[SOLVED]windoze like user experience (but linux can be fixed!)

[lmilano]

Re: windoze like user experience

to sum up...

if i understand correctly, i have to find out what it is
that was installed along with kubuntu-desktop
that drastically slows down my login procedure.

yeah?

yeah, if you want something quick, I would uninstall akonadi (warning, this will remove most kde), and then re-install kde-minimal. The best way to do it is with a wired connection, perhaps from a icewm session, so you don't even need to reboot. And then add things one by one. On the separate thread I linked above we are trying to investigate the bottleneck, please feel free to give a hand.

NOte that kde-mininal will bring back akonadi, but at least in my case that procedure alone gave me a ~20 to 30% speedup (of course I am not sure how generic this is).

Cheers!

[GreyGeek]

Re: windoze like user experience

Too Windoz like for me. Worse than Vista:

Kubuntu 9.04 beta amd 64 desktop
......

Jon,
I run the 32bit Kubuntu 9.04 gold (it's been out of beta for months) on the first partition of this 64bit Sony VAIO VGN-FW140E/H and 64 bit Kubuntu 9.10 beta on the second partition. Karmic has run SO WELL since it was Alpha4 that I have spent 99% of my time in this partition since then. From power off to being able to run an app is about 60 seconds. Kate works perfectly. Everything is BLAZING FAST, which is the main reason why I stay with it. I have two bugaboos: Stellarium's F2 menu doesn't display properly and Second Life doesn't run well at all.. This notebook has a GM45 Intel video chip and HAL uses the i915 driver for it. For the most part 3D accelerated video is great. GL-117 runs at 45+ fps. Stellarium runs at between 30-40 fps. Since both are 32bit applications I believe their problem stems from the ia32 library. Aside from those two problems KDE 4.3.2 is FAST and AWESOME!!

It looks to me like you have a bad md5sum on your ISO or your CD burn. Check HERE for how to check the md5sum of your CD after you burn it.

[jankushka]

Re: windoze like user experience

yeah, if you want something quick, I would uninstall akonadi (warning, this will remove most kde), and then re-install kde-minimal. The best way to do it is with a wired connection, perhaps from a icewm session, so you don't even need to reboot. And then add things one by one. On the separate thread I linked above we are trying to investigate the bottleneck, please feel free to give a hand.

NOte that kde-mininal will bring back akonadi, but at least in my case that procedure alone gave me a ~20 to 30% speedup (of course I am not sure how generic this is).

Cheers!

alright...
before i start to add/remove stuff...

i tried to monitor the process table and see what happens mem/cpu wise during the login procedure.
thing is...i can't see anyhting and there's no disk activity.
then, all of a sudden, the kde processes pop up and things are back to normal.

so i thought: could this be a kernel/drivers issue?
in particular, in my box, there's always something funny going on about audio, since karmic.
4 audio devices are detected, then sometimes kde complains it wants to remove some.
then it enables pulse audio, which doesn't work, forcing me to go in system settings to fix it.

[lmilano]

Re: windoze like user experience

Yes, it could certainly be that. Or a service stuck waiting for response. In particular, something you may want to try is different combinations for the system notifications, from no notifications to sound, null sound server, etc. There was a fix of a very annoying bug in KDE 4.3.1, where I also suggested to fork out the sound server as an async process but it was never implemented. Oh well, hope we get this monster on its cage

[lmilano]

Re: windoze like user experience

Oh, for the record, my system boots in 42 seconds to a responsive desktop. This is how I measure it:
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...9881#msg199881

Quick specs: AMD Phenom @2.5Ghz, DDR2@900, 7200RPM FAST (I did my research) Sata 3gb/s drive. Ext4 dor /, and xfs for /home. I think the fast HD makes a big difference.

[dibl]

Re: windoze like user experience

Quick specs: AMD Phenom @2.5Ghz, DDR2@900, 7200RPM FAST (I did my research) Sata 3gb/s drive. Ext4 dor /, and xfs for /home. I think the fast HD makes a big difference.

@lmilano -- Interesting -- thanks for testing and reporting!

Two questions:

1. What is the hdd model?

2. How long have you been running /home on an XFS filesystem?

[lmilano]

Re: windoze like user experience

Quick specs: AMD Phenom @2.5Ghz, DDR2@900, 7200RPM FAST (I did my research) Sata 3gb/s drive. Ext4 dor /, and xfs for /home. I think the fast HD makes a big difference.

