Hi guys,

I am writing with some thing about which not many bother, because they get used to the things the way they are.

I want to make my linux fluent, fast, efficient. What I mean, I want my linux to be working so perfect as my mac machine. It means, when I click firefox I want it to appear imideitelly. When I want my thunderbird now, I want it now I don't what to wait until they load. Usually under my linux box (ubuntu), when I hit firefox first the HDD starts working for couple seconds then firefox load up. I want to make it just click and it appears.

Is it possible? How to do it? Why for example all these things could be done in Mac, and why they cannot be done under linux?

PS. Please do not answer me in way like "so use mac". I work on mac already but I am a linux fan and I want to make it better

Cheers!
Kris

It all depends on what you choose to run(and when).

KDE and GNOME are ultra bloated, picking a faster window manager will give you the most result(Fluxbox, Icewm, ...).

You can also strip the kernel, do more at boot time, preload stuff...
Many of this depends on your hardware and how you're planning to use it.

PS: ...so just start by using a faster window manager, next remove everything you don't use from your kernel and don't install to many different GUI libs.

Hi,

Any operating system has to load the application from harddisk. Unless firefox is particularly small in OSX than in Linux (which I doubt), loading it in OSX will take the same amount of time.

The only way you notice that firefox loads faster in OSX is that it was loaded BEFORE. This means that you already paid the 2 second while the OS was loading and that firefox is using system memory all the time.

I know it is possible to do so in Windows (there is a firefox preloader) and from what you say I deduce it is possible to do it also in OSX, but I do not know if it can be done in Linux or not.

HTH

On my Mac nothing opens immediately, it takes few seconds. As someone said, once it opens for first time, other times is faster.

When you click that icon and it start bouncing, its loading then.

What are you doing anyway that a few seconds matter?

Just a thought!

i was reading something in one of my books last night about pre-linking libraries etc. if you did that at boot up your apps may start suedo immediatly.

Info from the gentoo docs - http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/prelink-howto.xml

Hi guys,

Thanks for all your answers, but frankly speaking it does not solve the problem. Prelink probably could help something, but I do not have time to dig everything on my own. Some ubuntu help page would be nice, anyway I will keep looking.

It is said, every application should take fair same amount of time under every of OS... true and not. Comparing my G5 with my P4 makes huge difference Whether it is Windows, OSX or Linux. Under linux I use gnome (I love it), but again, the loading time is not the same.

The main thing which is bothering a little, is when I push for example firefox or thunderbird button and my hdd starts spinning like crazy Finally it loads, but also, the interface window does not load imidietelly - ok it is still fast, but not fluent. In my Mac, when click something, windows appears and thats it, even if it takes second or two. Under linux.. it takes up to 5-6 seconds, what becaomes a little pain in ass and window initial refreshing is not perfect - maybe it is because of embeded JAVA.. who knows. In windows the linux thing appears, but generally all the effect is worth

What I would love to do is just to have firefox and other needed programs preloaded somewhere in memory, however not showing on the taskbar.. just preloaded, so when I hit the firefox button it loads right now

The other thing with linux preloading, is when you close an app, and open again.. for first 2 or 3 times again it takes a little more time, after this 3/4 time it keeps app in memory so it launches imiedietelly...

Now my question is, how to make such behaviour from the very beginning.

BTW. I do not want to use any stuff like "alltray" etc. - which is taskbar icon loader. BTW.

Whole XGL works really nice, just this crappy app launching

Cheers!
Kris

Prelinking seems like exactly what you need then, it'll load the libraries etc. and when you run the program it only need execute the binary, the libs are already in memory.

Quick startup, you may well find that other OS' (Windows/Mac) are prelinking/loading, which is why it has quicker startups...

You could also look into what else is running, and taking up resources?

If you're not willing/unable to look into the solution, sorry i wasted my time.

As for loading in memory, my laptop (700mhz, 200MB RAM) running arch linux only needs open things like firefox once (around 10 secs), next it'll open in 2 or 3 seconds.

Thanks a lot! You didn't waste your time, believe me Just yesterday I had a crazy rush day. Thanks a lot, I already found resources about prelink in ubuntu, will try it at evening, and will post what I got.

Cheers!
Kris

Yeah, I tried it and in somepoint it works better, for example loading xterm in window, but still no improvement on firefox or thunderbird. I am using P4 Celeron, and I really surprised, my firefox (thunderbird the same) loads like 10 seconds(!), which using G3 Mac everything can work fluently.

I added additional folders for firefox into /etc/prelink.conf for example /usr/share/thunderbird - cause I installed it on my own in this directory, and I know there are some libraries.

Any other ideas how to improve perfomance/load time?

Thanks
Kris

As I posted above,
GNOME is just slow (and KDE even slower).
Just try a window manager that uses less CPU (like Fluxbox).

PS: Using a G3 iMac, OS X is a lot slower for me with everything...
Firefox takes about 10 sec to start.

KDE starts KDE, not firefox .

As I understand it, it is per application where he wants accelerated reaction.

Two points: SuSE is doing it per pre-loading during boot. Have a look at a newer SuSE (>= 10.0).

The other way is the hard way, convince the programmers to make the startup screen appear immediately -- until the common user starts to interact significantly the rest of the application can be loaded without anyone the wiser .