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Bounties for Gnome Optimization
Eugenia writes "Novell and OSNews are sponsoring the memory reduction project led by Novell's Ben Mauer by providing bounties to developers to help to clean up bloat in GNOME and related programs."
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I did this long ago by switching to xfce, what do I win?
I use gnome 2.4 with about 100MB of ram
I tried to optimize my gnome once with a suit of +2 leather armor and a new red hat, but he still ended up getting slain by a bunch of kobolds.
DecafJedi
my weblog: apropos of something
Money is sometimes a very good incentive, but sometimes things you work for money don't seem as much fun. It's hard to explian but it's true. When you get paid to build a system, it's not as much fun as when you build your own system. Myabe its the whole intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation thing. My two cents.
That should be "cat Gnome > /dev/null"
Unix for Dummies, Second Edition.
"[A] high IQ is like a Jeep; you will still get stuck, just farther from help!" --Just d' FAQs, c.g.a
Take out all the GUI eye candy and that will speed up about 50% on older systems.
This is great news. I switched from KDE about a year ago because of the newer gnome interface. (2.4+?) I run gnome on FreeBSD 5-stable and found that my biggest complaint is the memory usage. I have a dual xeon 2.0 gig with 1 gig of ram and gnome + xorg eat up at least 200-300mb of the ram. Maybe while they are at it they can fix some other problems with gnome like the fact the default stack size needs to be increased in many non linux systems when porting it!!!!!
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
Isn't that the Gnome2.x manual?
This is a realy good idea, something like this should be done not only to GNOME but also to other window managers such as KDE. Even non linux based systems could need some work when it comes to memory leakage and optimization. This does'nt only help people with little RAM but helps everyone.. Hope everyone are willing to help.
Bits of News Giving you the latest bits.
And the next set of bounties will be offered for cleaning up bugs introduced by rapidly encouraging people motivated only by money to make changes to Gnome without fully considering the ramifications of these memory reductions. :-)
I wonder if there will ever be enough bounty's on offer to make a career out of it.
I can just see all the coder bounty hunters with their boba fett helmets on.
The Borg assimilated my race & all I got was this lousy T-shirt
Gnome-terminal is going to make someone ridiculously wealthy. Seriously, there's so much room for optimization that a good coder will be able to retire off that one program.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
What is your experience with new Linux on old hardware? I now believe that older Linux versions should be used; or, one of the light distros.
On a dual boot P233 with 64MB of RAM:
Win XP feels less sluggish than 2.6 with gnome.
The newer Linux stuff just requires more memory.
...seem to be doing great stuff for the Gnome community and Linux in general more and more.
I know they have a vested interest but this is great stuff.
'cause a bloated gnome is just a hobbit... which is actually cooler.
Offering money is a great way of getting people interested in many things, but do the people who are capable of creating valuable bug reports and/or patches really need these bounties?
I wonder how many crappy bug reports and patches are to be submitted because of the "easy" money being given. I do believe that the bounties will go to the right people and for the right reasons, but more the crap, the more it takes work to find the gems.
Nevertheless, it's about time to unbloat Gnome.
Tapio 'itn' Nuutinen
Things like this make me love OSS, an effort to vut bloat? when was the last time a closed-source software outfit (Microsoft I am looking at you) acctually tried to make the packege MORE efficiant? the simple answer is Never that I can remember.
Sometimes I feel Open Source stuff is even more bloated than their Closed Source counterparts...
I have a machine at work that struggles to run XFCE with only 256Mb of memory.
Windows XP runs fine with that... I know, I know, security sucks, blah, blah, but!
Open Source used to be pretty good at reducing bloat, but nowadays...
how long until
As you can see from Novell's actions they are totally biased towards Gnome but still they make more money out of Suse distribution which uses KDE extensively.
Feel the irony?
They should instead be desktop neutral and support KDE developers too...
Never learn by your mistakes, if you do you may never dare to try again
A good coder would just rewrite that heap of crap from scratch. Konsole is good, except I don't want to load all the libraries just to get a usable terminal in my GTK+ based WM.
Yeah, because GNOME is only developed by volunteer hermits living in caves at the moment. It's not like there are big companies paying developers' salaries to work on it or anything.
It's GPL therefore it's Free software. Whether people are paid to work on it or do it out of the goodness of their heart doesn't matter as long as their contributions are GPL.
Is this motivation for people to find the bugs, i.e., there's some programmer out there thinking, "Hmm, if I do this and this, then Gnome will run three times as fast. Oh well, I'm a KDE supporter so I don't care." Or is this a way to reward all of those people who do care about Gnome and are working on it by giving them a specific area to concentrate on and then rewarding them for their hard work, in other words some programmer thinking, "Hmm, I've got some free time and I can either work on fixing eyecandy or fixing memory leaks. Guess I'll fix the memory leaks first and get a reward."
