Novell and OSNews are sponsoring the memory reduction project led by Novell’s Ben Mauer by providing bounties to developers to help to clean up bloat in GNOME and related programs. If you are a developer and you are interested in some extra cash or prizes by making Gnome more usable on machines with 128 MBs of RAM (very usual configuration in developing countries or even European businesses), please read here. Related post here.
Bounties for Gnome’s Optimization
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
As an aside, can anyone tell me what ROI Novell gets out of all this? I just wish the community could deal with this by themselves really.
Yes, we know that you wish that Novell and it’s employees weren’t part of the “community” that you hate (Gnome), but how Nat Friedman spends money is independent of what you wish.
Obviously, the future of the desktop over at Novell is Gnome, and that is something that you wish wasn’t happening; but is anyway, regardless of your make-believe “rules of the game”.
You can’t throw money and developers around at the problem like it’s a proprietary product because the rules of the game are different for open source projects.
I don’t dictate the rules of the game – I’m explaining to you what they are
.
Once again David, the rules of the game are independent of your little fantasy world where you have influence. We all know that you hate Ximian running desktop development over at Novell; that you hate Mono and Gnome, but that’s ok you’ll live.
Your IP range is from Brazil. Are you smoking crack? Computer with 1GB of RAM are common here? hehehehehe… Brazil is a rich country, we pay 40% of taxes, our public health and security services do not work but in some place here there is a lot of computers with 1GB of RAM. You are crazy!
Please, what’s up with the bashing of third-world-this or US-that, or whatever-else? Isn’t it obvious that there’s all kinds of users (and computers) everywhere? I’ve seen classrooms here in the US that have state-of-the-art stuff as well as those that rely on 20 year old technology. Same is true for most corners of the world, I would think.
I run Debian Sarge on a P2 233MHz, 192Mb RAM and it runs Gnome pretty well actually. Sure it’s not a speed-demon but it would work fine for most users, I bet you. For me it’s a second machine (to a P4 2.6GHz 1Gb RAM) but for many things I do it could just as well be the main one.
I welcome any speed optimizations that could be made, but what I currently run actually works ok.
Guys, I suggest you cool down. I wrote the article. And I am not a US citizen. I am Greek. So, there is no reason to say that “oooh, again US people are telling us that we are third world”, because I am not a “US person”. And don’t take offense about talking about developing countries. Because THERE ARE such countries.
Funny how we expect so much for less. Still running a dual screen setup I’m pushing 200meg plus under Gnome on an Arch installation. Not complaining though and if they make Gnome tighter then we all stand to benefit. I have been quite happy with Gnome and my only gripe has been Opera’s lack of integration into the desktop, just setup for KDE but I still find it a usefull browser with better features for me than the others.
People praise Xfce desktop for being fast which it is but I still prefer nautilus to the default file manager. Still it is impressive what they have done.
Having used 2.2 and 2.8 back to back on a machine with 180MB of usable RAM; 2.8 is significantly faster, and it takes a lot more to start it swapping. This is all subjective I know, but from RHEL3 to RHEL4…wow.
We need to think that some places do not use WinTel architectures, and little memory optimization brings a lot of economy in a Thin Client based solution. In other hand the OS and graphic environment can speed up applications by freeing memory to the users, so that’s it.
In truth Gnome turns linux based desktop performance a problem, computers with another OS can have the same usability with a minor hardware configuration. It’s a great idea do this modifications before gnome 2.10.
I’ve ran gnome 2.6 on a p2-450 with 128mb ram for a little under a year (on FreeBSD 4.10).
Contrary to what some people are saying, it is quite useable with only 128mb ram. And yes, I did use outrageously bloated things like OpenOffice and mozilla, and all that jazz. Sometimes it wasn’t lightning fast, but I think the goal of making it snappy with 128mb of ram is quite possible (and definitely worthwhile).
Heck, to tell you the truth, I’ve ran gnome 2.6 on a p200 with 64mb of ram. It’s definitely a bit sluggish, but still useable.
This is definitely a worthwhile project for those of us with older machines that are still chugging along nicely.
