| |
Kernel Patch Promises To Improve Desktop Responsiveness
By: Taylor Gillespie
Expert Author
2010-11-23
A new Kernel patch that aggregates processes into groups based per virtual terminals (TTY/PTY), reportedly optimizes CPU-load to make the Linux Desktop respond much faster to input during heavy use by balancing processor resources equally. Originally reported to increase Linux performance substantially with a small patch, some argue that Linux is currently capable of such optimizations, but those changes must be configured manually.
The "nice" command, which is used to prioritize certain processes over others, has been around for a long time, and the last few years have seen the introduction of Control Groups, or "cgroups", which can be used to group processes together and constrain or relax the allowable the resource limits. Together these two concepts can be used to optimize the system to the real, typical workload for the machine. In fact, this is what the best system administrators do for servers, they tune the performance based on the expected throughput. With that said, most desktop users will not, and really can not be bothered, to take the time to adjust their computer to balance the tasks that they ask of them. This general grouping by terminal is a middle of the road approach that can be used by the average user. Typically, all desktop applications started from the windowing system will all be grouped under that one terminal, so many users will not notice much difference in responsiveness.
Most users don't use the command line heavily to start and stop processes from a separate virtual process; however, with this one Kernel patch, desktop users can launch applications from different terminals and get a more fair scheduling without specific per-user configurations. Some argue that the different distributions should handle configuring the application-space and that the Kernel should stay as generalized as possible, but by patching the Kernel the most users get the most potential benefit of balancing processor load by grouping processes by terminals.
About the Author:
Taylor is a Staff Writer for WebProNews
|
|
