X Server is SLOW

[BIGEE1212]

Who agrees with me? In a pretty clean windows system, everything runs pretty snappy, in linux, widgets get re drawn, tabs take forever to open, dragging windows seems a little sluggish. I know that the windows gui is practically written in the kernel, while KDE, gnome, etc are pretty much external, but I think that the X server needs a lot of work. I shouldn't have to touch the xorg.conf for my hardware to work.

[seablade]

Who agrees with me? In a pretty clean windows system, everything runs pretty snappy, in linux, widgets get re drawn, tabs take forever to open, dragging windows seems a little sluggish. I know that the windows gui is practically written in the kernel, while KDE, gnome, etc are pretty much external, but I think that the X server needs a lot of work. I shouldn't have to touch the xorg.conf for my hardware to work.



Can't say I have any problems with speed in E17.

In as far as touching xorg.conf... you gotta set up your hardware somewhere no matter WHAT OS you are using. With Macs it generally already set up for you, for windows it is a driver you gotta install just the same.

Linux doesn't have a good GUI for editing the file, but even with one you would still be touching the file, just in an indirect way.

Seablade

[BIGEE1212]

Can't say I have any problems with speed in E17.

In as far as touching xorg.conf... you gotta set up your hardware somewhere no matter WHAT OS you are using. With Macs it generally already set up for you, for windows it is a driver you gotta install just the same.

Linux doesn't have a good GUI for editing the file, but even with one you would still be touching the file, just in an indirect way.

Seablade

Linux is fast, just not as fast comparative to windows. Linux is plenty fast for day to day use, and for windows true you have to install drivers, but that doesn't involve messing with a text file. You have to know what you are doing to get your xorg.conf completely working, which is a pain. They both have their disadvantages though

[bigtrouble77]

I used to think this, but my system, now, is as fast as responsive as windows ever was. The one area I could complain about is resizing windows. For some reason that is always choppy. I remember Ubuntu Hoary has some serious performance issues, but those days are long gone.

Loading apps, moving windows and screen redraws are really fast and smooth for me. And that's been consistant from the day Dapper came out to today. I have done a few tweaks... like ext3 speed tweaks to eliminate useless features that just slow things down. I also removed that close animation that gnome does which gives a feeling of slugishness. Now my windows just disappear instantly.

I do still think there's room for improvement. If I do need to take a slight performance loss to keep gnome external (and HUGELY improve stability) then so be it. I could never maintain a stable windows machine for more than a few months simply because I use so many apps at once. I don't have that problem at all anymore.

The one app I think is unreasonably slow is OpenOffice. I'm actually trying to wean myself off of it, but it's a problem because abiword doesn't support odf. I also think opera 9.10 has some memory links because it just takes up way too much memory over time. I have to reload it ever day. Right now it's taking up almost 500mb and I only have 9 tabs open.

[seablade]

Linux is fast, just not as fast comparative to windows. Linux is plenty fast for day to day use, and for windows true you have to install drivers, but that doesn't involve messing with a text file. You have to know what you are doing to get your xorg.conf completely working, which is a pain. They both have their disadvantages though


As I mentioned, I haven't had ANY speed problems in Linux. If anything my install of Linux is faster than anything I have used on Windows recently.

Editing your xorg yes you need to know what you are doing to do it well. But as I mentioned, there is no good graphical editor for it yet.

In as far as openoffice, lets see if I can time mine...

Hmm, under 3 seconds from the time I hit enter to start it, to the time it loads up and is ready to go...

Now is it as fast for spreadsheet calculations? Nope. There is definite room for improvement in some area, but it is a heck of a lot better than it used to be, and very useable for me for most things.

Seablade

[seablade]

Here lets see if I can give another example, Rosegarden on a non-kde system. It would have to load ALL kde libs as this is the only KDE app I have installed....

Under 5 seconds from time I click on the icon to time it is ready to roll.

Dang I love Linux.

Seablade

[seablade]

Ok for grins and giggles I did it while running GLXGears and MPlayer running a Movie.

Yea same results.

Rosegarden easily under 5 seconds.
OpenOffice easily under 3(Probably under 2 to be honest)

For the record, top has my CPU at about 60% before I open either of the above, apps.

Seablade

Actually I don't seem to have any application that takes more than 5 seconds to load at this time.

For the record though, I do agree with BT, there is something screwy about refresh will resizing windows, that has always bugged me.

[bigtrouble77]

Here are some quick loadtime benchmarks (of non-cached apps unless noted):

OpenOffice Writer: 9sec
Abiword: 3sec
Eclipse(loading my workspace): 16sec
Blender(custom compile): 2sec
GoogleEarth(to globe): 7sec
Nautilus: 1sec (cached)
ScummVM: 1sec
Gimp: 3sec (cached)
Pan Newsreader: 2sec
GFTP: 1sec
K3B: 5sec (no kde libs cached)
F-Spot: 2sec (Mono app)

I think the results are pretty good. Running Ubuntu Dapper 64bit on the machine in my sig.

Seablade, quick question... I never got Rosegarden to work. Do you need Timidity installed? Does it work with USB emulated midi keyboards? Is it easy/possible to load soundfonts? Does it support quantanizing? Mind sharing a screenshot or pointing me to one with it actually working? Sorry for the OT questions but I would REALLY like to do midi compositions in linux.

[drlouis]

I've always thought my linux system was slightly more responsive overall than windows on the same machine. It's one of the reasons I find myself in linux almost all the time, and almost never in windows anymore.

[seablade]

Sure though honestly I don't work it in to muchyet myself BT.

DOes it need Timidity? No.

Will it work with emulated USB Keyboards? Not real sure what you mean by emulated there. Personally I just have a midi keyboard run through my RME soundcard, and through Jack, patched into Rosegarden. Works fine like that.

Does it support Quantizing? No clue sorry.
This seems to suggest it might be able to though...
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/en/chapter-8.html
"The tools toolbar has several of the same tools found in the main window, but it adds icons for step recording and the quantizer."

It it easy/possibly to load soundfonts? I dont use them as I run it through Kontakt instead when I use it, but a long time ago I think I tried, and I had to use an external soundfont program to load them, but it has been some time and I honestly can't remember or even garuntee it still works that way.

Can't grab you a screenshot at the moment, not enough time, remind me later and I can try to grab some and even try to do what you are asking. To be honest, its notation editor is OK, but not quite as nice as others. Still needs a bit of work. Though I have not tried 1.5 which I believe they recently released, I should probably do that sometime.

Seablade

[cjcox]

Linux is fast, just not as fast comparative to windows. Linux is plenty fast for day to day use, and for windows true you have to install drivers, but that doesn't involve messing with a text file. You have to know what you are doing to get your xorg.conf completely working, which is a pain. They both have their disadvantages though

That's simply not true. There are many situation where Xorg is faster than Windows... even with the fact that it provides much more general functionality. Are there certain closed source driver manufacturers that cause performance problems... yes...