LXDE is fast [LWN.net]

LXDE is fast

Posted Apr 29, 2012 18:06 UTC (Sun) by flammon (guest, #807)
In reply to: LXDE is fast by gmatht
Parent article: The Dawn of Haiku OS (Spectrum)

I run Ubuntu 12.04 an a modern hexacore system and the UI is still not as responsive as it should. Heavy disk access makes the whole system unusable. I'm not sure where things went wrong but I thought Linus was originally targeting desktops.

Would it be possible to use the Linux kernel and drivers and run the Haiku multi-threaded IU framework on top of it or is the Haiku kernel coupling too tight?

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LXDE is fast

Posted Apr 29, 2012 22:25 UTC (Sun) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

I have similar problems with Ubuntu 8.04 on a Core 2 Duo - very long delays sometimes when I/O is going on (Firefox freezes anyway), and when I boot up, the updatedb processes make the system completely unusable until I kill them.

LXDE is fast

Posted Apr 30, 2012 6:17 UTC (Mon) by kevinm (guest, #69913) [Link]

Does putting updatedb in the 'idle' IO priority class with ionice -c 3 -p `pidof updatedb` help?

LXDE is fast

Posted Apr 30, 2012 19:47 UTC (Mon) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]

I'm using Ubuntu 8.04 on less impressive hardware and found that updatedb was taking most of the I/O bandwidth, but then I also suspect that the hard disk has something to do with it, given that I noticed this becoming more of a problem after switching to a Western Digital Caviar Green model that apparently belongs to a range of products that have various performance-related issues.

I've since reconfigured the auto-parking feature on this particular WD drive - which really shouldn't be the cause of a bandwidth issue, but it was misbehaving in a pathological fashion - and I haven't noticed any really bad performance issues so far, so maybe you're experiencing some equivalent problem with your storage.

(All these claims about Linux needing multicore CPUs to be responsive are, in my opinion, nonsense. My hardware is around seven years old, apart from the hard disk, and it's easily responsive enough.)

LXDE is fast

Posted Apr 30, 2012 7:40 UTC (Mon) by Pawlerson (guest, #74136) [Link]

UI responsiveness you are according to has nothing to kernel. With Wayland Linux should become very responsive. I'm using Kubuntu and in not UI related tasks it's much more responsive than Windows XP. Those Haiku guys are simply lying or have no clue. I heard Haiku is cheating (preloading itself into memory or something like that) and that's why it seems to be fast. I recommend to try Puppy Linux which kills Haiku in every term.

LXDE is fast

Posted Apr 30, 2012 9:15 UTC (Mon) by jond (subscriber, #37669) [Link]

How can it 'cheat'? If they're predictive preloading and it works, then that's a good thing, right?

LXDE is fast

Posted Apr 30, 2012 11:36 UTC (Mon) by Pawlerson (guest, #74136) [Link]

How can it 'cheat'? If they're predictive preloading and it works, then that's a good thing, right?

It has to be verified if it preloads itself or does something else. It's cheat, because when you modify your setup, install third party applications its speed will go away. If someone wants to have a good comparison then he should compare haiku to Linux distribution that's doing something similar. Puppy Linux running on CD is increadibly fast and responsive.

LXDE is fast

Posted Apr 30, 2012 9:42 UTC (Mon) by renox (subscriber, #23785) [Link]

> With Wayland Linux should become very responsive.

Very funny, one more post which claim that Wayland will fix everything..

So FYI, Wayland should improve performance, but for the responsiveness this is more complicated: for example Wayland with server side window decoration&management (planned for KDE) should be more responsive than Wayland with the default Weston compositor and the client side decoration&management.

LXDE is fast

Posted Apr 30, 2012 11:39 UTC (Mon) by Pawlerson (guest, #74136) [Link]

Very funny, one more post which claim that Wayland will fix everything..

We don't like Wayland, do we? Not everything, but just UI responsiveness and it seems you have agreed. It doesn't matter if Wayland itself is not enough.