@lmilano -- Interesting -- thanks for testing and reporting!

Two questions:

1. What is the hdd model?

2. How long have you been running /home on an XFS filesystem?

Hey Dibl!

This is the drive (I did quite a bit of research before buying, including places like Tom's HW)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136284

I think the huge buffer, among other things, helps quite a bit!

As for xfs, a few years now. It is really convenient for large data, and I have it all in /home. I defragment it each night as part of the cron job to backup all to a slower disk.

And wait until you read about my 24 secs boot of KDE light on a Dell mini 9:
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...9939#msg199939
8)

[dibl]

Re: windoze like user experience

Thanks.

I bought one of these about a year ago: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136313

Very similar specs to yours. Kubuntu 9.10 is running on it, on an ext4 partition.

I did set up some XFS partitions a couple years ago, and ran Kubuntu on it for awhile. But I think running my Win XP VM on it tore it up -- the VM is a large (8GB) virtual hard drive, and I don't think XFS likes it. After 6 months, it started getting flaky and I changed it to ext4. But I didn't have any trouble with the XFS partitions that I used for storage -- they ran for several years, until I recently reformatted those partitions to JFS.

How about JFS -- have you tried it? I've been running my sidux OS on a JFS partition on a WD Raptor 10,000 RPM hard drive. It seems to be very stable that way.

[jankushka]

Re: windoze like user experience

alright...

been doing some experiments...
on my troublesome karmic i have not been able to find the source of the problem.
i have tried to disable/enable a few things (one at a time), including akonadi, apport, ... and some other stuff.
nothing.
this is an installation that i have cleanly installed at alpha1 and have been kept updating ever since.

i have now installed a fresh version, based on ubuntu server beta.
the pae kernel gets installed with this.
on top of this i installed kde-minimal and (almost) all my other applications.
/home is shared, so the .kde directory is the same as the other one.
this new installation shows no signs of the issue i have on the other one.
akonadi is installed and started alright.

timings are as follows:
grub to kdm: 25 secs
kdm to full desktop: 27 secs.

i will do a diff on the installed packages list.
i will go on trying to understand what it is that troubles the old install.

for now, i will flag this thread as solved...

[lmilano]

Re: [SOLVED]windoze like user experience (but linux can be fixed!)

@jaunushka: good work. I hope we find what's making the diff, I'll investigate on my side time permitting, and post here.

@dibl: no, I never felt much tempted to try jfs, because the benchmarks I've seen tend to give better overall performance for xfs, now disputed head to head ext4. Well, there is also reiser, but it only bothered me as a one folk trick, so I never even tried it (and I am glad I didn't)

[jankushka]

Re: [SOLVED]windoze like user experience (but linux can be fixed!)

alright.
cheers.

as for file system benchmarks, i happen to have run some last summer with ext3, ext4 and...xfs.
i also tried btrfs, but the thing failed miserably after the second write.
i used iozone on my box.
i could share the .txt output files if you wish (anyone volunteering to prepare graphs welcome!).

[lmilano]

Re: [SOLVED]windoze like user experience (but linux can be fixed!)

Ha, you can use the phoronix test suite, it produces the plots for you and posts them on the web for free, plus it allows to add a new set of plots every easily. Something along these lines:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...nchmarks&num=1

Cheers!

[GreyGeek]

Re: windoze like user experience

....
for now, i will flag this thread as solved...

Great job! 8)

When some seem to just throw up their hands and start a whine/rant it is refreshing to see you dig in and solve your problem In doing so you will help others who may have a similar problem.

[lmilano]

Re: [SOLVED]windoze like user experience (but linux can be fixed!)

Yes, the beauty of Free(dom) software. No one is hiding your computer from you, you can always make it better. Which is why you just can't compare Linux with Windows.

[jankushka]

Re: [SOLVED]windoze like user experience (but linux can be fixed!)

still investigating...

i waited a few days after the release of 9.10 final and updated both old and new installations to the latest packages versions.

as a reminder...
the old system was installed at alpha1 and updated all along to the final release.
the new one was installed based on ubuntu-server, to which kde-minimal and all the rest was added.

i now have similar kdm to full desktop timings (around 29 seconds).

in some circumstances, though, the old installation takes 40 seconds.
while the new consistently takes around 30 seconds.

the main differences are:
old: has apport, packagekit, acpi-support and acpid, alsa-base and alsa-utils
new: doesn't have the above, but has gstreamer stuff, that the old hasn't

will continue to investigate time permitting...