Re: bad interactive performance when building

["Steven M. Bellovin" <smb%cs.columbia.edu@localhost>]

On Wed, 25 Feb 2009 21:04:21 +0200
Antti Kantee <pooka%cs.hut.fi@localhost> wrote:

> On Wed Feb 25 2009 at 19:42:57 +0100, Adam Hoka wrote:
> > Antti Kantee wrote:
> > 
> > > Has anyone noticed that the UI slows down considerably on 5.0 when
> > > building with a high enough -j and doing something which consumes
> > > a little CPU for UI processes (e.g. minimize/maximize a web
> > > browser). This happens both with 4BSD and M2.  I never saw it on
> > > 4.99.42.
> > > 
> > > I realize this may be simply because 5.0 is faster, but I don't
> > > know if we can call it progress if a faster system feels slower
> > > to the user.
> > 
> > Yeah I see this effect too. Running Xorg with nice -10 or even real
> > time priority usually makes a huge difference under load...
> 
> That is obvious.  However, the question is why it wasn't necessary
> previously and how do we fix the default again so that users who do
> not necessarily know they need to run X with a negative nice (or
> builds with a positive one) continue to get good interactive
> performance.

Some of us have been complaining about this for several years.  That
said, it got better -- much better for a while, but recently has seemed
bad again, including on -current.


                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb