Performance tuning the Fedora Desktop

[John Williams]

On Wed, 2004-05-12 at 17:57 -0400, Will Cohen wrote:

Lots of very encouraging stuff.  Thanks Will. :-)


> METRICS
> 
> Unfortunately, many people's metrics for desktop applications were
> literally eyeballed, click a menu item see how long it takes for the
> result to occur. This is difficult to automate and script.  We really

A small comment: the only really meaningful metric from the user's point
of view is "does it take too long?".  This is a binary variable.  It is
of course totally subjective, but _that is the point_ --- "objective"
considerations are not meaningful to users.

What I am trying to say is that (I humbly suggest) you face two
problems: first finding the most pressing problems; and then fixing
them.  Objective metrics help with the second, but not the first.

Examples: 

1) Clicking on the Nautilus desktop menu to open a terminal results in a
noticeable delay before the window has appeared on the screen.  For such
a simple application it should be instantaneous (my rig is a 2,.4GHz
Athlon with 767MB RAM).

2) Opening a PDF file with gv results in an instantaneous appearance of
the window; using ggv takes about five seconds.

3) A noticeable delay starting gedit (same reasoning as per terminal).


I know that these "simple" apps hide hidden complexity due to their
gnomeyness, but again, that is irrelevant to users.

I hope the above is useful.  Please don't read it as bitching.  I _love_
Fedora and GNOME, and I want to express my gratitude to those of you who
have provided me with such an enjoyable computing environment.

cheers,

John
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