Everyone has been assuming that this is pure motivation, appealing to the greedy nature of people who aren't already contributing. I don't think that's the case. Generally speaking, those people who are good programmers and know the code well enough to actually identify and fix problem areas are probably already doing so. This "bounty" seems to be more a way of rewarding them and helping to give them a list of priorities.
the kernel development is funded by the OSDL, some are under the direct employ of redhat, and probably other companies (maybe novel, IBM, im not sure)
trolltech is a company that makes QT, and thats duel licensed, one license being GPL.
the firefox lead developer is employed by google.
many large opensource projects have people being paid to develop them fulltime, its a good thing because the source stays open.
no, they want to reduce bloat not increase it
not the eugenia from osnews now is it?
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
This would be a good way of paving the way.
What if someone wants to work on an OSS project, yet finances won't allow them? I think this is great.
If I was a financially troubled programmer (heck, if I was a programmer at all) I would be interested in taking on one of these projects not only because of the benifit to the community, but the extra cash can help programmers with such real world necessities as WoW registrations.
I'm gonna code me a new RV...
I like this, from my observations it alwasy appears that OSS is a bit heavy on the memory while closed source tends to be heavier on harddrive and processor dependent (not to say it is bloat free, far from it). That said, I run Gnome 2.8 on my old Pentium 2 laptop with 128mb of RAM. It actually works decently well, other than the screen refreshes which can use up all my processor and still take a few days :) . It is quite usable though and future versions of gnome will hopefully perform even better.
Thank You Novell
Now, it seems that (finally) developers are looking at resources that our programs use.
Unfortunately, for many in developing countries (like me, here in Brazil) having a computer filled with RAM and with the fastest processor available on the market isn't an option.
For instance, my desktop has a Duron 600MHz with 256MB of RAM. That's the fastest computer to which I have access here and it is some years old, but still working fine.
I can't say how happy I am with this bounty for optimization of memory.
In Computer Science we always have this concern with both time and space complexity and it seems that if Free Software developers start caring about good data structures and good algorithms (and avoid layers and layers and layers of abstraction over and over), we can actually use our computers more efficiently.
Again, this is especially important for those who have to use computers of two or three generations ago.
A welcome movement indeed.
P.S.: If you have never felt the need for less memory comsumption, then you won't probably understand how important this project is and probably this post makes little sense to you.
We might finally have the open source capitalism model that kills these "commie" snipes dead, and leaves proprietary competitors dead in the water. Offer to employ programmers by buying their labor in a contest! Leverage the open source on the Net to get as many job applicants as possible, who submit the finished work, then give the "job" to only a single winner whose superior work is used. The losers need only inspect the open source of the next version for any of their content to keep the process honest.
This creates parity for labor in the capital markets. Programmers can sell their labor as a packaged product, just as vendors can resell the programs to consumers. Programmers can market their code with better documentation, APIs and popular features. While integrators like Novell can get access to the labor market, without risking that the labor they're buying is better at job interviews than at delivering on deadline.
There is an issue of the "waste" of the losers' code submissions. But since these projects are open source, the losers can fork the project and compete with it. If the losers are really better, they can compete better with the original project - which itself might be forked by the original contest sponsor. Brand equity will determine winners in the long run, but the open source lets brand equity be earned by persistent quality, as determined by the consumer market, rather than the funder of the code.
Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines!
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make install -not war
- Remove all deprecated libraries from the codebase of the Gnome core.
- Remove or replace subsystems which never really were useful
- Make all demons optional
Yeah, I know that all would be a Herculean effort. Probably, it makes more sense to start with a lean and clean codebase like XFCE and just bring its usability to Gnome level, instead of cleaning up a bloated mess...In its history, Gnome has changed its libraries and subsystems several times, from imlib to gdk-pixbuf, from gnome-canvas to pango, from Corba to Bonobo to possibly Mono, from esd to gstreamer, and so on. Many Gnome apps still use older, deprecated libraries. Get rid of those libraries and port all apps to the standard core API.
I'm thinking of Bonobo and gnome-vfs here which are not consistently used in Gnome and whose quality and use value is questionable. If their functionality is still needed, it could be replaced by KDE's superior kioslaves and kparts (just as KDE is ditching its arts sound demon in favor of gstreamer)
Neither Gnome, nor KDE applications should be depending on any desktop-specific userspace demons. Make it possible to deactivate gconf, for example, and have applications read and write configuration files the classical Unix way, by one central switch. Make the sound demon optional, so that audio output could just be written (in old-fashioned, non-overlapping way) to /dev/dsp.
Etc.etc. The demons might have some use for some people, for for many, they are just bloat and unnecessary complexity.
gopher://cramer.plaintext.cc http://cramer.plaintext.cc:70
The best way of ensuring that it stays fixed is to give all the gnome developers PIIIs with 128 Mb RAM.
NO disintegrations.
Jonathanjk.com
Yup, it's her. I found out by clicking the link on her name in the story.
In The Hobbit, gnomes were used to refer to the Noldor, but Tolkein changed that because of the stereotype gnome being short-and-fat and very unelvish (in the Tolkein universe). An overweight Noldor would look a lot like an overweight human. And, if the movies are to be believed, very gay, but I'm not buying that ...
hi Mike
or is it Pixel...?
Forgive the sarcasm, but what's a better motivater than cash? A job that pays cash? Threatening developers with death?
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
While they've still got a long way to go, each successive release of KDE is substantially improved in terms of required CPU power and memory usage. KDE 3 ran a great deal faster than KDE 2 despite all sorts of added functionality, and KDE 3.4 RC1 is the fastest yet by a pretty big margin. The upcoming Qt 4 has a whole slew of performance improvements which should reduce requirements further.
The bounties Novell is offering are too low. They're offering $1-200 for tasks that will take an adequately skilled programmer, already familiar with GNOME, something like 2-4h to complete, including the docs that will let GNOME integrate the code (which will help win the bounty). The programmer doesn't need to spend time testing the code, though that will increase their chances of winning. So they're offering $50:h.
That isn't enough to support a community of coders, even if the range of bounties were scaled up to supply a significant headcount with enough work to keep busy (say, 500-1000 bounties a year). The labor might be fueled by people who are coding GNOME anyway, to prioritize completion/submission of some tasks. But the better, even more productive coders won't be available at those rates. It remains to be seen whether a multitude of mediocre submissions can compensate for too-cheap bounties that can't attract quality coders. Or perhaps this model will merely send all coding offshore, to programmers who can work so cheap that a single $100 bounty won can fund a month of unsuccessful submissions to other bounties they lose.
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make install -not war
Seriously... I've spent a very significant amount of time optimizing four shipped titles now--mostly games, one commercial shrinkwrap application--for both speed and size tradeoffs.
The big annoying thing with optimization is that assuming you are working with talented people (I believe the people who work on GNOME are talented), there is generally little low-hanging fruit. An example of low hanging fruit is places where you are using--for example--a vector, but you should be using a map or a hash table. Another example is places where complex code can be skipped over by checking some preconditions and bailing early.
Although premature optimization is the root of all evil, most of us recognize these sorts of places early, and do the relevant optimization work in the first place. What you're left with in terms of optimizations is places where your initial architecture is *just wrong.* This kind of performance / memory deficiency really sucks, because most of the time the code is too complex and there are too many other dependent pieces of code to do the necessary rewrite.
The other thing that makes optimization work hard is (lack of) tools. There are basically two types of problems you can optimize: speed and size. Sometimes you get lucky, and fixing size problems *also* increase speed (generally because your smaller code now fits in the instruction cache, or because your data memory fits in the L1 or L2), but that is usually the exception. With size problems, the best bet is usually to make all objects pooled individually. This allows you to dump out information during the program run as to how many objects you've allocated of a particular class, as well as how much memory they're taking up.
With speed concerns, it's a little more difficult. There are basically two types of speed problems. Problems that occur constantly, and problems that occur as a result of user interaction or are themselves cyclical. Effectively it's a matter of identifying spikes versus identifying plateaus. Plateuas are the easier of the two, because they are identifiable via tools like Intel's VTune (which has been--I believe--ported to Linux by Intel). But spikes are harder, in that identifying them requires code instrumentation, and although there are some suites that will do it automatically, they often over instrument places which lead to artificial spiking.
Anyhoo, sorry for rambling... optimization is something very near and dear to my heart.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
I think this is a horrible idea. When you have to offer bounties to encourage people to alter open source, then you're basically hiring and paying programmers...Open source isn't about hiring and paying people, it's about everyone working together to make better software for themselves.
I think you are confusing Open Source Software and Ken Kesey's Magic School Bus. One solution to this problem is for your to do way less drugs.
> Yeah, because GNOME is only developed by volunteer
> hermits living in caves at the moment. It's not
> like there are big companies paying developers'
> salaries to work on it or anything.
GNOME isn't developed by hermits. Let's clear this up:
* GNOME is obviously developed by Gnomes (duh) and Simians
* KDE is obviously developed by Trolls (and Dragons)
* BeOS is obviously developed by colonial insects
* GNUstep is obviously developed by Dancing GNUs
* OS X is obviously developed by the porn industry
And BTW, gnomes don't need no stinkin salaries. Just give them enough underwear and a TV to watch South Park and they'll be happy.
