Written by xubaj the 27 Aug 09 at 01:18.
Related project: Nautilus.
Status: New
Rationale
being a gamer and heavy Windows XP user i think that the file browsers in Linux are terribly slow. if you click on "My Computer" (Windows Explorer) it pops up immediately and if you're in the flow you notice even small loading times like 0.5sec. if you open a folder in Linux it can sometimes take a few seconds.
i don't know what Windows does different to respond so quickly but even lightweight file browsers like Thunar are slow compared to Windows Explorer.
cheesehead(Brainstorm admin)
wrote on the 27 Aug 09 at 12:18
Have there been any useful comparisons with real, useful numbers attached? Why is one OS appreciably faster than the other? Has anyone compared different file managers in Ubuntu with useful numbers?
I agree. I want to see numbers. For me, opening Computer in Nautilus takes about a second, and it's ready to go. From memory, on Windows, it would take several seconds to open, and it'd still take a while to load (especially if you've plugged in some removable media).
As for the caching idea, as you describe it, I don't think that's a good idea. I'd rather wait a while and see what's really in a directory than jump in and be instantly presented with an outdated set of files.
the only time nautilus opens slowly on my system is when my external drive has gone into power save mode, and needs to spin up. I don't know how fixable that is, but it is annoying. It can take several seconds before nautilus will display anything, even if I just want to see the contents of my home folder.
I agree with everyone here that caching is a bad idea. However, I would like to see an option for this implemented. I'm not absolutely sure, but I believe OSX does something like this by default. When the computer starts, it starts just like Linux, loading only what it needs. Afterwards, if a person clicks on, say, file browser, it will open, and then keep itself in memory for the next use. I think that this would be extremely useful, and users would only have in memory what they've used. Obviously, this would need to be optional. Not everyone has 4 GB of RAM like I do.
i will give you real numbers, if someone tells me how to count the time. the problem is i think that neither Nautilus nor Windows Explorer sends any signals when the directory has been loaded. another option would be make a 100Hz screen capture video and count the frames.
@Zatara214: "I agree with everyone here that caching is a bad idea". btw., as far as i know, Linux loads driver and commands which may be used sometime until all the memory is consumed. this part of the memory however can be deallocated anytime. the idea behind this is "unused memory is wasted memory" even if it is possible trash data.