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tranquilcool
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 Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2007 8:57 pm Post subject: AMAROK is HEAVY |
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just my opinion.
amarok has become cool, smooth, clean-shaven, funky but
also very very heavy on resources.
i don't see the need for all that stuff. it started out clean light fast.
why bog it with all that stuff?
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didymos
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| Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2007 10:52 pm Post subject: |
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Because they wanted to add those features? Because other people wanted them? While the memory usage could probably be reduced somewhat, I don't think the idea was ever for amarok to be a lightweight, stripped down audio player. It's just that the early versions were, well, early, so they were sort of lightweight by default rather than design.
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tranquilcool
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| Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 7:17 am Post subject: |
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| didymos wrote: | | Because they wanted to add those features? Because other people wanted them? While the memory usage could probably be reduced somewhat, I don't think the idea was ever for amarok to be a lightweight, stripped down audio player. It's just that the early versions were, well, early, so they were sort of lightweight by default rather than design. |
wont dispute their reasons rather mine are end-user comments. a 2G mem system comes to a standstill if amarok
is playing. i still think that's too much. of course one can revert to another player but still a player that needs to 'do
everything' then gets that heavy is a pain in the right place.
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didymos
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| Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 7:35 am Post subject: |
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I'd say something else is up with that. I've only got 1GB, and I can easily run amarok and firefox with multiple tabs, along with the normal KDE stuff, plus 3 or 4 yakuake terminal sessions. Sometimes, I've even been emerging stuff at the same time. The only thing that really messes with responsiveness is when some rather large chunk of C++ code is building, and even then, it's not that bad.
Currently, I've got 19 tabs of firefox, ktorrent, thunderbird, misc. KDE stuff, 4 terminal sessions, and amarok running (and playing). Plus the standard stuff like networking and other background processes. I still have about 114 MiB free.
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tranquilcool
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Joined: 25 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 7:50 am Post subject: |
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| didymos wrote: | I'd say something else is up with that. I've only got 1GB, and I can easily run amarok and firefox with multiple tabs, along with the normal KDE stuff, plus 3 or 4 yakuake terminal sessions. Sometimes, I've even been emerging stuff at the same time. The only thing that really messes with responsiveness is when some rather large chunk of C++ code is building, and even then, it's not that bad.
Currently, I've got 19 tabs of firefox, ktorrent, thunderbird, misc. KDE stuff, 4 terminal sessions, and amarok running (and playing). Plus the standard stuff like networking and other background processes. I still have about 114 MiB free. |
what can i say. the only thing that eats most resources for me is amarok. my system is well tweaked for speed i suppose.
nothing else makes it as slow as amarok and i have a 2G system. maybe 'am used to everything being snappy apart from amarok.
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erikm
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| Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 7:53 am Post subject: |
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| Which engine do you use? I've been running the same instance of amarok (1.4.5) for days now, and it still only uses 46 MB RAM...? |
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tranquilcool
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| Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 8:09 am Post subject: |
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| erikm wrote: | | Which engine do you use? I've been running the same instance of amarok (1.4.5) for days now, and it still only uses 46 MB RAM...? |
i use the xine engine. could it be that?
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erikm
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| Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 8:15 am Post subject: |
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| tranquilcool wrote: | | erikm wrote: | | Which engine do you use? I've been running the same instance of amarok (1.4.5) for days now, and it still only uses 46 MB RAM...? |
i use the xine engine. could it be that? |
I doubt it; that's what I use, and it is in my experience the lightest running engine.  |
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tranquilcool
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| Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 8:23 am Post subject: |
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| erikm wrote: | | tranquilcool wrote: | | erikm wrote: | | Which engine do you use? I've been running the same instance of amarok (1.4.5) for days now, and it still only uses 46 MB RAM...? |
i use the xine engine. could it be that? |
I doubt it; that's what I use, and it is in my experience the lightest running engine. |
am using amarok-1.4.6-r1 and compiz.
anyway try exaile and maybe you'll see what i mean.
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venquessa2
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| Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 1:02 pm Post subject: |
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compiz?
If like Beryl? If so, then turn off the analyser in Amarok and your performance will expand before your eyes.
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pmatos
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| Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 10:45 am Post subject: Re: AMAROK is HEAVY |
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| tranquilcool wrote: | just my opinion.
amarok has become cool, smooth, clean-shaven, funky but
also very very heavy on resources.
i don't see the need for all that stuff. it started out clean light fast.
why bog it with all that stuff? |
Try banshee  |
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batistuta
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| Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 11:10 am Post subject: |
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Amarok is (or was) very cloggy when using the sqllite database engine, specially during background scanning or updating your music collection. Paradogically, if you use the fully-blown mysql instead, as described in this wiki, then your system will be much more responsive. Try it  |
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i92guboj
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| Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 11:34 am Post subject: |
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About it being heavy, well... Simple question with a simple answer. It has every feature under the sun. If you need a truck, you need to understand that you are going to need some space to park it. Definitely, you can't have a truck that fits in a parking for bikes. I don't know what answer did you want to hear. But this is just a logical fact.
| erikm wrote: | | Which engine do you use? I've been running the same instance of amarok (1.4.5) for days now, and it still only uses 46 MB RAM...? |
It is not about engines. It is a about collections, if you have a big collection and you don't use amarok in xmms mode  it is NEVER going to take just 45 megabytes of ram, because even kaffeine takes more than that just to open a simple video (ripped from TV) with xine. Remember, amarok uses databases, if you have a 20k songs database, it will always suck up some ram, there is nothing you can do about that, except, of course, live with a simple player, and work using the old dir/file paradigm instead of the lists one. Of course, if you compile without visuals, opengl and such stuff you'll get some extra memory for important stuff (after years and years in this world, I still can't understand what's the use of visualization plugins, but yeah... to each his/her own).
EDIT: About databases, if you own a big quantity of songs (lets say, something around 7-8k or more), you should consider using mysql instead of the built-in sqlite. It is far more efficient in these cases. |
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tranquilcool
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Joined: 25 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:02 pm Post subject: |
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| i92guboj wrote: | About it being heavy, well... Simple question with a simple answer. It has every feature under the sun. If you need a truck, you need to understand that you are going to need some space to park it. Definitely, you can't have a truck that fits in a parking for bikes. I don't know what answer did you want to hear. But this is just a logical fact.
| erikm wrote: | | Which engine do you use? I've been running the same instance of amarok (1.4.5) for days now, and it still only uses 46 MB RAM...? |
It is not about engines. It is a about collections, if you have a big collection and you don't use amarok in xmms mode it is NEVER going to take just 45 megabytes of ram, because even kaffeine takes more than that just to open a simple video (ripped from TV) with xine. Remember, amarok uses databases, if you have a 20k songs database, it will always suck up some ram, there is nothing you can do about that, except, of course, live with a simple player, and work using the old dir/file paradigm instead of the lists one. Of course, if you compile without visuals, opengl and such stuff you'll get some extra memory for important stuff (after years and years in this world, I still can't understand what's the use of visualization plugins, but yeah... to each his/her own).
EDIT: About databases, if you own a big quantity of songs (lets say, something around 7-8k or more), you should consider using mysql instead of the built-in sqlite. It is far more efficient in these cases. |
my point is who needs a truck just to play songs?
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i92guboj
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| Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:07 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | my point is who needs a truck just to play songs? |
The amarok users that don't complain. Otherwise, they would be using anything else.
Amarok is heavy for everyday usage, but some people have a box just to play music and surf the web. Under these circumstances there is no point in keeping your memory free. But it is nice to be able to use amarok to search wikis, tag your songs, or study a bit about music in general. Remember: not everyone uses the amarok features to learn about Shakira or blink182
I agree that if you are just working and have music in the background, then amarok is not for you. I have it installed and use it sometimes, when I am not doing any other thing with my computer. |
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tranquilcool
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| Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:17 pm Post subject: |
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| i92guboj wrote: | | Quote: | | my point is who needs a truck just to play songs? |
The amarok users that don't complain. Otherwise, they would be using anything else.
Amarok is heavy for everyday usage, but some people have a box just to play music and surf the web. Under these circumstances there is no point in keeping your memory free. But it is nice to be able to use amarok to search wikis, tag your songs, or study a bit about music in general. Remember: not everyone uses the amarok features to learn about Shakira or blink182
I agree that if you are just working and have music in the background, then amarok is not for you. I have it installed and use it sometimes, when I am not doing any other thing with my computer. |
i quite agree with you. a lot of people shouln't play music; shakira and the likes.
@batistuta
am trying the mysql database. seems faster.
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batistuta
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| Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 1:03 pm Post subject: |
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| tranquilcool wrote: | | am trying the mysql database. seems faster. |
I'm not completely sure if it is faster (that is, the overall time it takes to scan a complete collection). Benchmarks anyone?
What I can tell for sure, is that it is much much more responsive. That is, while scanning your collection, your computer will still be usable. My experience (on my old Athlon-XP) is that with sqllite, my computer is almost unusable while updating my medium-size music collection. With mysql I barely notice it |
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tranquilcool
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| Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 1:18 pm Post subject: |
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| batistuta wrote: | | tranquilcool wrote: | | am trying the mysql database. seems faster. |
I'm not completely sure if it is faster (that is, the overall time it takes to scan a complete collection). Benchmarks anyone?
What I can tell for sure, is that it is much much more responsive. That is, while scanning your collection, your computer will still be usable. My experience (on my old Athlon-XP) is that with sqllite, my computer is almost unusable while updating my medium-size music collection. With mysql I barely notice it |
same experience here so far. now at least i can use it without cursing.
thanks!
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Last edited by tranquilcool on Tue Jul 17, 2007 3:13 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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wworky
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| Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 3:01 pm Post subject: |
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I can not understand
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i92guboj
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| Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 3:11 pm Post subject: |
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| wworky wrote: | | I can not understand |
What's the thing you cannot understand?
Mysql is designed to scale well, no matter how big a database is.
In the contrary, sqlite (as it's own name tell us) is ok for light databases, but it scales really bad for bigger ones.
No wonder that the performance is better with mysql if you have a big collection. |
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RoundsToZero
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| Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 4:17 pm Post subject: |
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| I think I heard they are working on improving the sqlite backend but maybe not until 2.0. |
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Crash_Maxed
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| Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 8:47 pm Post subject: |
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| I'm running on an Athlon 64 3200+ and 2GB of ram. I'm currently running firefox with about 10 tabs, emerging world (currently compiling wireshark), running 8 terminals, gftp, and amarok(playing). My system seems perfectly fine and responsive...dunno why your's isn't. |
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batistuta
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| Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 9:46 am Post subject: |
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| Crash_Maxed wrote: | ...
My system seems perfectly fine and responsive...dunno why your's isn't. |
He said it himself: he was running with sqllite, which is not the most responsive database back-end for large music collections. Since he said that switching to mysql improved the responsiveness, I would say that this must have been one of the factors.
If (I'm not sure if it does it, but if it happened to be the case that) sqllite tries to starve system resources, in this extreme scenario, I would guess that the OS scheduler could also play a major role in the perception of system responsiveness. |
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i92guboj
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| Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 6:05 pm Post subject: |
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| batistuta wrote: | | Crash_Maxed wrote: | ...
My system seems perfectly fine and responsive...dunno why your's isn't. |
He said it himself: he was running with sqllite, which is not the most responsive database back-end for large music collections. Since he said that switching to mysql improved the responsiveness, I would say that this must have been one of the factors.
If (I'm not sure if it does it, but if it happened to be the case that) sqllite tries to starve system resources, in this extreme scenario, I would guess that the OS scheduler could also play a major role in the perception of system responsiveness. |
I am by no means an expert in the subject, but I think that the main problem with databases and the like, is that they are almost always threaded. If you have a big application accessing any database of an average size, past a few thousand of registers), then the load of the threads can take to its knees to any conventional scheduler. In this regard, mysql is far more friendly to the rest of processes, and scale much better. It is a database engine designed to work under any load. It doesn't matter how big a database is, the performance of mysql should be the same.
Sqlite is ok for small tasks, and under light loads it might even perform better than bigger counter partners, like mysql, but under heavy loads, sqlite is a no-no. |
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brullonulla
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| Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 3:15 pm Post subject: |
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| tranquilcool wrote: |
am using amarok-1.4.6-r1 and compiz.
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As already pointed out, if it's like with Beryl, THAT is the culprit.
Somehow amaroK plays bad with Beryl and it eats cpu like hell.
Disabling Beryl, my old AMD Duron 1800 MHz with 1 gig of RAM is currently playing music with Amarok with open:
-full fledged kde
-nicotine
-firefox
-thunderbird
-kate
-tomboy
-akregator
-three mrxvt with various tabs
-two konqueror windows
-my own laboratory data analysis app eating data
-two superkaramba widgets
...and everything works smoother than ever. 
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