Open source isn't about hiring and paying people, it's about everyone working together to make better software for themselves
Most open source programmers are employed and get paid to do open source programming.
Open source isn't about some utopian, socialist community, it's about companies paying in order to develop software for their own benefit. Open source is a more efficient free market alternative to big software companies.
To put it more bluntly, you can hire a lot of well-paid programmers with the money people spend on Windows licenses--a lot more than the number Microsoft hires from their revenue.
Pixel broke 5 keyboards with her hooves. No net for her now.
(Score: -1, Doesn't Understand OSS)
/. a couple years ago doesn't need to come around telling *US* what open source is about. That took serious cajones. Especially when you come to find out that you are the one who doesn't understand it.
Perhaps you've been bitch slapped enough by now, but someone who just found
OSS was licensed that way so that no one entity can maintain total control over a single piece of software and control its distribution. There's no mention of money. In fact, some of its roots come from the socialist concept of everyone having a job. If companies don't have to buy ridiculously expensive computers anymore and all the software is free (like it was in the old days), then that leaves more money to pay support personnel and developers to support and customize the software.
No more funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to Sun, IBM or Microsoft just for the right to get fixes and updates.
Get it now? Cheap hardware. Good, free software with no restrictions on modifications and distribution. More buckage to keep people employed customizing the software and supporting the users. Maybe even selling their customized versions to other companies!
Now, go read CATB newbie.
The biggest memory problem with GNOME is it's overly heavily reliance on the intobk_open library function. If you're looking for low hanging fruit, then that's it. I suggest creating a wrapper and then replacing this call entirely.
There, now what do I win?
Its an Open Source project, so any bloat would be removed by the 'many eyes' principle? Or am I missing the point here? I use Open Source software precicely because its not bloated and bug-ridden like Micro$oft. Are you saying I'm labouring under a misapprehension?
There is nothing about open source that is against paying people to program. It is about getting as many people to contribute as possible.
If you can get people to contribute to free software by lighting your farts on PBS, that's just one more for us.
Robert Love (inotify fellow) is a Novell employee, IIRC.
Isn't that the Gnome2.x manual?
You mean the gnome project aims for people not unix-knowledgeable to use a GUI? The horror!
Fluxbox.
It runs KDE programs, i _think_ it runs Gnome applications as well. It's simple, powerful, SMALL, and FAST.
And, it plays nicely if you put it on with KDE and/or gnome at the same time. You don't like it? Take it off without hurting what you already had on.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
If you read the comments from Ben Maue (the bounty poster) (see http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=9889), you'll see the the bounties aren't for paid work. They're just prizes.
Essentially, he's saying, if you want to contribute to GNOME in your spare time then it's better to work on these projects (which you'll get some recognition and a small prize) than another place (which won't get you as much recognition and their are no cash prizes).
In the end it's all free software so you get to keep what you produce and if you use GNOME, it gives you a sense of pride to contribute and be recognized.
As a side note, have you seen how little bountied software makers are getting (e.g. www.rentacoder.com)? You get low pay and even after you produce your code, if you're not quicker than someone else and no willing to get less pay than someone else, you will still lose out. There's an enormous risk in time and effort for little reward. IMO, I doubt anyone can make a decent living off of bounties.
Perhaps you've been bitch slapped enough by now, but someone who just found /. a couple years ago doesn't need to come around telling *US* what open source is about. That took serious cajones.
It's spelled 'cojones' ;)
BTW, I agree with you.
When you're like me, working through Univursity to pay for a computer science degree that's being paid concurrently, these are great. Rather than going to a soul killing job that has no relevance to my course of studies, but happens to pay me money, I can just do a mod to Gnome (which is relevant to my studies), and get paid 10 times my soul-sucking hourly rate.
This isn't for people who have jobs which pay them so much money they can have sexy-parties with hookers and blow every Tuesday, this is for people who need a little financial incentive to do it, or for people who aren't established and want to make some money while they're making their name. Obviously you're a hookers and blow kind of guy, so maybe you shouldn't send in any patches.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
That accomplishes exactly nothing. cat /dev/null > gnome, perhaps
the real problem of gnome is a inutle file manager
like nautilus....
i suggest a bounty to replace it.
Ha ha ha! I thought Microsoft products were the only products with bloat. What next a Knoppix dist. that goes over 2 cds?
I think what this will do is take the script kiddies that just talk and make them actually do it. Once they get that confidence that add to the people who code for OSS. Some will contribute for money only, others will contribute for reputation.
