales at Red Lobster Sink Darden's Earnings

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By The Associated Press

darden earnings red lobster panera chipotle

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Victor J. Blue, Bloomberg via Getty Images

Darden Restaurants‘ third-quarter net income dropped 18 percent, as it dealt with soft sales at Red Lobster but the performance still beat Wall Street‘s expectations.

The Orlando, Fla., company said Friday that sales at its Olive Garden, Red Lobster and LongHorn Steakhouse restaurants open at least a year fell a combined 4.6 percent. The figure is a key gauge of a restaurant operator’s performance because it excludes results at store recently opened or closed.

Darden Restaurants Inc. (DRI) has been struggling to make its brands relevant again as diners increasingly head to chains like Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. (CMG) and Panera Bread Co. (PNRA), where they feel they’re getting restaurant-quality food without paying as much. As it looks for ways to catch up to shifting trends, Red Lobster this week started testing a “pay-at-the-counter” concept at two location near the its headquarters.

For the three months ended Feb. 24, Darden earned $134.4 million, or $1.02 a share. That’s down from $164.1 million, or $1.25 a share, a year earlier. Analysts polled by FactSet expected earnings of $1.01 a share.

Revenue rose 5 percent to $2.26 billion from $2.16 billion, matching Wall Street‘s view. Revenue for the specialty restaurant group surged 61 percent, buoyed by the addition of some Yard House restaurants, as well as new restaurants for The Capital Grille, Bahama Breeze and Seasons 52.

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Revenue at Red Lobster dropped 6 percent as it contended with higher expenses and weaker sales at its locations in the U.S. open at least a year. Olive Garden revenue edged up slightly and revenue for LongHorn Steakhouse climbed 6.9 percent as both chains took in money from new restaurants.

Darden said that bad winter weather hurt sales at some of its restaurants. Sales at Red Lobster restaurants open in the U.S. at least a year declined 6.6 percent in the quarter. The figure fell 4.1 percent for Olive Garden locations in the U.S. and dropped 1.6 percent for LongHorn Steakhouse.

The company reaffirmed its fiscal 2013 earnings forecast of $3.06 to $3.22 a share. Analysts predict earnings of $3.17 a share. It still anticipates revenue will climb 6 percent to 7 percent. Based on the prior year’s revenue of $8 billion, this implies about $8.48 billion to $8.56 billion.

Wall Street expects revenue of $8.52 billion.

Darden’s board also declared a quarterly dividend of 50 cents a share. The dividend will be paid on May 1 to shareholders of record on April 10. Darden Restaurants shares closed at $48.96 on Thursday.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance