Hello,

I have never used Linux before, but it is becoming an important development target platform for us now. After installing Ubuntu 8.1 with gnome desktop I was quite surprised that the user interface felt quite slugish. The same machine with XP works as expected. It is hard to believe for me that Linux would be any slower than XP.

- Is there a way to speed up Ubuntu? (drivers, other GUI ...) (:Yes, I know it is not a Lazarus specific question:)
- What Linux distro's are the recommended targets for Lazarus apps?
- Is there any real difference from the developers point of view?

Regards,
Leslie
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What does work slower ? The GUI (if so it might be because some wrong configuration or wrong driver)
Something else ?

What was installed on the machine ? if there are many daemons and services running, it will make things slower ...

Ido

2009/1/20 :

2009/1/20 :

this is like saying a ford focus weighs less than a bmw 7-series. ubuntu does have a lot of stuff you probably don't use and google will give you tips on getting it faster. you can always just use another distro (e.g. debian). xubuntu is also supposed to be easier on resources. there are distros that specifically focus on slower hardware, too.

there may be some issues with different versions of the widgetset you choose to use, but i'm sure people on this list will be able to help you.

henry

Specifying exactly what parts are slow could help us identify it. What is your PC's Specs? Ubuntu 8.1 is a newer OS by about 7 years to XP ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_xp), so it might have some underlying assumptions about your hardware.

It could be that you have a high-end graphics card, and don't have decent drivers. Also ubuntu are now starting to use a fair bit of transparency, and other special 2d graphics (warping, flying in windows etc.)

- Is there a way to speed up Ubuntu? (drivers, other GUI ...)

right driver for the Graphiccard?

What Linux distro's are the recommended targets for Lazarus apps?

deb-based (Debian,Ubuntu etc)
rpm-based (Red Hat,Suse etc)

http://distrowatch.com/

Is there any real difference from the developers point of view?

the packaging

Most machines ship with special Windows drivers, starting from the chipset and reaching to the graphics card. Actually I cannot make work properly an XP from a distribution for a different machine, lacking the appropriate drivers for the new machine. The new machine only comes with Vista drivers, support even for other Windows versions is poor to non existent. The same for Linux distros, which may not include the machine specific drivers.

I found XP very hardware dependent, since I've had to replace the graphics card on an older machine - XP now fails to start even in safe or VGA mode. A W2K installation on the same machine had no problems to switch to the new hardware.

- Is there a way to speed up Ubuntu? (drivers, other GUI ...) (:Yes, I know it is not a Lazarus specific question:)

You should make sure that all required drivers are available for your favorite system, *before* buying a new machine. Lazarus cannot make the OS work faster ;-)

Or you install the host system, as shipped with the machine, and run other systems in virtual machines. Then you can find out how other systems behave on your machine, without hardware dependencies. You also have a chance to e.g. test your applications on different target systems. I create a new VM for every major software project, so that I can save and restore the project together with the entire environment. No more problems with multiple FPC/Lazarus or Delphi versions, when each development system is installed in a dedicated VM :-)

DoDi

After installing Ubuntu 8.1 with gnome desktop I was quite surprised that the user interface felt quite slugish.

Odd, I've built several Ubuntu systems from 7.10 and 8.04 and 8.10 and I've been happy with the speed. Three of the systems are Mythtv boxes and they do a fine job of HDTV.

- Is there a way to speed up Ubuntu?

Are we talking graphics being too slow? Does the system have an ATI or NVidia graphics card?

If so you may want to try the ATI or NVidia drivers for your machine.

Google "ubuntu envy script" and read Alberto's page. Go to synaptic and add the envy script. Run it.

Good luck.

Thanks for the answers and suggestions everyone!

The speed issue I have is that simple things, like popup menues, clicking on tabs of a pagecontrol, changing tasks ...almost everything is handled too slowly. Compared to what I am used to, the delay is quite disturbing. The other kind of slowness is that when the screen is refreshed it is slow enough to see the different areas refreshing one by one. All together it feeling is similar to working in a web browser. The PC is an older one: Celeron 1700 CPU, 512MB RAM, 200GB HDD (10 GB for Ubuntu), Integrated Video, but I think it should be decent enough for running Linux. There was enough free RAM so the slowness could not have been caused by disk swaping either.