The best thing maintainers can do is make sure people can attain a rep, this way it will work better than money in most circles.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
If you insist on running five year old hardware, just run ten year old code on it (early fvwm, xterm, xclock, etc) and go your way. There isn't going to be a version of GNOME or KDE optimized for Pentium systems with 64MB of RAM. EVER. So stop waiting for it. If you can't afford $400 for a new P4 system, you're on your own.
"And the next set of bounties will be offered for cleaning up bugs introduced by rapidly encouraging people motivated only by money to make changes to Gnome without fully considering the ramifications of these memory reductions. :-)"
It all wouldn't be necessary if all those motivated by "LOVE" didn't bloat it to begin with.
Beach vacations to the Carribean? Whores offering blowjobs? Then again, money can translate to any of these things so why not just fork over money?
From bounties site:
"Create a test suite for browsing in Nautilus"
hey are you crazy ?
this bounty is so bored
In all fairness, GNOME has a long way to go to reduce the bloat, but I wish them all the very best.
Firefox could use the treatment too. This would be great if there could be some kind of metric available for the FireFox team. E.G., "Here FireFox with 3 tabs open only uses 300KB of RAM, while IE uses 30MB of RAM".
"Open Source used to be pretty good at reducing bloat, but nowadays..."
The price to beating Microsoft.
What I would like to see is the ability for me as a user to add to the existing bounties and start new ones of my own. I would like to be able to propose a bounty and send money to a reputable bounty clearinghouse like at Novell or Ubuntu, and then they could offer the bounty as if it was their own since they have my cash until the bounty expires or is completed. And then while the bounty is still up for grabs I would like to be able to send the clearinghouse money to add to the existing bounties in order to make them more lucrative to potential hackers.
I could setup this site right now fairly easily, but people wouldn't trust my joe random site as well as they would trust a bigger and more established organization like Novell or Ubuntu/Canonical. But I can't be the only one looking to put my money where my mouth is, so why does this functionality not exist?
501 Not Implemented
There's people on OSDL's, Redhat's, Novell's, Intel's, AMD's, HP's, SGI's, IBM's, Cyclade's, Montavista's, NSA's (yes, really), etc, payroll working on the Linux kernel. Even Sun's (Mike Waychison, for example), or Dell's (Matt Domsch).
Linux is not a hobby anymore, long are the times it was developped by a handful of heremit-type hackers. It's move on to the professiona world, where lots of people are being paid big bucks to make it happen.
Sourceforge should extend it's donation system and create a bounty system. When you donate money to a project's bounty system, you get a vote for each dollar you give. People submit for the bounty, and then, you can vote for who will get the coding contract.
perception is reality
Watch the hacking scene in the movie Swordfish for the best motivator a hacker could ever want.
Forgive the sarcasm, but what's a better motivater than cash?
Eternal life, perpetual youth, perfect health, godlike power.
I just took a scan through all the bounties listed at the link and noticed a few things:
1) Many of the bounties are already fixed
2) The fixed bounties still haven't been claimed or paid after more than a year in some cases.
3) The bounty hunters all start early on the bounties, but then no progress for months while people wonder if it's being worked on.
4) Sometimes a patch is submitted, but it never gets applied by the coordinators.
5) It's very collaborative. Many are just a long thread of incomplete fixes that go on for years.
6) The patches often get lost after the original author gives up to it not being included after a period of months/years.
7) Changes often impact other projects, whose maintainers may not want thier project patched.
Frankly, I'm amazed that in some cases it takes 2 years to fix and patch a simple bug. Meanwhile, the source tree is changed, rendering the original patch unusable. Don't tell me how I should contribute to improve it. I was thinking about doing just that until I came to the realization of how horribly inefficient the whole process is. If I fix a bug, I don't want to wait 2 years, if ever, to get paid thank you.
thanks, the grandparent poster really has no clue what he's talking about, but thats never stopped mod's from pushing him up in the ratings. lameness.
Well, the thing is that parts of Novell DEPEND on GNOME, since they now develop evolution etc. SuSE might use KDE, but not in such a core-business way. Personally, though, I wouldn't be investing in GNOME these days. Seems like it's going downhill to me, while KDE is improving in leaps and bounds.
I have no problem subsidizing education, much like I have no problem subsidizing universal health care. Ooh, some money I don't really need is lopped off my paycheque. Big deal. There are larger things than what you take home every pay period affecting the country.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
If gnome really wants to reduce bloat they should consider moving back to gnome office from OO.o
You know you've been playing too much World of Warcraft when you look at the headline and start thinking up ways to min/max the gnome character, and how to spend the money from the bounty for doing so...
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$tar -xvf
It would seem to me that you would want your development machine to have low end specs so you can get a better feel for how the software will perform on the majority of older PCs out there?
