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Kernel 2.6.31 To Speed Up Linux Desktop
Dan Jones writes "As the Linux community looks forward to another kernel release, the kernel hackers have been working on improving the memory management so that the X desktop responsiveness is doubled under high memory pressure. The result is an improved desktop experience. Benchmarks on memory-tight desktops show clock time and major faults reduced by 50 per cent, and pswpin numbers (memory reads from disk) are reduced to about one-third. Another improvement coming with 2.6.31 is kernel mode-setting support for ATI Radeon graphics cards, enabling faster user switching and a more seamless startup experience. Peripheral developments that will also improve the Linux desktop experience include support for the new USB 3.0 specification and a new Firewire stack. Even minor Linux releases have heaps of new features these days!"
What's broken here is that a completely closed off format has become standard on the internet.
Troll. But I'll bite.
X11 is a whipping boy for anyone who's ever had a complaint about a Unix GUI. No matter whether it's a badly-designed application, an unstable driver, or poor kernel scheduling, or a deranged toolkit drag-and-drop model, people always fault X11. And no matter what the root cause of the problem, the solution is always to throw out the X protocol and design something else. People like you fail to account for the possibility that there's actually very little wrong with X, and that it can certainly be the basis for a modern, functional GUI.
There was a very interesting comment on Slashdot a few years ago by Mike Paquette (who wrote Apple's Quartz) explaining why Apple didn't use X11 for OS X. The funny thing, in retrospect, is that every single feature mentioned in Paquette's post has now been implemented for X11, and that's with volunteer work. If Apple had invested resources into making this happen for X instead of reinventing the wheel, everyone would have been better off. Yet despite these additional features, we still retain full network transparency along with full compatibility stretching back to the 80s.
Don't confuse "newer" and "better". X11's architecture is quite good, and is among one of the better designs for a windowing system ever created. It's clean, extensible, fast, and network-transparent. It defines mechanism, not policy, and does its job extremely well. That it's been extended to support all kinds of modern features is a testament to the strength of its original design.
If it weren't for the soul-crushing stupidity, it'd be hilarious that people claim X is slow. X ran quickly on computers with 1/000 the performance of even a modest desktop system today, but it's slow on these modern computers? That makes no sense. People claim that X's network transparency puts it at a performance disadvantage, but neglect that Unix Sockets, used for local communication, are among the faster IPC mechanisms in existence. Criticism of X as a platform is baseless.
> As someone who uses Windows but has an open mind, I don't care who is at fault.
Fair enough on one level but totally unfair on the one that matters here. If the criticism of the Linux community is they concentrate their effort on things that mortals care little for this one doesn't work since the performance of Flash Player is entirely out of their hands.
Flash sucks everywhere, just to varying degrees depending on platform. Go watch the fun in the netbook space as the Intel Atom is being unfairly blamed by clueless pundits for the inability of netbooks with the newer 1280x720 and 1388x768 displays to play full screen Flash video (on Windows XP btw.). We nerds on slashdot know better of course, the problem is Adobe being mindless idiots who can't figure out how to properly use a scaled video surface.
I'd like some green group to calculate how many YouTube videos have been played and how many GigaWatt Hours of electricity have been wasted on software colorspace conversion and scaling because Adobe can't figure out how to use well documented and commonly available features on every video card made in the last fifteen years.
Democrat delenda est