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rsk
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Joined: 18 Apr 2002
Posts: 220
Location: Tucson, AZ
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 Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 7:51 am Post subject: Kernel 2.6 (NTPL) Desktop Impressions? |
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Hey, I'm hoping the more brave group out there can help me with this one. I just finished getting my nice stable machine installed with everything up to date and optimized (Well atleast as much as it can be) with Vanilla Kernel 2.4.23 and KDE 3.1.4
One thing I noticed that I hadn't noticed this much before was just how sluggish the desktop (especially Eclipse-GTK) feel. There is a tone of flashing, repainting, etc. This is on a P4-2.8Ghz w/ GF MX 420 card, so its not a sluggish machine, but the video card is on par with a GF2)
Anyway, I'd like to hear some people's first-time impressions of their desktop improved performance when moving to the 2.6 kernel (and additionally NTPL support in glibc, which helps most notably Java, but others as well).
I know there is the group of you that think I should just "do it and see for yourself" but its my work machine, and I really like keeping things as unbroken as possible unless I KNOW I want to move to a new kernel.
Thanks guys!
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Jazz
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Joined: 16 Nov 2003
Posts: 543
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 8:16 am Post subject: |
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It ROCK'S !!  |
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tomaw
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Joined: 26 Mar 2003
Posts: 429
Location: UK
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 10:24 am Post subject: |
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Yeah it really is good, seems to have speeded my machine up quite a lot. NPTL does mean that you cannot go back to a 2.4 kernel though, so you should probably run a 2.6 for a while without NPTL and make sure there are no problems with your system and 2.6
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monotux
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Joined: 09 Sep 2003
Posts: 751
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 10:30 am Post subject: |
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Well, some people says that the responsiveness from the 2.6-kernel is equal to the gaming sources - and I agree.
the gaming sources are very responsive, and the latency is minimized.
but nothing compares to 2.6 with love-sources 
if you add "preemtible kernel" under "Processor type and Features", you will get a desktop that still will be very responsive, even under a 100% CPU-load
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lurid
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Joined: 12 Mar 2003
Posts: 595
Location: Florida
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 2:00 pm Post subject: |
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I believe its on par with gaming-sources because the gaming-sources are based on the ck kernel which if I recall correctly has a lot of back ports of 2.6 patches. So gaming-sources (ck) is basically all the desktop goodies from 2.6 ported to 2.4. That made sense to use when 2.4 was the stable kernel, but now that 2.6 is stable there is no reason not to switch.
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Angrybob
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Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Posts: 575
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 2:42 pm Post subject: Re: Kernel 2.6 (NTPL) Desktop Impressions? |
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| rsk wrote: | | There is a tone of flashing, repainting, etc. This is on a P4-2.8Ghz w/ GF MX 420 card, so its not a sluggish machine, but the video card is on par with a GF2) |
2.6 does improve this but its mostly because X is pants and old. sometime next year when freedesktop.org's xserver replacement project is ready things should be a lot better. |
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malloc
l33t
Joined: 19 Sep 2003
Posts: 762
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 2:52 pm Post subject: Re: Kernel 2.6 (NTPL) Desktop Impressions? |
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| Angrybob wrote: | | ...X is pants and old. sometime next year when freedesktop.org's xserver replacement project is ready things should be a lot better. |
Amen on that brother
Well I've heard that for now freedesktop only supports the vesa driver, is this correct? If so when do you think they'll introduce support for the nvidia driver? I've read somethings about this server and i can't bloody wait to test it. |
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aardvark
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Joined: 30 Jun 2002
Posts: 576
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 3:00 pm Post subject: |
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| tomaw wrote: | | Yeah it really is good, seems to have speeded my machine up quite a lot. NPTL does mean that you cannot go back to a 2.4 kernel though, so you should probably run a 2.6 for a while without NPTL and make sure there are no problems with your system and 2.6 |
umm, no nptl with a 2.4.x kernel?
I believe fedore core does that however....? |
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tomaw
Guru
Joined: 26 Mar 2003
Posts: 429
Location: UK
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 3:02 pm Post subject: |
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From what I recall RedHat backported the nptl patches to the 2.4 kernels. It's possible that the 2.4 redhat-sources from portage, although I've never used them...
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rsk
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Joined: 18 Apr 2002
Posts: 220
Location: Tucson, AZ
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 3:48 pm Post subject: |
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Wow hey guys thanks a lot for all the feedback, from what I'm hearing it sounds like an overall win-win situation...
and Tomaw thank you for the heads-up on the NTPL support, I think you've got it right when you say I should move to a 2.6 kernel first, use it for about a week see what I think then recompile glibc.