Heck, to tell you the truth, I’ve ran gnome 2.6 on a p200 with 64mb of ram. It’s definitely a bit sluggish, but still useable.
I won’t call you a liar, and 2.6 is 2 generations behind what i’m running on Ubuntu Hoary, but even back then a p200 with 64 meg of ram was unacceptable with even a fresh bootup.
People don’t exagerate. Gnome, KDE are just as much hogs as XP. Why not just run fluxbox and dillo if you have weak machines. I love my thinkpad 166 with 80 meg of ram that lives under the bed. I mostly use it as a repository, but sometimes I’ll grab it and fluxbox and dillo works fine (ok, occasionally i have to fire up opera).
I’m not saying that Gnome isn’t bloated and slow. It is…totally. Gtk+ is bullshit slow, as me and Eugenia and others have been griping about for years, but time marches on. You have to upgrade at some point. Shit, 128 meg was medium standard 3 years ago.
I’ve run GNOME-2.9.91 on a box with 128MB of RAM. It’s very usable. I don’t understand this GNOME/GTK is slow arguments. I’m almost inclined to call them trolls. But like I said earlier, I think peoples’ expectation of free software are smashing through the roof.
Loading Gnome itself on 128 MBs, IS usable. However, if you load OOo, Firefox *or* Evolution (not all at the same time), the machine SWAPS LIKE HELL. Fixing OOo or Firefox is almost impossible, because they are incredibly bloated and complex. Fixing Gnome or Evolution is a bit easier though, as they are more componetized. So, if for example, a bare Gnome desktop leaves you with 20 MBs of free RAM on a 128 MB, and we make it free up 35 MBs after the bounties, these extra 15 MBs can be consumed by third party apps without starting swapping immediately. No matter how you see it, fixing these memory problems will help in the overall usage of the DE, even if the big hogs are the three apps I mentioned above.
I have a toshiba notebook, celeron 400, 128 of ram.
It has an excellent LCD monitor and it neved had a problem.
Originally it was shipped with 64mb of ram, I then upgraded to 128 but I can’t upgrade more because it’s a limit of my notebook.
I’ve run over the past year Debian/sid + Gnome.
My main issue with gnome is that it is slow when you have to delete the content of a directory containing about such as 200 files.
Also I remember when I had to choose a program to run and browsed /usr/bin it took a lot to show all the apps there.
(it was not natilius but i remeber it was so slow).
Also the cooling fan is running very often.
Switched to KDE and I saw that:
– browsing files was faster
– when I play lbreakout2 the cooling fan doesn’t start immediately but after sometime (with gnome it started immediately)
Obviously that was my experience (/me using kde during the last week only)
When KDE3.4 will be released as package for FreeBSD5-stable I will switch to FreeBSD and KDE.
BTW,
my pc is still usable, form my tasks, even with Gnome and yes sometimes I used OpenOffice even for small documents.
I have to be patient I know and sometimes I can’t distinguish the power led from the hard-disk led but I can’t still work.
p.s.
On a side note, at prompt login (yes to launch gnome/kde I use startx) running the command free I see that the Debian/Linux is consuming about 54MB of ram itself…(I have Apache2 installed but it consumes about 5MB of RAM as far i remember).
That was my whole point in my first comment.
It’s ridiculous to even think that even with optimizations matter when FireFox is gonna be leaking memory (and it does) out the ass. Who cares if you can “load” Gnome in 128.
Novell and RedHat folks need to take gecko by the balls and do something.
I just don’t care though (I’ve got a gig), into the fact that I do</bO care about general code bloat. Shit, they’re writing this stuff in C.
I’m running E17cvs in an xnest and I know things can be done better. Can I give a C bill for something specific Eugenia? How about Pango ?
always preview…sigh
that this issue finally gets tackled!
however, it’s not just gnome alone, it’s also (to a lesser extent) firefox and especially openoffice.org which, in combination, are very slow on pcs with less than 256 or even 384 MB Ram.
my hdd likely got damaged because of the constant swapping under linux/gnome!
this is really very good news for people like me owning an old notebook which can’t take more than 192 MB Ram.
also, as some other people already said, it’s not just good for owners of older pcs, but it might improve the performance even for users of faster pcs.
with new features comes new bloat, and form time to time, you have to clean up that bloat.
that i hope openoffice.org will, now “feeling the heat” from gnome, set (even) more emphasis on improving the performance of ooo – it needs it more than gnome!