I hope that made sense.
I hate to say it, but the slow GUI speed is why I don't enjoy using Linux. Even xfce4 is slower than Windows XP, which is ridiculous. Gnome used to be my favorite environment (it's by far the easiest to use), but I got fed up by the sluggishness. I hope this project can bring me back to GNOME.
you sir, are a complete idiot. Fluxbox is a window manager it doesn't run anything. KDE / Gnome applications are just applications that use KDE / Gnome libraries, and so will run in any X environment, or linux framebuffer environment depending on the backend they use.
... nevermind, I can't remember what I say.
I stole this signature
Here, I'll give someone a head start. I'm busy with my daughter right now but need week I'm going to dig deeper with dtrace!
"128 MBs of RAM (very usual configuration in developing countries or even European businesses)"
OMG! This pseudo nerd Eugenia is such a jerk.
.oO(That's why the whole world hates you americans.)
How do you pull this off? I've got two systems running KDE 3.4...
The first one (running 3.4 final) has 1 GB of physical RAM. There is never a time when KDE is running that it isn't using at least 1.5 GB of RAM (including swap, discluding cache).
The other one (running 3.4 rc1) has 256 MB of physical RAM. It is almost consistently maxing out while care is taken to be running only the minimum services/programs.
So... how did you get KDE working properly with a mere 128 MB of RAM?
Luke-Jr
Have you considered that maybe such systems are not 5 year old hardware?
The new Zaurus SL-C3000 (released within the past 6 months) computers all have 64 MB of RAM (along with 4 GB HD and 400 MHz overclockable to ~600 MHz).
So where exactly do you suggest I find a similar system with better specs for *any* price (let alone something affordable)?
Luke-Jr
Before you even touch any vector-to-map conversions you should make sure your disk IO is optimal. If you are reading/writing/opening any file more than once, you will see no measurable gain from adding binary search to some measly thousand element vector. If you are using the network without a pretty darn good reason, or not caching the results, you can forget about doing any other optimizations. If you need to start twenty daemons to run a word processor, you have some serious architecture design issues.
In other words: fix the slow stuff first!
This may be a stupid question, but here goes: Why don't these guys use languages (Python, for example) that are memory friendly?
I'd like my $200 now.
64 + 32 + 4
I've seen weirder setups
What gave you the idea that there is *any* number that can't be made up of powers of two?
What you are proposing sound like you could be helped by starting a demon which autostarts the needed gnome demons ;-)
..
Another demon, but maybe you#d like this one
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Wow, so much money, so much incentive. Honestly, I think Novell may get a little too much credit with what they have helped do with linux. I mean look at the contributions to the kernel mostly from OSDL, Redhat and IBM. What about Sun paying developers salaries for OO development. Meanwhile KDE developers make KDE much more memory efficient than Gnome for free and Novell profits. Novell simply is trying to get in the news with a prize instead of pumping a sufficient amount of money into either Desktop Environment. Lets all fight over $3000!w00t.
Math
(lame post) This would be useful for normal users, and help get corporate users into the loop...
there is no thing
what else could you want?
Actually it's quite common in an algorithm to trade space for time. Algorithms tend to work on abstract levels where there's lots of one resource in order to trade off. In fact many algorithms are concerned precisely about abstraction over anything else.
The other catch is you've got to be wary of optimisations that complicate code. It used to be the case that gotos could provide a fast way to short circuit your way out of code at a cost to a reader trying to follow the code's logic.
Get rid of the horrendously evil clone of the Windows Registry.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Basic visual cues are "eye candy," the favorite intellectual fallback weapon to describe anything that makes you feel less elite for using it.
This isn't 1987 anymore. My CPU can handle drawing pleasing visual effects so that after 13 hours of programming, my eyes aren't fatigued.
It seems that offering this bounty is an admittance that "volunteer effort" isn't as good a motivator as plain old financial incentive, which--shock--is what goes on in the commercial software world we all profess hate so much.
This bounty means two things:
1.) The code is bloated (just take a look at gnome-terminal sometime). Apparently, the "many eyes" idea of open source didn't work for GNOME.
2.) Financial incentive is needed to get the software up to shape. This, too, goes against the OSS philosophy that all you need is volunteer effort to get things done. Here we see the same old capitalism in play, the same kind Slashdotters love to gripe about.
Amusing. I expect to get modded down for pointing this out, but if you want, reply and explain why you disagree.
A desktop- and windowsmanager of your choise?
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
It's because so much gets pointlessly reinvented. Take a look at Mozilla sometime. So many wheels are reinvented in that code just for the sake of easy portability. The code is horrible. Take a look at that layout code sometime and attempt to decipher it. And Mozilla is supposed to be a golden child of OSS development!