I guess after Christmas break I have my work cut out for me
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rsk
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Joined: 18 Apr 2002
Posts: 220
Location: Tucson, AZ
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 3:49 pm Post subject: |
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Oh yes and another thing, I'm seeing A LOT of 2.6/Alsa posts. Did you guys have a ton of trouble getting sound working with the 2.6 kernel or was it pretty much compile-n-go?
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tomaw
Guru
Joined: 26 Mar 2003
Posts: 429
Location: UK
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 3:51 pm Post subject: |
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I made sure I compiled them as modules so that I could play around with what I needed, after that the alsa init script works as it always has, at least for me anway.
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rsk
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Joined: 18 Apr 2002
Posts: 220
Location: Tucson, AZ
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 4:03 pm Post subject: |
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Hmm ok then things sound pretty safe after all.
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MasonMouse
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 26 Nov 2002
Posts: 146
Location: Texas, USA
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 6:36 pm Post subject: |
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| Kernel 2.6 does seem to give better performace on my desktop but XAWTV and BZFlag both seg fault. I haven't tried much else to see what other things crash yet. |
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Safrax
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Joined: 23 Apr 2002
Posts: 422
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 6:58 pm Post subject: |
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NPTL support requries a glibc version of around 2.3.2-r3 (i think its r3.. anything higher does work), a 2.6 kernel, and the NPTL use flag. It also pretty much requires a complete system recompile otherwise weird things will happen. Once you go NPTL you cannot go back to a 2.4 kernel unless you have a 2.4 kernel that is patched with NPTL support. To my knowledge redhat is the only distro providing that functionality.
NPTL support is nice though. Very nice. |
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Lovechild
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Joined: 17 May 2002
Posts: 2858
Location: Århus, Denmark
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 7:29 pm Post subject: |
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| aardvark wrote: | | tomaw wrote: | | Yeah it really is good, seems to have speeded my machine up quite a lot. NPTL does mean that you cannot go back to a 2.4 kernel though, so you should probably run a 2.6 for a while without NPTL and make sure there are no problems with your system and 2.6 |
umm, no nptl with a 2.4.x kernel?
I believe fedore core does that however....? |
My Fedora box surely does NPTL on it's 2.4 based kernel |
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Nightwish
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Joined: 10 Dec 2003
Posts: 10
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 9:06 pm Post subject: Re: Kernel 2.6 (NTPL) Desktop Impressions? |
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| rsk wrote: | Hey, I'm hoping the more brave group out there can help me with this one. I just finished getting my nice stable machine installed with everything up to date and optimized (Well atleast as much as it can be) with Vanilla Kernel 2.4.23 and KDE 3.1.4
One thing I noticed that I hadn't noticed this much before was just how sluggish the desktop (especially Eclipse-GTK) feel. There is a tone of flashing, repainting, etc. This is on a P4-2.8Ghz w/ GF MX 420 card, so its not a sluggish machine, but the video card is on par with a GF2) |
I hate to say that, but it' because GTK, plain and simple, sucks, when compared with other toolkits like wxWin or QT.
I really never understand, why GTK got so much interest by developers... well, maybe, because back in the days when GTK became popular, there weren't any good alternatives besides Motif, which, of course, sucks even more (and was proprietary at that time).
GTK2 is even worse when it comes to screen redraw performance. On a slower machine (my "playground" is an old P3-600 with only 256 MB RAM), themed GTK2 apps are horrible. You can almost watch them drawing their menu items or dialog box controls. QT/KDE on the other side feels "snappy", even with more complex themes like thinkeramik and font antialiasing.
In general, I try to avoid GTK apps if possible, that is, of course, not always possible.
Aside from this, GTKs API is a nightmare
| Quote: | | Anyway, I'd like to hear some people's first-time impressions of their desktop improved performance when moving to the 2.6 kernel (and additionally NTPL support in glibc, which helps most notably Java, but others as well). |
2.6 is definately better for interactive work under X. Mouse cursor choppiness is gone, the system generally feels more responsive. Even the memory management seems to be a lot better. Since my little playground machine has only 256 megs of RAM, it quite often runs low on memory while working with KDE, OpenOffice and a few other applications. With kernel 2.6 this happens less often and swap usage is less extensive than with 2.4.
| Quote: | | I know there is the group of you that think I should just "do it and see for yourself" but its my work machine, and I really like keeping things as unbroken as possible unless I KNOW I want to move to a new kernel. |
I suggest that you give it a try. Migrating to 2.6 isn't such a big pain. Basically it comes down to:
* build a kernel
* make sure, you have the new modutils (module-init-tools) since the old "modutils" package won't work.
