Linux users want better desktop performance (Screw data. Prioritize code)

Christopher Montgomery xiphmont at gmail.com
Tue Feb 17 19:38:37 UTC 2009


On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 2:19 PM, Valent Turkovic
<valent.turkovic at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://rudd-o.com/en/linux-and-free-software/tales-from-responsivenessland-why-linux-feels-slow-and-how-to-fix-that
>
> What is you comment?

...this article is wrong in enough factual areas it's hard to comment
(just because an explanation feels right doesn't make it true, it just
makes it 'truthy').  But one thing is correct.  Linux Desktop
performance has gotten sluggish.  It's not due to eg swap.  I have no
swap on any of my machines and haven't for years.

It's because a) virtually everything is backed by a db today (firefox
is a pig because every keypress is firing off multiple database
queries) b) Filesystems have finally turned on barriers to avoid most
cases of 'I lost alot of data after a power outage' and c) the 'Wings
Fall Off' buffercache serialization bug that showed up sometime after
2.6.15.   You think sluggish is bad, try 'my buffercache filled up
while rendering video and the machine wouldn't even ping for a week'.

These problems all feed each other.

Monty




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