[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
[Ayatana] General System Responsiveness
- To: Ayatana List <ayatana@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Subject: [Ayatana] General System Responsiveness
- From: Luke Benstead <kazade@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 09:39:46 +0100
- Dkim-signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:received:date:message-id :subject:from:to:content-type; bh=zy9arPhqTrp+Fi00NN1nwnf1w0t0A/QdWiS9pnI7oyc=; b=XPEeNpCw49rHlts7Hb8pCX8UEQ+vGC0AHe7BDLdFX3QDdEvYotfTPqF4Zj6tcHGFpC 8F2cakk/OuD1HiJguohtDmmIByck6zZjEY9UgPz+3hGrLgcP5gmVLPacaIRPDo4VcfyQ MlFTggYvPhZeqvtn3doJVtZ91ChwaEH/sWgyM=
- Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type; b=lDxLXKNyhK4VqCgI5Okh7mboX70oxKHP9j5pOH9j8jtMLsEQTLrSWvcOAmz8s70k6b 4KSVhx3imsFdMhPYp7DrvrJkASt4qpN8PP32Uddcwsg8CfkzTfGf23E674Gok1OkP7q2 gVwD2VtGBmzHRQCgUcuf4Dchq0gH5TlZhMw9k=
- List-archive: <http://lists.launchpad.net/ayatana>
- List-help: <https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp>
- List-id: <ayatana.lists.launchpad.net>
- List-owner: <https://launchpad.net/~ayatana>
- List-post: <mailto:ayatana@lists.launchpad.net>
- List-subscribe: <https://launchpad.net/~ayatana>
- List-unsubscribe: <https://launchpad.net/~ayatana>
Hi everyone,
This is just something that I've noticed recently, if it wasn't so tricky to fix it would definitely belong in the "papercut" category as one of those things you learn to live with / stop noticing.
I've had a Vista install alongside my Ubuntu install for some time, but never really used it. Recently I've had some Flash issues in Ubuntu so it was easier just to reboot in to Vista to watch some online video. One thing I noticed was how much more "solid" Vista *felt*. For a while I couldn't figure out why this was, something just gave the illusion of being more robust than Ubuntu.
Just now I figured out what it is, I've just logged into my work PC, and fired up Thunderbird, Netbeans, Firefox etc. and I sat and watched a desktop that appeared to be doing nothing.
There are really two issues here, one is feedback to the user after starting an application. When you start an application from the menu, there is no indication that anything actually happened (aside from the menu vanishing), there's no "I'm thinking about it, one second..." indicator. In Windows of course there is the little busy cursor, our busy cursor doesn't seem to trigger in this situation. I'm not saying that a busy cursor is a good solution to this, but we could do with some kind of "The application is launching" indication.
The other issue is that if some app starts accessing the hard disc / use some CPU, everything seems to stop completely. Just now I ran some updates while trying to type this email and Firefox started "grey screening" me every few seconds. Why? The updates seem to use all the CPU and leave the applications struggling to even refresh. I'm not saying this is an Ubuntu specific thing, obviously we've all seen Window's "The application is not responding" dialog, but I know that I see the greyed window on Ubuntu far more than that dialog on Windows. And in my experience, the Windows dialog actually appears when that program is hanging, not because another program is busy.
I don't know the solution, (better CPU scheduling? Prioritizing of GUI threads? CPU limiting the update manager?), but we should really try to do something to improve this.
Luke.
P.S.
Apparently I'm not the only one that thinks so too: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/85/