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Rationale
Hi, I think that Ubuntu developers need to try and optimize the performance of the desktop in general other than making ubuntu faster to startup and shutdown.
If it is possible of course, I guess something more custom could be done with the kernel for speed.
One very important thing is that.. For some reason, I can't feel all of my 4 cores really working for performance, the system works as if I have like 1 core at a faster clock rate,
but that's about it.
Anyway, just my thought, the desktop should be more responsive, apps should open up faster (I've tried an iMac before, if you know what I'm talking about...)
One last thing, just as a sidenote: Is everyone thinking that nVidia actually Fixed the performance problems they have? Because I think that if they did, only little... And yeah, that's a major source of performance problem for the desktop, so... gotta talk to them nVidia devs to figure out what they do wrong.
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Skalman
wrote on the 1 Dec 08 at 18:43
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Is there an an actual, specific idea, or is it just "make Ubuntu better"?
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i saw some forum posts saying this slowness is because kernel version, afecting also all other distributions, not only Ubuntu - some Debian and Fedora (maybe also Gentoo) users, expecting it being an Ubuntu-only problem, got amazed on how it affected all other distributions - i hope this performance situation can be fixed soon - lots of people uses Linux professionally on very serious tasks like network management (like internet hosting and management), industry critical tasks, etc., on which i deeply hope there are no proprietary lobbies trying to destroy Linux development...
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I think we need to improve the performance of GNOME, gnome-panel, GTK, etc.
I think we need to have focused process priority boost.
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Totally Generic.. This idea is useless. Developers already know they need to make stuff faster. Big -1. Did you think developers were focusing on making it slower?
If you want this to happen, THE DEVELOPERS NEED TOOLS!!!
Whether or not you vote systemtap, which makes this much easier for developers, I no longer care honestly. But just be aware developers are using OSX or other distro's these days for optimisation because its easier. I doubt there tools are in the repos for any serious developers to optimise their code using ubuntu (which is why its so important, and should have been done AGES ago).
But do what you want....
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Ubuntu is already by far the fastest OS I've ever used (for me it is anyway). Besides, apparantely the main focus of Jaunty will be faster boot up times and performance in general so keep your thumbs up :)
+1
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Magnes
wrote on the 2 Dec 08 at 08:44
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I have nvidia card, no problems with speed.
Shutdown and startup times should be MUCH faster though.
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So what do you suggest to achieve this?
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As has been said before, nice sentiments but developers can't really use "sentiments".
They need specific ideas.
"make it faster" isn't one of them unless you've got a specific code optimisation, or something like that, that a dev could implement to speed Ubuntu up.
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sowelie
wrote on the 3 Dec 08 at 14:48
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"I think we need to improve the performance of GNOME, gnome-panel, GTK, etc."
I second this...why does gnome-panel use 14MB of memory on my system?
Also Nautilus uses ~63MB when I don't even have a window open, and one icon on my desktop.
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sowelie
wrote on the 3 Dec 08 at 14:49
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P.S. I don't think people on this site necessarily have ideas how to optimize the code...I think the point is we're users suggesting things...the developers have the responsibility to find performance issues.
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Probably you want responsiveness, not speed.
MerlinofChaos: As a software developer I can say that always need to be done some tradeoffs like memory consumption, thread usage. Making a multi-threaded desktop experience need a lot on testing deadlocks, etc. and can be done in time.
Let's put in areas:
- fast startup time of applications = all libraries (files lib*.so) to be already loaded. This is a hard task in itself. They have to be loaded in the boot time, but in itself will increase the perceived start time. Secondly all these libraries have a memory footprint and is not good for low-end machines (not yours)
- fast feedback on an area can be done mostly spawning more threads, which shows to you an extra animation from time to time. This is already done in long-timed operations (like system update or in the applet that connects to the net)
- another issue may be perceived when you run a machine face-to-face with an Windows XP. Windows XP is more light in itself as Linux have many thing written in a text-based configs (or even XML like gconf) which is slower than XP. Secondly Ubuntu (with Compiz enabled) is almost on par with Windows Vista features. Anyway running most tasks in an high-usage of cores (like a compilation or rendering) may be perceived speedier using good compiling flags on packages.
The single thing that I can point out to you is to go to:
System->Preferences->Startup programs and add: gedit, banshee, firefox, openoffice (or anything you run often) and after they start, you will have them in cache. If you want instant at all feeling, you can let them minimized and move them to another view.
sowelie: nautilus is an entire shell. Killing nautilus will make your wallpaper to dissapear. Secondly the memory usage is not right (you should take in account the shared memory between processes like all libgnome stuff) so it occupy much less. If you want a quick solution to decrease a bit the memory usage is: remove useless applets from Gnome Panel (any applet in itself is an application), remove the desktop wallpaper, put a light theme (Mist)
In rest, for me seems not an issue and this idea should be closed.
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I think the problem is we are providing developers with sucky tools for optimisation, so this request is a waste of time.
Vote for systemtap.
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sowelie
wrote on the 7 Dec 08 at 13:12
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We're providing developers with sucky tools? Shouldn't developers be building their own tools?
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@sowlie, They are, Sun has dtrace (which once again because of licencing we wont get), but Redhat developed Systemtap, which is the same kind of thing. Its available on most other distro's now (in the main repos). And dtrace on OSX has an awesome frontend. The problem is that the lack of decent programming tools is discouraging developers from supporting ubuntu I feel (starting with eclipse in the repo being out of date in the repo).
In fact, Apple have done such a good job, many developers are developing/optimising code on OSX, and just hoping it runs as fast on Linux. I know Songbird does this (and many others probably do too).
WE need something like dtrace, with a nice frontend. Fedora has something like dtrace (systemtap), but neither that, nor a remotely up to date copy of eclipse is in the repos, for some of the half hacked up gui's for it. You need good developer tools to attract developers to develop better ones.
You guys seem to refuse to vote on systemtap, instead preferring to vote heavily for generic ideas with no solution attached such as this one! This idea does no good for anyone.
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Craig73
wrote on the 9 Dec 08 at 00:49
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I vote that everybody should put $1 in the bucket and put their money where their mouth is as to what the developer priorities should be... would they pay for faster? would they pay to support this idea?
[not a MS pay for what they think is important... but a pay voting system...with perhaps some free votes to those who actually do something other than ask for ideas]
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Hey people, just check this out, it's a benchmark from Phoronix regarding the latest kernel. Just to show you how unoptimized it is, some tests do show a tiny regression.
http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=13315
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