So, one thing is already clear, I will need a proper driver for the video card for sure. But realy would not want to be offtopic any longer, I better go to the Ubuntu forums to seek for more specific help.

Thanks for all the reactions again,
Leslie

I am running Ubuntu 6x, 7x, 8x and Windows XP/2000 in VMs on the same machine and have the same impression as you: For me, Windows feels snappier than Ubuntu Linux.

Regards, Bernd.

I run Windows 2000 under a VMWare in linux, and it is dog slow.

I think we are more measuring the speed of VMWare and their drivers than the actual guest OS.

Michael.

Michael Van Canneyt wrote

I run Windows 2000 under a VMWare in linux, and it is dog slow.

Try VirtualBox ;-)

I think we are more measuring the speed of VMWare and their drivers than the actual guest OS.

you may be right, in VirtualBox you have to install the so called "Guest Additions". May be, these are better optimized for Windows.

Regards, Bernd.

Let's be honest here: current versions of both GNOME and KDE are quite slower than XP UI.

It always felt a bit slower - what I and many others assumed to be caused by the X architeture or lack of hardware acceleration - but benchmarks seemed to differ.
Anyway "Linux" UI performance has been on a downhill for years; enlightenment 0.16 with plenty of bells and whistles runs perfectly on a Pentium 100MHz, but current encarnations of GNOME and KDE run barely acceptably on a Duron 1.2GHz (with a geforce 6200 either with vesa, nv or nvidia drivers. Of course the onboard sis video isn't any better). Enlightenment and LXDE (and other ligthweight DEs) still runs pretty smooth; XFCE doesn't cut it since it switched to GTK2 :-/ It seems CPU-related, as a Core2 notebook with a crappy via onboard video runs snappy even with either openchrome or vesa driver.

-Fl?vio

"Let's be honest here: current versions of both GNOME and KDE are quite slower than XP UI.

It always felt a bit slower - what I and many others assumed to be caused by the X architeture or lack of hardware acceleration - but benchmarks seemed to differ.
Anyway "Linux" UI performance has been on a downhill for years; enlightenment 0.16 with plenty of bells and whistles runs perfectly on a Pentium 100MHz, but current encarnations of GNOME and KDE run barely acceptably on a Duron 1.2GHz (with a geforce 6200 either with vesa, nv or nvidia drivers. Of course the onboard sis video isn't any better). Enlightenment and LXDE (and other ligthweight DEs) still runs pretty smooth; XFCE doesn't cut it since it switched to GTK2 :-/ It seems CPU-related, as a Core2 notebook with a crappy via onboard video runs snappy even with either openchrome or vesa driver."

Maybe this could be an issue worth discussing here after all. :)

The main reason Linux is becoming important for us is to target small companies where price matters a lot. This far I thought that Linux would be superior to XP possibly even with weaker machines. Now I feel I really need advice from those who can compare the two. :)

It looks we can tell our clients which distro and GUI to use, but I need to make that decision first. I think it could be for the benifit of quite some of us to make a list of the worthy canditates (distro, GUI) with their advantages and disadvantages from the developers point of view (support and maintanace included. I'd welcome any personal opinion/experience.

Regards,
Leslie

null

Dear Leslie ,

I am also studying many Linux , FreeBSD , Solaris , OpenSolaris distributions
to find an easily usable one with the condition that my program when becomes ready
can be run on it as attached to a network .

I bought more than 10 hard disks with a smallest ( GigaByte / price ) ratio value
( some 250 GB , some 320 GB ... ) .

I am installing an OS on a disk in a PC , then I am attaching other one to the
same PC and installing a new one . I am not using partitions and not different
distributions in disks connected at the same time because they are changing structure of first hard disk .

My work PC is around 2.5 GHz Intel Pentium with an Intel main board .

