Re: GUADEC Hacking

[Mike Hearn <mike navi cx>]

On Mon, 11 Apr 2005 22:42:41 -0400, David Zeuthen wrote:
> Interestingly enough, implementing things such as disk defrag and sane
> readahead (a'la Windows XP and Mac OS X) may actually help mask the root
> problems we're seeing right now. So we better work on them before it's
> too late :-)

<random lurker speculation>

Starting up all the programs in the session at once probably makes things
look slower than they really are, just through the thundering herd
problem. I have no statistics on this. It's wild hand waving and
intuition.

Usually when I log in, all these things try and start at once:

- metacity
- evolution
- nautilus
- gnome-panel, and then all the panel applets
- gaim
- xmms
- terminals
- other stuff I don't remember

Probably you could make the desktop appear quicker and feel more
responsive (even if it's actually not) by throttling things a bit.
So the file manager should start first, so the desktop appears, then the
panel, then the applets, then the WM and then the session managed apps
could be brought up.

The trick is to avoid the Windows XP problem, where the desktop appears
right away and then hangs itself for 15 seconds while all the session apps
in the Startup folder begin :)

</end random, probably worthless speculation>

thanks -mike