* save your old kernel as some kind of backup in your bootmanager configuration.
A few things to keep in mind:
ALSA is now the default sound system. That's good, but a lot of applications rely on the old OSS standard. So make sure, you have OSS emulation activated.
Third party kernel modules won't compile and/or work, unless they have been updated for 2.6. One example is the NVidia kernel driver, however, there is a patch on http://www.minion.de which works just fine. Now with 2.6 being "final", vendors will hopefully post updated drivers soon. |
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Nightwish
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Joined: 10 Dec 2003
Posts: 10
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 9:09 pm Post subject: |
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| rsk wrote: | | Oh yes and another thing, I'm seeing A LOT of 2.6/Alsa posts. Did you guys have a ton of trouble getting sound working with the 2.6 kernel or was it pretty much compile-n-go? |
Works fine. OSS emulation is a "must" for a lot of applications. Maybe, it depends on the sound hardware, I use the snd-emu10k1 driver which works for me.
I'am not really a gamer though, but sound works for Q3 and UT |
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ikaro
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Joined: 14 Jul 2003
Posts: 2527
Location: Denmark
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 9:59 pm Post subject: |
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2.6 fells less laggy when multitasking on the desktop in relation to 2.4
alsa was pretty much a compile-n-go as you mentioned.
I didnt compile OSS API, ALSA works fine for me.
using mm1 now the vanilla was causing me some trouble .
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Epyon
l33t
Joined: 11 Sep 2003
Posts: 754
Location: NJ, USA
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 10:15 pm Post subject: Re: Kernel 2.6 (NTPL) Desktop Impressions? |
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| Nightwish wrote: | | rsk wrote: |
One thing I noticed that I hadn't noticed this much before was just how sluggish the desktop (especially Eclipse-GTK) feel. There is a tone of flashing, repainting, etc. This is on a P4-2.8Ghz w/ GF MX 420 card, so its not a sluggish machine, but the video card is on par with a GF2) |
I hate to say that, but it' because GTK, plain and simple, sucks, when compared with other toolkits like wxWin or QT.
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I think the slowness of Eclipse has something to do with it being written in Java... |
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rsk
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Joined: 18 Apr 2002
Posts: 220
Location: Tucson, AZ
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 11:38 pm Post subject: |
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Nightwish: awesome feedback thank you for all the detail. I think what I should do is as you suggested and maybe just build a kernel and try it out... before I take the dive. Admitedly one of the things I would be shooting for is the NTPL support, which as you mentioned requires quite a bit of rebuilding. Also I'm glad to know that it IS GTK causing the trouble and not just my setup. I guess I should give the Motif (akkkk) version of Eclipse a try and see if its better. I always thought GTK would be faster than the C++ (QT) alternative, guess I was wrong.
Epyon: I would agree with you IF NetBeans/IntelliJ/JBuilder (all Java-swing apps with no benefit of native speed like Eclipse) didn't run much faster... its just Eclipse/GTK that happens to run like mollases... its terrible.
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Drewgrange
Guru
Joined: 29 Mar 2003
Posts: 483
Location: Ohio, US
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 11:38 pm Post subject: |
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A quick nptl question:
Do you have to enable anything in the kernel? I have a 2.6.0 system installed and want to use NPTL, do I *just* do USE="nptl" emerge glibc and then it should work? |
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Epyon
l33t
Joined: 11 Sep 2003
Posts: 754
Location: NJ, USA
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 11:43 pm Post subject: |
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| rsk wrote: |
Epyon: I would agree with you IF NetBeans/IntelliJ/JBuilder (all Java-swing apps with no benefit of native speed like Eclipse) didn't run much faster... its just Eclipse/GTK that happens to run like mollases... its terrible. |
Maybe SWT is slow or something. I don't have any speed problems with any other gtk apps and my computer is slower than yours. |
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rsk
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Joined: 18 Apr 2002
Posts: 220
Location: Tucson, AZ
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2003 11:59 pm Post subject: |
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Yea your probably right... I hear people rave about Gnome and I've run gimp for god knows how long... never really noticed a speed problem...
damnit I hate switching IDEs 
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Safrax
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Joined: 23 Apr 2002
Posts: 422
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| Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2003 12:09 am Post subject: |
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| Drewgrange wrote: | A quick nptl question:
Do you have to enable anything in the kernel? I have a 2.6.0 system installed and want to use NPTL, do I *just* do USE="nptl" emerge glibc and then it should work? |
Nothing needs to be enabled. Setting nptl in the use flags will cause nptl to be enabled. I don't recommend this as you will run into weird problems, like programs crashing. If you want to do it the right way, flatten and reinstall. |
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