Tried it on my Touchscreen netbook

Story: Alternative To The "200 Lines Kernel Patch That Does Wonders" Which You Can Use Right AwayTotal Replies: 22
Author Content
JaseP

Nov 19, 2010
12:02 PM EDT
Tried it on my Touchscreen netbook, running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS & it does feel "snappier."
dinotrac

Nov 19, 2010
2:11 PM EDT
Coolness. It's about time I had something to set other than swappiness.
jimbauwens

Nov 19, 2010
2:41 PM EDT
I think I'll give it a try on my netbook later, seems a lot easier than the kernel version. Dinotrac : I don't have a swap partition, removed it with my last install, because my memory always stays at about 300MiB :)
dinotrac

Nov 19, 2010
5:17 PM EDT
@jb: Braggart.
jimbauwens

Nov 19, 2010
5:29 PM EDT
@dinotrac I know, I know :) Hey while we are on the subject of memory usage, open up top/Gnome System Monitor. Then open FireFox (or another browser), and paste in the urlbar : javascript:while(true){document.title+=document.title;} Watch your memory getting filled in seconds and your computer freezing. :)
dinotrac

Nov 19, 2010
5:43 PM EDT
@jb:

You don't have to tell me about firefox. Yuck. Sad thing, Opera's not a whole ton better, although -- it seems not to go into never never land and stays snappy.
jimbauwens

Nov 19, 2010
5:48 PM EDT
@dino, That script should also work on opera. My favorite browser is epiphany, its lite and runs perfect on my netbook. The only problem with it is that it has some webkit bugs that make some (1 in the ...) website really slow (omgubuntu is such a website).
tracyanne

Nov 19, 2010
6:18 PM EDT
I haven't tried this trick yet, only saw it late last night. But I still don't understand the issues with Firefox. I typically have Multiple instances of FF running (using FF Profiles) with Multiple Windows in at least one instance with up to 30 tabs open. The only thing that has a major impact on memory usage on my machine is Virtual Box, which has 4 gig assigned to it, so I can run 32 bit Windows with reasonable performance.
JaseP

Nov 19, 2010
6:36 PM EDT
After using it for a little less than a day, I would say that the desktop is certainly more responsive, but that it's a very modest & subtle change. It's no 60x faster, like the kernel patch story indicates.

I'll try it on my multimedia network & see how that changes performance on those machines. It might be my imagination or faulty memory, but glxgears seems to give a higher FPS.
azerthoth

Nov 19, 2010
7:37 PM EDT
JaseP, load it up and see what happens, say compile OOo with -j64 (that would gag my desktop) and see how it feels.
JaseP

Nov 19, 2010
8:17 PM EDT
No desire to compile large apps or do kernel compiles... Well, maybe kernel compiles if I ever get around to patching the ubuntu kernel for touchscreen through the ps2 port function and SD8686 wifi support on my little Viliv S5 (but I'd figure I'd apply the full patch if I bothered)...

But I'm more interested in getting server performance & multimedia playback performance. Hulu is a big one... So is ripping a DVD to put it on my storage drive. If I get better performance from them, I'll be happy.
tracyanne

Nov 19, 2010
9:22 PM EDT
I just ran a test using glxgears. Before implementing this mod I get:

17078 frames in 5.0 seconds 17460 frames in 5.0 seconds 18601 frames in 5.0 seconds 17940 frames in 5.0 seconds 17611 frames in 5.0 seconds 18380 frames in 5.0 seconds 19312 frames in 5.0 seconds 19080 frames in 5.0 seconds 17771 frames in 5.0 seconds 17591 frames in 5.0 seconds 19461 frames in 5.0 seconds 17891 frames in 5.0 seconds 18700 frames in 5.0 seconds 17492 frames in 5.0 seconds

The desktop on my 4 core machine stutters and there is a noticeable latency when draging windows, and doing other GUI related things.

After implementing this mod, I get

22682 frames in 5.0 seconds 23414 frames in 5.0 seconds 21540 frames in 5.0 seconds 21000 frames in 5.0 seconds 21452 frames in 5.0 seconds 20960 frames in 5.0 seconds 21432 frames in 5.0 seconds 21331 frames in 5.0 seconds 21340 frames in 5.0 seconds 20912 frames in 5.0 seconds 20511 frames in 5.0 seconds 22100 frames in 5.0 seconds 22412 frames in 5.0 seconds

The desktop still stutters and there is a noticeable latency when draging windows, and doing other GUI related things.

I guess that is an improvement of sorts.
JaseP

Nov 19, 2010
9:23 PM EDT
OK ...

Most noticeable improvement is that Hulu Desktop will now run at a marginally acceptable level on an Atom N270 processor, with a Gig of Ram...

