lubuntu-desktop team mailing list archive

[Mikhail Maksimov <mcwillin@xxxxxxxxx>]

Steve,

I simply cannot deduce the difference.

Fully updated my installation at about 7 AM GMT 2010-02-11. Used only
the default repos set by installer. Yet again freshly booted system
running just taskmanager and Midori reports 108 Mb RAM used.

Midori's help->about reports: "Midori 0.2.2, GTK+ 2.19.1, WebKitGTK+ 1.1.17"

Why is it eating 30 Mb of RAM more than on your system?

BTW, the 75 Mb usage with three pages seem unbelievably low. I'm going
to retry the tests having only 128 Mb RAM left in the system.

Regards,
Mikhail

On 2/11/10, Steve <yorvik.ubunto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:59:11 -0000, Mikhail Maksimov <mcwillin@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
> Hi, all.
>
> I've resurrected an ancient PC to try Lubuntu. Celeron 400 MHz, 256 Mb
> RAM and a 20 Gb PATA HDD. Here's my impression of running different
> browsers on the specified hardware.
>
> Tried this on my machine 266MHz PII, 128MB 66MHz ECC RAM, 6.4GB UDM2 HDD
> Only tested Midori so far, will try others tomorrow.
>
> Testing method:
> 1. Install Lubuntu from Lucid alpha2 preview2 iso.
> As above fully updated as of 10:20 UTC 2010/2/10
>
> 2. Install additional browsers (Chromium, Midori, Arora) from default
> Lucid repos.
> 3. For each of the four available browsers, measure startup time and
> memory usage on a freshly-booted machine (no executables cached), with
> homepage set to about:blank (no downloading/rendering on startup).
> 4. For each of the four available browsers, try to load three tabs:
> - open google.com, search for "Lubuntu";
> - open my gmail account, navigate to a 47-letters thread in
> lubuntu-desktop list ("default browser" discussion), hit "expand all"
> and wait for all to expand;
> - open http://www.rbc.ru, a news site in Russian with several Flash
> banners on the start page.
> 5. Examine memory usage afterwards.
>
> All memory usage numbers are listed as reported by Xfce4 Taskmanager
> with default settings (ie, with "Show memory used by cache as free"
> option active). These values are total numbers, including any memory
> used by system. A freshly-booted system with just taskmanager running
> reports 50..58 Mb RAM used.
>
> Startup times and memory usage after loading (homepage is about:blank,
> if applicable):
> Firefox: 13 seconds, 85 Mb.
> Chromium: 8..10 s, 81 Mb.
> Arora: 12 s, 78 Mb.
> Midori: 17 s, 108 Mb.
>
> Midori: 23 s, 75MB
>
>
> Common problems noticed:
> 1. Standard Gmail interface is slow. After initializing, it occupies
> about half CPU capacity constantly. Occasionally, several  seconds'
> delays happen just as I type this text.
> 2. Flash literally kills everything.  Several gtk-gnash processes take
> up all CPU power the machine has. Several times, I had to wait for
> more than 10 minutes (!) until taskmanager window gets redrawn and I'm
> able to see memory usage.
>
> Arora problem: never finished expanding the 47 messages thread. "Still
> Working" message remains shown for more than 10 minutes, and there are
> about 15 messages not expanded.
>
> Firefox problem: while expanding 47 messages, gmail shows
> "unresponsive script" warning at least once. Apparently, the script is
> suspended until the user makes a choice, so the loading process needs
> close user attention.
>
> Midori: initially, gmail did not identify it as a fully compatible
> browser and loaded a reduced "compatible" interface. However, after
> changing the reported browser type to Firefox in preferences, no
> problems encountered with the full version of gmail interface.
>
> Same problem and solution
>
> Memory usage with three tabs loaded:
> Firefox: 150..160 Mb.
> Arora: 175..185 Mb.
> Midori: 175..185 Mb.
> Chromium: 135..145 Mb.
>
> Midori: 74MB
>
> Conclusion: on low-grade hardware, flash and script-rich pages are
> painfully slow regardless of the browser. On less than 192 Mb RAM, you
> are likely to experience swapping with several pages opened in any
> browser.
>
> Given the available options, my vote is for Chromium *and* disabling
> flash by default. Best is to start playing flash only after the user
> clicks on it, however I'm not sure if it's possible without hacking
> the browser code.
>
> Regards,
> Mikhail
>
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> --
> Steve
>
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