For Delphi programming I am using XP Professional . Up to now I could not be able to obtain a fully working copy of my program compiled by Free Pascal in GUI mode due to Delphi and Free Pascal differences.
After obtaining that I will start to compile it for Linux , FreeBSD , Solaris .

For Internet access I am using an XP Home and another PC with Mandriva Free 2008.0 .

My main aim is also to be able to find a best combination to advice to the users
because in a data base environment users need many PCs and at least one server .

There are pages in Internet comparing Linux and BSD distributions .

If you search

benchmarking of linux distributions
comparison of linux distributions

benchmarking of BSD distributions
comparison of BSD distributions

in Google , you will find a lot of pages about this subject .

In your case , you did not mention exact listing of your hardware components and services running in your PC .

For Lazarus , selected widget set ( GTK , GTK2 ) may affect response times . There are many messages about that issue . If you search
Lazarus mailing list, you may find messages about that issue also .

My experience is that there are not Lazarus performance differences due to used OS .

If you have another PC running XP , you may disconnect its hard disk and attach your other OS hard disk to the same machine and compare the performance
of the SAME Lazarus configuration ( Version , SVN , Widget Set , etc. ) .

At present I can not suggest another solution to your problem because I could not be able reach to a useful conclusion on my studies yet .

With my best wishes for your success .

Mehmet Erol Sanliturk

Fl?vio Etrusco wrote

Let's be honest here: current versions of both GNOME and KDE are quite slower than XP UI.

I have to agree! I am a huge Linux fan and hardly ever work on Windows anymore (other than for quick application tests).

It always felt a bit slower - what I and many others assumed to be caused by the X architeture or lack of hardware acceleration - but benchmarks seemed to differ.

I definitely don't think it's the X architecture, but rather the bloat in the desktop environments like Gnome and KDE. I often test the fpGUI Toolkit on various DE's and Window Managers. I have about 7 different Window Managers installed on my system. Most of them are a LOT faster than Gnome or KDE. Sometimes I even switch my window manager for a few days, so I can feel raw speed again! :-)

smooth; XFCE doesn't cut it since it switched to GTK2 :-/

I must agree here as well! GTK2 is sluggish! I often find a bug in Gnome, then switch to XFCE and hope it's not there, yet the bug still exists. More inspection reveals that it's a GTK2 bug. :-(

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/

The main reason Linux is becoming important for us is to target small companies where price matters a lot. This far I thought that Linux would be superior to XP possibly even with weaker machines.

The exact reason our company is targeting Linux as well. :-) We have a franchise business and want to lower the running cost of our franchisees.

It looks we can tell our clients which distro and GUI to use, but I need to make that decision first. I think it could be for the benifit of quite some

We are doing the same. Our product runs and all distros we tried it on, but are rather going to recommend a single distro, to simply and improve support. Currently we recommend the Ubuntu LTS (long term support) releases. It's a relative small install, only one CD install and well supported on the internet etc...

We are also evaluating other Window Managers for very low spec systems. We have also made some notes on those Window Managers because they don't all work the same (modal dialogs come to mind) and don't all support the FreeDesktop standards (adding menus, desktop icons, file locations...) etc...

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/

En/na Graeme Geldenhuys ha escrit:

Probably because they're doing a lot less than Gnome/KDE?

Bye

Luca Olivetti wrote

Probably because they're doing a lot less than Gnome/KDE?

That's true, but is all that extra "fluff" really needed! I also think many developers are becoming sloppy with their programming. There is no excuse for inefficient and bloated code! Yes I know in the corporate environment, deadlines and cost are major factors, but that is no excuse for open-source software.

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/

Le mercredi 21 janvier 2009 ? 15:42 +0100, a ?crit :

Celeron 1700 CPU, 512MB RAM, 200GB HDD (10 GB for Ubuntu), Integrated Video, but I think it should be decent enough for running Linux. There was

Intel integrated video? There's big issues with (all?) Intel integrated, since Ubuntu Intrepid. Lucky guys can get it working but with very bad framerates. This is due to the new memory management from Intel, as explained on the Intel drivers's launchpad bug tracker.