Also, there is less structure and discipline because it's not a corporate environment with lead programmer, project leaders, and so on overseeing things like performance and code size. Instead, it's a volunteer effort that takes code from all over the place rather than from the small pool of gifted programmers you hired solely for your project.
Everything has advantages and disadvantages, and OSS has its disadvantages like any other model.
I gave up on the Gnome and currently run with the Mouse that flies. I have a 200MHz PPro with 128MB RAM. Gnome is usable if I'm not Gimping. When I am which is often ( I'm changing my carrer from programmer to artist) Gnome is intollerable ( 3 seconds for a penstroke!). I have found that XFce is at least usable on my antique hardware. The other nice thing about it is that it has not been Microsofted.
How is somebody a jerk for being naive? How can you hate somebody for being naive?
With 'the whole world' you mean everybody except the Americans and the people who do not hate Americans?
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
Some kind of really wanted ring?
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
The reason people haven't done profiling/memory usage reduction is because GNOME CVS is a pain in the ass to hack on (IMHO, of course), so the only people that work on it are *seriously* dedicated.
My idea of a nice program to work on is one where you can sit down, pull CVS, implement and test your patch, and send it in. I used to do this quite happily with rxvt -- discover that a feature could be added, pull CVS, add code, test, submit. Piece of cake.
Now, let's compare the process for working on, say, gnome-terminal. Well, I'm running Fedora Core 3, which is pretty up-to-date. But when I pull down gnome-terminal CVS, it won't build because it requires gnome-common from CVS. Okay, I pull that down, semi-manually bundle it up into an RPM (so that I can remove it later). Install it. Try again to build gnome-terminal, discover that it has a mass of more dependencies. Which require more dependencies. I'm not going to deal with the breakage ensuing from installing an entire set of CVS Gnome and waste the time involved with dealing with all the crap I just dumped all over my system just because I want to hack on one piece of software.
This also bit me with Gaim -- I got irritated with something minor in Gaim, read through the code, realized that a patch would be easy to produce, pulled CVS -- and then discovered that because of one addition that the Gaim author chose to make (use of gtk_cell_view), CVS gaim requires gtk+ 2.6 instead of 2.4 (what ships with FC3). I'm not going to hassle with dependency hell, troubleshoot all the problems involved with dumping the stuff all overy my system, just to add my minor patch. So now *I* don't have my feature and all the other people out there who would have enjoyed the feature are also missing out.
The problem is that the GNOME libraries are just too quick-moving of a target, and *all* of the GNOME software is rapidly updated to use the very-latest and greatest features (and hence *require* the latest and greatest GNOME dependencies). Which nobody who just wants to drop in a small patch wants to hassle with. If you are a GNOME author, and you want help from OSS developers out there, you simply need to stop requiring the latest-and-greatest. Give a six-month lead on new library versions, if you can, so that distros have some time to get out a system that you can code to.
A similar example -- the Xlibs that ship with Fedora Cores have long been buggy, and trigger valgrind (or at least I see otherwise-nonbuggy software triggering valgrind's memcheck tool in Xlib code). But I don't really want to go through the hassle of dumping new X stuff all over my system just to investigate a problem that probably exists, but can't be directly linked to crashes or misbehavior on my system. You also see surprisingly few people hacking on X (given the number of people that use it and the number of people that have straightforward feature wishes involving it).
Software that requires the latest-and-greatest of a vast dependency tree that that requires altering important software on the system will *never* be as well maintained as software that does not. GNOME makes it a pain in the ass to just drop in and submit a bugfix or a feature fix or two.
I have submitted numerous patches to OSS software packages to reduce memory usage and CPU usage, and plan to continue doing so in the future (even though I don't have the old PII that inspired me to write a bunch of my earlier patches). But as long as it's easier for me to just continue using xterms than to start hacking on a piece of software in GNOME CVS, I'm not going to be touching the code.
-0x0d0a (account and IP banned from Slashdot, making his first post in ages)
The point was that it's not something that runs by default unless you log into Gnome.
;)
Run gtk apps outwith Gnome, and you'll lose some settings. Someone else points out that after the settings daemon, a ~/.gtkrc-2.0 will be checked by GTK, though as I recall this isn't bulletproof (font settings not stored in the rc file change the moment the daemon is up and running, last time I toyed with it).
I have no problem with many daemons running, my point was purely that to have to carry this settings daemon around with you even when you're not using Gnome seems a bit excessive. Granted, anybody who truly gets off on using as few CPU cycles as possible isn't going to be using GTK-2.x...
Library on top of endless library, based on the vain assumption it somehow decreases programming work and increases managability. Quite the opposite in reality.
