Valent Turkovic wrote:
On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 8:19 PM, Valent Turkovic
<valent.turkovic@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?

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As a long time Linux desktop user and Linux enthusiast I want bloody
screaming fast desktop :) There are some situations that I just want
to pull my hair out when I see that desktop performance just crawls to
a halt :(

When I read articles like Tales from responsivenessland[1] I really
don't get why there aren't bells ringing in the heads of the people
who can actually make a difference for Linux desktop performance.

I was also really sad when I read interview with Con Kolivas[2] and
the reasons why he quit kernel development[3].

I hope kernel developers will wake up and realise that there are also
us - Desktop users and what we need and want are responsive desktops.

Will Fedora be the first Linux distro to have sane desktop defaults
(vm.swappiness=1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50). Current Fedora slogan
is "Features. Freedom. Friends. First", I hope to see "Desktop
performance" as part of it soon ;)

[1] http://rudd-o.com/en/linux-and-free-software/tales-from-responsivenessland-why-linux-feels-slow-and-how-to-fix-that
[2] http://apcmag.com/interview_with_con_kolivas_part_1_computing_is_boring.htm
[3] http://apcmag.com/why_i_quit_kernel_developer_con_kolivas.htm

  
Valent may have partially pointed to the issue of performance vs. features.  As Microsoft users have discovered, the more active processes that are running and the pipes that interactive data, such as email and internet, go through, the slower a system will run.  Newer, more complex (read: amount of code required to be functional) applications and updates are applied, the perceived performance continues to degrade. The amount of load on a desktop system has expanded at a staggering rate.  Virtualization adds its own load to active desktops as well.  And because of additional security monitoring processes, older hardware should not be pushed to perform at the level that it has in the past.

New hardware technology such as higher speed, multi-core processor and 2 and 3 channel memory is becoming more common, which tends to be better able to handle the expanded processing  and I/O load.  This does nothing for the majority of Linux users that are used to being able to use older hardware, yet want the features of the newer applications and functions.

Desktop performance comes down to a trade off between the perceived performance and number of active features/processes with the amount of code to be executed,  based on a common hardware performance.   A proposed "auto-tunning" I/O manager may provide some assistance, but it also adds an processing load on the desktop. 

Has anyone done any benchmarking on the amount of code, granularity of the code, and processing performance?  Has anyone done any benchmarking of applications and versions that may give some insight on the code processing vs hardware performance issues?