Kernel scheduling algorithm and X.Org performance

[Eric Anholt]

On Wed, 2005-08-31 at 16:47 +0400, Dmitry Shatrov wrote:
> Good day, xorg list. If you think this worths another list please
> redirect me.
> 
> I would like to talk about X-based desktop responsiveness and how 
> close
> it turns out to be related to the kernel's process scheduling 
> algorithm.
> 
> Recently I had some time to play with my friend's Windows box. And
> somehow one thing that I never noticed amazed me. Windows desktop 
> looks
> perfectly responsive when I drag windows on top of each other. You do
> not notice that all the applications whose windows were obscured by a
> window you drag wake up and re-parent themselves. It looks just like 
> the
> pictures were already there. Compare this to the common X-based 
> desktop
> behavior: pick up any window, drag it over your desktop. Soon you'll
> notice that you're able to erase the contents of any window so that it
> looks filled with its background color, the desktop icons disappear,
> things flicker here and there. The very first thing I hear from my
> friends when I first install Linux on their computers (happens from 
> time
> to time) is that after they drag a window and see it working as an
> eraser they say: "Woo, it's slow". What can I answer then? Tell them
> that this thing is network-transparent? I know it is, but they don't 
> get
> it and tell their friends that "that Linux thing is slow". Sad.

xcompmgr -a (or, to use a different path, xcompmgr with no args) will
remove the visible redraw latency.

-- 
Eric Anholt                                     eta at lclark.edu
http://people.freebsd.org/~anholt/              anholt at FreeBSD.org
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