Linux users want better desktop performance (Screw data. Prioritize code)

[Da Rock]

On Fri, 2009-02-20 at 19:32 -0500, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> Valent Turkovic wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 8:19 PM, Valent Turkovic
> > <valent.turkovic at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> http://rudd-o.com/en/linux-and-free-software/tales-from-responsivenessland-why-linux-feels-slow-and-how-to-fix-that
> >>
> >> What is you comment?
> >>
> >> --
> >> http://kernelreloaded.blog385.com/
> >> linux, blog, anime, spirituality, windsurf, wireless
> >> registered as user #367004 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org.
> >> ICQ: 2125241, Skype: valent.turkovic
> >>
> > 
> > As a long time Linux desktop user and Linux enthusiast I want bloody
> > screaming fast desktop :) There are some situations that I just want
> > to pull my hair out when I see that desktop performance just crawls to
> > a halt :(
> > 
> > When I read articles like Tales from responsivenessland[1] I really
> > don't get why there aren't bells ringing in the heads of the people
> > who can actually make a difference for Linux desktop performance.
> > 
> > I was also really sad when I read interview with Con Kolivas[2] and
> > the reasons why he quit kernel development[3].
> > 
> I've known Kon for years, sent him patches for his 2.4 based "ck" kernel 
> patches. But if you didn't read the LKML before he left, and can't follow the 
> code, you see his point of view without context.
> 
> > I hope kernel developers will wake up and realise that there are also
> > us - Desktop users and what we need and want are responsive desktops.
> > 
> > Will Fedora be the first Linux distro to have sane desktop defaults
> > (vm.swappiness=1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50). Current Fedora slogan
> > is "Features. Freedom. Friends. First", I hope to see "Desktop
> > performance" as part of it soon ;)
> > 
> I read that [3] article and the first two things I noticed were the reference to 
> "small RAM" which in the days of $11/GB RAM is rare, and that the author didn't 
> touch the "dirty" tuning parameters, which are better suited to controlling the 
> behavior of i/o buffers. He didn't mention tuning read ahead to speed reading of 
>   application off the disk (which limits response even if lots of memory is 
> free). In short the article is based on one trick, not a balanced approach to 
> getting both responsive performance and good i/o performance.
> 
> I regularly handle images 4x the size of memory, and in 33 days uptime have 
> written a total of 109MB (from iostat) to swap. A balanced tune is far nicer 
> than cranking swappiness as low as it will go and keeping crap in memory which 
> is not needed (left over initialization code, error messages you never see, etc).
> 
> > [1] http://rudd-o.com/en/linux-and-free-software/tales-from-responsivenessland-why-linux-feels-slow-and-how-to-fix-that
> > [2] http://apcmag.com/interview_with_con_kolivas_part_1_computing_is_boring.htm
> > [3] http://apcmag.com/why_i_quit_kernel_developer_con_kolivas.htm
> > 

Try getting rid of the bloat of some of the new desktop systems- kde4 is
a real resource hog. I can't stop it from stealing my speed unless I
kill the binaries in memory. And gnome is not that much better.

If you want real speed customise and maintain xdm and the smaller
desktops like xfce and fvwm.