Gnome 2.4 is fast!

HaMBoNE · n00b Joined: 20 Feb 2003 Posts: 44 Location: Grayson, GA

Anyone else feel like they have a new computer after installing Gnome 2.4? I can't get over how much faster Nautilus is and how fast the menus render. It's also making everything else feel a little faster, but I guess that's because it's using resources more efficient or something. What do you guys think of it?

dertobi123 · Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2003 6:29 pm Post subject:

Yeah! It rocks

Tobias

Kesereti · Guru Joined: 07 Nov 2002 Posts: 520

Umm, I actually DID get a new computer when I installed Gnome 2.4... =) I upgraded at pretty much the same time I installed the new Gnome...but either way, 2.4 is pretty cool ^_^

HaMBoNE · n00b Joined: 20 Feb 2003 Posts: 44 Location: Grayson, GA

I currently have Gentoo installed on a 566 Celeron machine with 128MB of RAM, but after installing Gnome 2.4 it is more responsive than my 866 P3 machine running RH 7.3 and Gnome 2.0.

TheWart · Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2003 7:02 pm Post subject:

It is very fast....only opens a tad slower than XFCE4
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kamui · n00b Joined: 22 Jul 2003 Posts: 74 Location: SoCal, USA

Hehe, love it, gnome 2.4 was well worth the wait and the time to re-build most my apps ))
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ebrostig · Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2003 10:48 pm Post subject:

No, I don't see much difference from earlier versions.

Anyone got any benchmarks?

Erik
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pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20485

Is the metacity window focus problem still there?

Any overal improvements to metacity?
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mallchin · Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2003 10:28 pm Post subject:

Definately feels faster, less lag opening apps

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puntium · n00b Joined: 14 Mar 2003 Posts: 24

tphamm · Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2003 11:08 pm Post subject:

I'm still getting used to the general speed-up seen by upgrading from a 300 MHz Celeron to a 2.53 GHz P-IV, but I have noticed that:
- Menus seem snappier and render much quicker.
- Nautilus does feel faster.
- My Gnome terminals use a "partially-transparent" background. With Gnome 2.4, the background updates much faster, so that it actually looks like a real transparent window as I move it. In Gnome 2.2, it wouldn't update until after I stopped moving the window.
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mallchin · Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2003 5:17 pm Post subject: swoosh

Lycander · Guru Joined: 10 Apr 2003 Posts: 468

Let us PPC Gentooers enjoy Gnome 2.4!!! C'mon!
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Verteron · Apprentice Joined: 23 Jul 2003 Posts: 189

I've been very impressed with its speed, although 2.3.x was the first Gnome I compiled fully march=pentium4 optimised...

Lovechild · Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2003 5:52 pm Post subject:

Kesereti · Guru Joined: 07 Nov 2002 Posts: 520

Lovechild · Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2003 6:19 pm Post subject:

Benchmarks are useless, no matter which environment you use.

Kesereti · Guru Joined: 07 Nov 2002 Posts: 520

ebrostig · Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2003 7:06 pm Post subject:

OMG!

Just because i"m not part of the zealots that thinks Gnome is the best thing since sliced bread, doesn't mean I don't use it.

Just because I don't see much speed difference and ask for numbers doesn't mean that I need to be ridiculed.

Unfortunatly this is the trend in the neverending DE war. When you don't have proof, ridicule.

What is so difficult with posting some numbers like: Mozilla now starts in .00004 seconds while it took .00005 seconds in the last version?

Or is it just that because everyone thinks or have heard rumours that 2.4 is faster than anything else that everyone says it's faster? I posted my impression of 2.4 after I have been running it a few days on 2.4Ghz P4 testmachine and I didn't feel it was noticably faster than earlier versions. I may be wrong or it may be faster in areas where I haven't used it, so may be a polite direction to where the speed increase is supposed to be would be a nice starting point rather than the useles flames from LoveChild?

Erik
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Verteron · Apprentice Joined: 23 Jul 2003 Posts: 189

There is no desktop war.

Lycander · Guru Joined: 10 Apr 2003 Posts: 468

Kesereti · Guru Joined: 07 Nov 2002 Posts: 520

Lovechild · Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2003 10:34 pm Post subject:

Useless flames.. *bah*

Okay, I challenge you all to benchmark the speed increase the users feel from 2.2 to 2.4 - not many milliseconds have been shaved off - but they have been shaved off in the right areas.

Overall 2.4 is basically 2.2 with some added goodies, the lower ressource requirements are not the big issue here - the big thing in 2.4 is that it's more of the same well polished desktop environment, with even more focus on usability than ever.

So it's a bit faster, who really cares, we have 1000000 times the CPU power NASA used to send us to the moon, we can spend a few cycles on NOP if we want to. The point is that GNOME is a good stable environment and that with 2.4 we have completed a succesful 6 month development cycle and managed to get an even better product out the door.

I really hate people who insist on benchmarking stuff, what does that really tell you about a product - does it say anything about where you are slow, no that would take profiling, benchmarking is a tool to be used by developers to measure differences in details, not for users to brag about, that's a myth only lamers and people who worship 3DMark and the likes.

Hell we have already seen the uselessness of benchmarks when people test Gentoo (optimized) against something like RedHat and found it slower - while nearly everyone can agree that Gentoo feels faster. Or remember how companies like nVidia and ATI "optimize" drivers for certain games and programs to give them an edge in benchmarks because that's what sells hardware...

Aded to that the fact that most benchmarks are so easy to cheat that any results are bound to be both prone to errors of a statisical nature and tampering from the user.

Benchmarks are so overrated, go with your personal experience instead, mine says that GNOME certainly hasn't gotten any slower with this release.

lurid · Guru Joined: 12 Mar 2003 Posts: 595 Location: Florida

I have to agree with Lovechild. A prime example of what hes talking about is the actual linux kernel itself. While some programs like contest attempt to benchmark and document areas that are faster, how do you scientifically quantify the 'feel' of something? I can't tell you why the 2.6.0 series of kernels is faster, but I can tell you that some of the patchsets make my machine 'feel' faster.

I'm assuming its the same situation with Gnome. In each release, Nautilus has gotten faster. A faster Nautilus is almost a given and its speed is still expected to improve. So you have that.. but really, of everything that comprises the entire DE, Nautilus is the only thing you could break out the stop watch and test. The rest of the DE relies on feel. A tigher more streamlined DE is just going to 'feel' faster. Optimised code requiring less resources 'feels' faster.

Lovechild has a way of putting things that seems to piss people off a lot, but if you take a step back and look at what hes actually trying to say, you'd see his posts generally contain more than just useless flames.

EDIT: ebrostig, if you're running gnome on a 2.4ghz processor, chances are you're not going to see massive improvements in speed. gnome is already blazing on your system. people with slower computers will probably be the ones to notice the speed ups.
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Kesereti · Guru Joined: 07 Nov 2002 Posts: 520

Eh, my last comment was meant to be somewhat silly, I guess it didn't carry across in text =) Lovechild can be very helpful at times, yes, but at other times, it just causes problems. Case in point was his first comment in this thread, where it seemed the whole purpose of the comment was to imply "Oh, you like Xfce or KDE instead of Gnome, clearly you suck".

Anyway, I've already stated my view on benchmarking -- take a look at the last paragraph of my comment on that for my views on perceived speed (what I call 'snappiness' =P). For a user interface, the user experience is paramount; hard benchmarking isn't too useful there. For sheer number crunching, benchmarks can prove very useful to determine the effectiveness of changes in your algorithms.