I Likey!!!
tracyanne

Nov 19, 2010
9:37 PM EDT
All right. I've just gone to You tube and pulled Eric Clapton playing I'm Tore Down, this is the first time I've been able to watch this across the web without it stuttering. I've just tried it with a couple of other videos, and this is the first time I've seen the downloaded stream gain on the played stream. I thought all my problems in this area were caused by my flakey broadband connection. This mod gets my vote.
tracyanne

Nov 19, 2010
10:21 PM EDT
I've tried this on my Asus EeePC 901, it's single core Celeron M 900MHz. This mod it makes a some difference, not as pronounced as on the 4 core, the youtube video of Clapton doing I'm Tore down pauses slightly from time to time, but otherwise plays fine. ABC TVs iView, which I download episodes of my favourite shows using the python iView script, still stutters enough, when viewed via the web page that it's still not pleasant to whatch, but there is a noticable improvement in that latency is noticably reduced.

I think this mod works better on hyper threaded and multi core systems. I'll try it on a single core hyper threaded machine I have.
gus3

Nov 19, 2010
10:59 PM EDT
@ta, I think the Eee PC 901 is underclocked to 630 MHz. What does dmidecode report on the CPU clock?
tracyanne

Nov 19, 2010
11:08 PM EDT
gus

Version: Intel(R) Celeron(R) M processor Voltage: 0.9 V External Clock: 70 MHz Max Speed: 900 MHz Current Speed: 630 MHz
gus3

Nov 20, 2010
2:03 AM EDT
Uh-yep.

That said, I watched an entire TV show on Hulu using my EeePC 900, with a slow cable connection, and the 200-line patch, and the only time it stuttered was on the commercials. Even when I moved the pointer, and the controls popped up and then disappeared, the overall playback never stumbled. I was impressed.
gus3

Nov 21, 2010
11:03 PM EDT
I tried to use the instructions on my mother's Fedora 12 system today, but I realized something kind of critical: without an open CLI shell, the instructions have no effect. With an open CLI shell, the instructions affect only the shell's child processes.

Either way, the general desktop remains unaffected. Using ~/.bashrc for cgroups task management is pointless, if no login ever invokes ~/.bashrc (such as a DM in the GUI).

I'm working on finding something that will work for a GUI login session. I encourage anyone to beat me to it. ;-)
hkwint

Nov 22, 2010
3:54 AM EDT
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hkwint

Nov 22, 2010
3:55 AM EDT
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hkwint

Nov 22, 2010
3:57 AM EDT
Sorry, issues with formatting, inserting lot's of nbsp's, see next post!
hkwint

Nov 22, 2010
3:58 AM EDT
gus3:

It's easy: First, do "ps afx" and you'll probably see xinit is already part of some shell. May be sh (and not bash) though.

If not: Kick out KDM / GDM / XDM (what's the use for it on a single-user system anyway?), and make sure Xorg is started by .profile or /etc/init.d/startx. The latter you'd have to write yourself. Mine is:
Quoting:start-stop-daemon --background --start -m -u [user]:[group] -v --exec /home/[user]/bin/startx --pidfile /var/run/startx.pid


This is [user]/bin/startx:

Quoting:xinit ${HOME}/.xinitrc -- /usr/bin/X vt7 > ${HOME}/.xinit.log 2>&1


This is the result:

 6477 tty1     Ss     0:00 /bin/login --        7175 tty1     S      0:00  _ -bash  7979 tty1     S+     0:00      _ /bin/sh /usr/bin/startx  7995 tty1     S+     0:00          _ xinit /home/[user]/.xinitrc -- /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc :0 -auth /home/[user]/.se  7996 tty7     Ss+   0:17              _ /usr/bin/X -nolisten tcp  8006 tty1     S      0:00              _ sh /home/[user]/.xinitrc  8009 tty1     S      0:00                  _ /bin/sh /opt/firefox/firefox --DISPLAY=:0.0  8016 tty1     S      0:00                  |   _ /bin/sh /opt/firefox/run-mozilla.sh /opt/firefox/firefox-bin --DISP  8021 tty1     Sl     0:43                  |       _ /opt/firefox/firefox-bin --DISPLAY=:0.0  8010 tty1     S      0:00                  _ /usr/bin/wmaker  8025 tty1     S      0:01                      _ /usr/bin/wmaker --for-real

Now the funny part: The top of the tree above shows "login" (root) and bash (user!), but I never logged in using pass and username. Even more, I didn't even see the login prompt, because as a result of parallel login Xorg is already on the display starting Firefox before login in the tty occurs.

Moreover, using this setup, you don't have to login, meaning you don't have to provide username and password, saving ~10sec boot time.

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