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Linux Mint 19 'Tara' Cinnamon Will Be Faster (betanews.com)

Posted by msmash on from the next-up dept.

Mint developers say they feel the app-launching time on the Linux distro seemed slow when using the Cinnamon desktop environment. So, they are working on fixing it. BetaNews reports: Windows build time was four times slower with Cinnamon compared to Metacity, while recovery time was nearly four times slower too. So yes, app-launching on Cinnamon -- as of today -- is slow comparatively. The big benefit to pinpointing a problem, however, is that it is the first step in solving it. And so, Linux Mint 19 Cinnamon will be faster as a result. "We developed a little script and a method to measure how long it took to flood the desktop environment with the creation of 200 windows. We could then measure the time reported by the script to build these 200 windows, and the time it actually took the desktop environment to recover from it and have these windows placed/mapped correctly and ready to be interacted with. Both measures were significantly higher in Cinnamon than in other desktops," says The Linux Mint Team.

61 comments

  1. The problem: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The window manager is written in fucking JavaScript:

    https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/pull/7251

    1. Re:The problem: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The test script you linked to is in Python. Do you know what you're talking about?

    2. Re:The problem: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Read the actual commits.

      https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/pull/7251/commits/59424ac791d51a6b92efc5989f7cb0d9562621af

      https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/pull/7251/commits/bc2bf1c7d5129918d90b805f33f20f99c155802a

      https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/pull/7251/commits/2cf573246db0466df99da9d0c3c05c7288c5c35e

      All JavaScript, all crap.

    3. Re:The problem: by dyfet · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The problem is not javascript per say. It seems to be in the way gtk3 lays out widgets, and that is now surprisingly slow. When I played with cinnamon with just a few panel extensions it took an extra 10-20 seconds to startup, and naturally my first thought is that it was js. But after profiling it a bit, it became clear gtk3 itself is to blame. I think this was also a primary motivation for Ike to abandon gtk in favor of Qt for all future bungie work.

    4. Re:The problem: by jareth-0205 · · Score: 0

      The problem is not javascript per say.

      Per say? For each speak? Does that make any fucking sense at all?

      Don't mindlessly repeat phrases you've heard better-educated people use. It makes you look like a right thick cunt."

      George Orwell (Collected Essays, Vol 3).

      What a useful and valuable contribution to the technical discussion.

    5. Re:The problem: by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Don't mindlessly repeat phrases you've heard better-educated people use. It makes you look like a right thick cunt."

      George Orwell (Collected Essays, Vol 3).

      Oh the irony...

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    6. Re: The problem: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, it's dogsh*t with 4k. I don't understand the popularity. It's no good.

    7. Re: The problem: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, it is all written in JavaScript, except for the parts that aren't:
      https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/tree/master/src
      (which appear to be the core of the program)

    8. Re:The problem: by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      He's not a cunt per se, just someone who makes a spelling mistake for an otherwise perfectly normal phrase.

      Now the type of person who derails a good technical discussion to abuse someone for a spelling mistake on the other hand:
      cunt /knt/
      nounvulgar slang - an unpleasant or stupid person.

      Yeah that fits the definition just fine.

    9. Re:The problem: by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      It's not a perfectly normal phrase. A perfectly normal phrase would be "in itself".

      People sprinkle foreign phrases around in order to appear intelligent and erudite; he failed because he's neither.

      It's one of those things you should do properly or not at all, like skydiving, invading Russia and creating init systems.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    10. Re:The problem: by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      It's not a perfectly normal phrase.

      Oh I get it. You weren't commenting on his spelling, you're just clueless.

    11. Re:The problem: by chmod+a+x+mojo · · Score: 1

      Yeah, you might want to check definitions before you spout off shit. It will make you not look stupid, like in this case:

      per se -

      by or in itself or themselves; intrinsically.
      "it is not these facts per se that are important"
      synonyms: in itself, of itself, by itself, in and of itself, as such, intrinsically;

      Sure looks like he used it correctly to me.

      --
      To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
    12. Re:The problem: by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      He didn't use it at all, dumbass. He wrote "per say".

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  2. Comment by WallyL · · Score: 1

    I use Cinnamon, on Fedora. I appreciate the effort the Cinnamon team puts into the DE. I use xfce on the less-than-heavyweight systems, and Cinnamon where I can. If Cinnamon gets improvements that let it run everywhere, I'm okay with that!

    I look forward to trying the new Cinnamon version!

  3. Mint updates don't piss me off by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Linux Mint with Cinnamon is one of the few pieces of software that doesn't piss me off. It sucks that it uses systemd, but systemd is less bad than the lack of trust I have in Microsoft. Today, it's all about using software that sucks less than its alternatives. I have no love for software anymore. Okay, maybe I have a little love for Mint. For now. But that's it.

    Cinnamon devs, if you can hear me, can you please let me lasso files in Nemo when it's in details view? I'll suck your dick man

  4. Why is decades old UI tech so slow? by Neuroelectronic · · Score: 2

    Make sure all your activities on the desktop are mirrored in a machine-readable metadata file that is loaded into a JavaScript interpreter, all resources of any type are to be assigned a GUID, and remember to load those DOM sources! I'm sure this is all very important.

  5. app-launching? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mint is a computer OS. We have programs on our computers, not "apps".

    1. Re:app-launching? by Stormwatch · · Score: 0

      App is short for application.

      --
      Circumcision is child abuse.
    2. Re:app-launching? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do not summon the appy apps apper.

    3. Re:app-launching? by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      App is just shorthand for application. It’s a term that has been used for 3+ decades, aspie.

    4. Re:app-launching? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mint isn't an OS. Linux is the OS. Mint is the collection of configurations for the OS. It has a primary desktop environment called Cinnamon.