Probably yes, but combined with the fact that those teams seem to be more interested in developing yet another new internal architecture every two years rather than optimize the current one.

Marco van de Voort wrote

Probably yes, but combined with the fact that those teams seem to be more interested in developing yet another new internal architecture every two years rather than optimize the current one.

That is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. Optimization is going out the window, so bloat sets in.

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/

I definitely don't think it's the X architecture, but rather the bloat in the desktop environments like Gnome and KDE.

IMO Vista introduces an similar bloat to the GUI, and I don't find it slow, on my machine (one year old, dual core...), neather native nor in a VM.

DoDi

With regards to the GUI and machines, games have been the driving force for new developments. Perhaps a distinction should be made between desktops for work, with no superfluous features and gadgets, and desktops for the end user, who has to explain the need for a new machine every year to his wife ;-)

DoDi

En/na Marco van de Voort ha escrit:

That's sadly true, however, apart from the rough transition from kde3 to kde4 (which still needs some optimization), it seems to me that each new release adds functionality with lower (or at the same level) system requirements, so it's not that bad.
Besides, nobody forces you to use gnome/kde: I have deployed a couple of really low end machines (they've more or less the power of a 486, but they're really nice since they're the same size as a vesa mount, so you can fit them with the lcd) with puppy linux and no window manager at all (they only run my application).

Bye

I run linux on a PC with an on-board intel graphics adapter, about 3y old. When I enable some of the "bloat" it is actually more responsive than some of the things that are supposed to be the "standard" stuff...

eg. Compiz stuff, like enhanced zoom (AWESOME tool, press Hyper - Mouse Scroll, and it zooms), wobbly windows... these things goes so smooth (hardly registers on the fairly weak 2.6 celeron CPU), I'd thought I had a 512mb graphics adaptor.

But doing some more basic stuff... I dunno, like scrolling in firefox on a window with some flash, javascript etc. is slow and sluggish.

Or opening the /lib folder in a file-open dialog box... slow as hell... I dunno, get a text list first, then assign the icons...

So some things are very responsive, and other things are not so. :-/

2009/1/23 Reenen Laurie :

I run linux on a PC with an on-board intel graphics adapter, about 3y old. When I enable some of the "bloat" it is actually more responsive than some of the things that are supposed to be the "standard" stuff...

My work PC is around 5 years old and has a integrated ATI graphics chip using shared memory. Compiz runs very nicely, other that a total system freeze after about 5-10 minutes. Very annoying, so I don't use Compiz anymore.

But doing some more basic stuff... I dunno, like scrolling in firefox on a window with some flash, javascript etc. is slow and sluggish.

Oh yes! This one drives me nuts! I don't know what causes it, but yes, Firefox is sometimes dog slow when scrolling pages. Yet while using Windows for the odd occasion, I haven't noticed this under Windows.

So some things are very responsive, and other things are not so. :-/

I have the same experience. Then after a while I get frustrated and switch my Window Manager to FVWM2 and run that for a week or so! FVWM2 is always lightning fast and starts up in around 1-2 seconds on my P4 2.4Ghz pc.

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/

Actually, it is just the same for me on windows. Facebook scrolling down (using the mouse wheel) is extremely clunky on Firefox, same for my gmail (with themes, chat etc enabled).

... So probably a firefox thing. Some people said that v2.+ is better at this than 3.+

Regards,
-Reenen

2009/1/23 Reenen Laurie :

(This thread is getting a bit too long on the OT, but...)

It's probably a several years old bug regarding scrolling of resized images. Actually AFAICT it's better in Firefox3 than in FF2.

-Fl?vio

PS. Agreed on the Compiz stuff (some operations being faster than pure GTK2). Some things really can't be slower when done in dedicated hardware, even if it's done with OpenGL on crappy hardware. And regardless of the years of optimization, Cairo doesn't seem to be any speed racer (some benchmarks say).

Hi,

some of you should try metacity with compositing enabled. Not as bloated as compiz.

$ gconftool-2 -s '/apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager' --type bool
true

or you can use gconf-editor as usual.