How many end applications are there? Not many. How many libraries are there, all developed in isolation? Umpteen jillion.
Force all open-source developers to use 64-bit platforms (preferably amd64, PPC64, and MIPS64 at least, for as much cross-platform exposure as possible) with only 128 MB RAM.
It sounds crazy but then you tackle 2 birds with one stone. Reduced memory bloat and 64-bit clean code all in one shot from day one.
In fact, there has been several different implementations - the two best known during the dotcom boom. See here, for example:
m l
http://www.searls.com/linuxforsuits/industry.ht
I'm very interested in the topic since I first heard about bounties. Unfortunatly, a good implementation (ie. covering not only the US) is a little bit complicated.
But it will come (back), I'm sure. As far as I know it has been (or is) under consideration by Canonical/Ubuntu.
claus
KDE realized this years ago and moved to the lightweight DCOP for inter-process communications. Come on, GNOME team, CORBA is for inter-computer communications and should be abandoned immediately in favor of a lightweight replacement. Bonobo doesn't count.
Kriston
Any DE will need a configuration system
Any such system will be hierarhical
Any hierarhical system can be displayed in a registry like format...
Is THAT really a problem? Geez get a grip on yourselves
X~
Actually (this may come as a shock to you) America is not just USA :) hope I helped you there
So with the whole world he means everybody (quite a bunch even if you just count china) except some Americans who do not hate Americans
Hope I didn't sound too korny I just wanted to be funny
X~
My backpack's got jets, I'm Boba the Fett
I bounty hunt for Jabba Hutt to finance my vette.
I chill in deep space, a mask is over my face.
I deliver the prize, but I still narrow my eyes, cuz my time I don't like to waste. Get down!
Mod up, GnomeOffice is so much faster.
Something non-monetary that is often an important motivator: glory/credit/recognition. Put their name in lights for their achievements/contributions.
Run gtk apps outwith Gnome, and you'll lose some settings.
That's terrible design. The library should start the daemon if it doesn't find it running.
my point was purely that to have to carry this settings daemon around with you even when you're not using Gnome seems a bit excessive.
Why? It's merely partitioning functionality into an external process. The functionality has to go somewhere. It sounds to me that you are forgetting that, and assuming that a client that handles stuff itself magically gets the functionality for free.
sqrt(2)....
Oh, ok, you can if you use an infinite number of powers of 2...
Program Intellivision!
i'll give you clue one for being a graphic designer - you better get some hardware that is vintage 2004 at the oldest if you want to get anything done.
modern graphic design and "antique hardware" do not walk hand in hand.
I'd argue that they are indeed investing credible resources (if not "pumping money") into important parts of desktop infrastructure.
Robert Love working on HAL.
Robert O'Callahan working on Mozilla.
David Reveman working on Glitz/Cairo
Etc, etc.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
everyone knows that gnomes are fat...
http://members.aol.com/TheRobots2/jpeg/gnome.jpg
btw: i'm a kde user...
kde 3.4 Rocks.... and kde 4 (with qt 4) will rock even more...
I for one, welcome our new hot grits... PROFIT!
I'd like it if they'd optimize it so that the save dialog actually works instead of being a UI nightmare. It feels like it's about 10 years of negative progress.
Even the Windows save dialog is better.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
So how many weeks of work does this $800 buy? I'm amazed at the apparently small size of these bounties, given the size of the industry that now exists around Linux. I guess they assume you live in a place with really low cost of living? Or just have tons of spare time? Or is it the thrill of winning the bounty?
Not to trauuull, but KDE people: get over it, TrollTech just missed the the licsencing train by a few years. A good lesson to all s/w companies.
"...normal evolution would have gone Word to Frame to troff, but instead, the computer industry has gone the other way!"
Thanks and thanks ;)
Intelligent Life on Earth
I've recently switched from kde to the gtk-based xfce4 because I wanted more free memory. It is stable, fast and still looks good. If you want to give it a try, check out http://xfce.org. The only drawback I've noticed personally is the (imo) odd file manager which can't be compared to Konqueror or Nautilus in functionality. You can still use one of these though.
...but I have cursed (metamodded against) the idiot who painted this with a "Flamebait" rating.
:-) gramatically correct.
Note to such idiots: modding is not about whether you agree with what's said, it's about how well the poster made their point. This post was well written, made some good points (if not as valid as the author might hope), was on topic and (-: hallelujah!
I'd give it +1 Interesting. Perhaps Slash needs to do something like LXer and break the ratings out into separate agree/disagree, quality/trash scales?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Wait, you're saying you can use the gnome GUI? I'm calling bullshit!
The Farewell Tour II