    5. Re:app-launching? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nope, Linux is the kernel.The OS is Mint.

    6. Re:app-launching? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I first saw the word "app" used in a demo program that came with my first PC clone in 1985, that was supposed to help you learn MS-DOS 2.11 commands.

    7. Re:app-launching? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nope. Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is the OS. Mint is just a DE and config tools that sit on top. The Mint team will openly tell you this. They even make that plain and clear on the website. You must be an AMD fan boi to be quite that deluded

  6. Blame GTK3 by SurenEnfiajyan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Linux Mint Cinnamon is a nice piece of software but unfortunately it's based on a rotten foundation which is getting worse and worse. They should should migrate to the commercially supported Qt. But I understand that it would be a huge work.

    1. Re:Blame GTK3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmm. Might I interest you in KDE? It's QT.

    2. Re:Blame GTK3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I give zero fucks about "commercially supported". It's one of a long list of complaints people make around Linux, that when you press for details, you find out they really want proprietary software. I want all proprietary software gone yesterday.
      That said, I'm still using Linux Mint 17 KDE. I wish they hadn't dropped KDE, and I'm searching for a distro for the future.

    3. Re:Blame GTK3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ditch 'desktop environments'. Why wait for anything? Logging in should be under a second. Starting anything should be instantaneous, unless the application itself is incredibly heavy. A lightweight window manager is all that is needed.

    4. Re:Blame GTK3 by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Sadly, KDE has Plasma. Might I interest him in LXQt?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    5. Re:Blame GTK3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's odd: early macs, various flavours of os/2, even win95 (between crashes) managed to provide responsive desktop environments on hardware you wouldn't use for a toaster today. To me that suggests that the desktop "paradigm" (ugh) isn't the problem but rather the implementation of same. Strip it back, worry less about playing chase-the-fad (design-fad or buzz-language) and focus on the basics: responsiveness, consistency, discoverability, simplicity (but not at the expense of your non-drooling-imbecile users).

    6. Re:Blame GTK3 by SurenEnfiajyan · · Score: 1

      With "commercially supported" I don't mean that Qt is necessarily closed source or they should go for the proprietary version of Qt. I mean that Qt developers are paid for their hard work to improve their product. Compared to it, GTK 3 (and GNOME 3) is a hobbyist project with no goals even though it's an unofficial RH product.

    7. Re:Blame GTK3 by youngone · · Score: 2

      I trialled Linuxmint 18.3 KDE from here and it looked pretty good.
      I might wait until 19 has a KDE version then use that, although the Cinnamon version works just fine for me.

    8. Re:Blame GTK3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why is this comment modded down? It's a fact that Linux Mint decided to stop doing a KDE edition.

    9. Re: Blame GTK3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I quite like KDE, so obviously am not interested in Mint.

    10. Re:Blame GTK3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I recommend blackbox.

    11. Re:Blame GTK3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What's wrong with MATE?

    12. Re:Blame GTK3 by Trogre · · Score: 1

      XFCE. Starts from login to last session restored on a 10-year old laptop with PATA SSD in less than two seconds.

      --
      "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
    13. Re:Blame GTK3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's gone GTK3, that's what. Mate has the same slow, syrupy feeling Cinnamon does now, and honestly, Xfce has become what Gnome 2 was. I'd rather have Mate than not have it, but I'd rather have, and do use, Xfce than either.

    14. Re:Blame GTK3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you're ok with Plasma then KDE Neon is a nice, stable distro. Ubuntu based and haven't had any QT showstoppers.

    15. Re:Blame GTK3 by zwarte+piet · · Score: 1

      Not quite as good as 17.3 though, and kdesvn isn't available for 18.x which stopped me from upgrading. So, I was waiting for 19 to fix this, but now there's not gonna be a 19 kde edition.

    16. Re:Blame GTK3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So Mint supports MATE and Cinnamon as standard. While I have no doubt Xfce can be made to work with it, is there any specific distro that you would recommend with solid Xfce support out of the box?

    17. Re: Blame GTK3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mint Xfce or Xubuntu

    18. Re: Blame GTK3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks.

    19. Re:Blame GTK3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's ugly.

      I'm sick of this trend where every single desktop environment is trying to mimic the anachronistic, two colour, Fisher-Price look of "Material Design" or Windows 8/10. Aren't there any sleek, professional looking desktop environments any more?

    20. Re:Blame GTK3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This.

      I wish it was a bit more configurable, but I compromised for the speed and lightness. Hell, I even give the project money regularly, usually after a day of fighting the latest Win10 brain damage at work...

      Speaking of configurability and money: Keyboard shortcuts for Thunar tab navigation
      https://www.bountysource.com/issues/3547148-keyboard-shortcuts-for-tab-navigation

  7. Why now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    One would think that measuring performance would be built in from the start. Both Linux and Windows provide simple low overhead high precision clocks so there is really no excuse for not timing important events.

  8. Beautiful OS by wolfheart111 · · Score: 1

    Really Lovely Interface... Should give it another shot.

    --
    [($)]
  9. It's been around for years by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They needed to develop their own script?
    Carsten Haitzler (rasterman, of enlightenment fame) released exactly that (called WM Torture) in the Enlightenment DR16 years.
    Surely, the best feature of a WM is to get out of the way.

  10. What wrong with LXDE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I new to Peppermint Linux, which has LXDE as the default GUI. Seems just one needs in a GUI, so far. Why I consider any alternative? What I am missing? Oh, Great Linux Guru, may you share you insights with me?

    1. Re:What wrong with LXDE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Session management, for one, it's show-stopper for me. Some people consider it as ugly, it seems okayish for me, although LXQt is prettier but heavier.

    2. Re:What wrong with LXDE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      By session management, you mean tracking and recording user activity? That is no concern within my personal home network. Do you mean some else, #56301815?