Just try old ximian gnome 1.x still available on many ftp (like fr.rpmfind.net) on a machine with 256 meg and at least 500 mhz and compared to gnome 2.x, tell us again gnome has improved.
In many way every cosmetic changes brought more slowness and even more bloat….
from a desktop environnement we’re waiting for 3 things :
1° a working cut’n’ past
2° Drivers easy to manage (especially printer)
3° when we click on a file, the application relevant to must be launched
in what ways gnome 2.x is different from gnome 1.x and for god sake why is it so slow ?
you could choose any graphical operating system since atari gem, it’s still be faster than gnome 2.x on a multi mhz machine and 512 meg of ram…
and I’m still using it
poor me…
it’s maybe because it’s the less worst on linux…
maybe we should launch a gnome 1.x relauded ?
That is true… i would like to know why Gnome 1.x is so much faster than the 2.x series…
Victor.
Just try old ximian gnome 1.x still available on many ftp (like fr.rpmfind.net) on a machine with 256 meg and at least 500 mhz and compared to gnome 2.x, tell us again gnome has improved.
In many way every cosmetic changes brought more slowness and even more bloat….
compare gnome 2.0 to 2.8. this is what people are talking about…
from a desktop environnement we’re waiting for 3 things :
1° a working cut’n’ past
2° Drivers easy to manage (especially printer)
3° when we click on a file, the application relevant to must be launched
i havnt had a cut-n-paste mess up in years now, not quite sure what you mean by “manage drivers”, but from the printer comment i think you mean “Make printing easy to manage”, and when you click on a file, the application will launch in anything from the past few years. imho, a cups interface done by gnome would be a fantastic idea, but the other two have been addressed.
in what ways gnome 2.x is different from gnome 1.x and for god sake why is it so slow ?
gtk2 does a hell of alot more then gtk1, and doesnt do it as fast. its a known problem that has been beaten to death everywhere that gnome is discussed, has been getting better with every release, and will get substancially better in gtk 3. gtk does a hell of alot, and gtk 1 and 2 arnt that comparable.
you could choose any graphical operating system since atari gem, it’s still be faster than gnome 2.x on a multi mhz machine and 512 meg of ram…
and I’m still using it
poor me…
it’s maybe because it’s the less worst on linux…
maybe we should launch a gnome 1.x relauded ?
How can I cooperate if I’m not a developper? I only can report on memory usage and perceived responsiveness. That won’t be very reproducible so not of any use.
Can this process be automated in the same way like fold@home? Would it be possible to track at which point which program uses a lot of memory and send these reports to a central database so the statistics on memory usage will show where to focus on in order to lower the memory usage? This, ofcouse, looks A LOT like spyware and but it could speed up the process of optimizing GNOME.
>>Just try old ximian gnome 1.x still available on many ftp >>(like fr.rpmfind.net) on a machine with 256 meg and at least >>500 mhz and compared to gnome 2.x, tell us again gnome has >>improved.
>>In many way every cosmetic changes brought more slowness and >>even more bloat….
>compare gnome 2.0 to 2.8. this is what people are talking >about…
And so what ? i’m a long user of gnome 1.x (my lab) and gnome 2.4 (in office) and I can tell you the functionalities are identical but gnome 1.x is far more faster on a lower machine (pIII 500 and 256 meg vs pII 766 with 256meg) than gnome 2.x and I don’t think the performance penalty worths the switch…
look :
to have decent perf on my term, i’m using multi-gnome terminal because gnome-term is just a joke, really do something text intensive and type “top” in another windows
….. and I’m using E16 just to get acceptable windows move and title bar raising
i’m a typical linux user and here’s the app I use everyday
1) xemacs and nedit
2) mozilla
3) gaim (or amsn, it’s depend about the network state)
4) xmms (or mplayer to get rtps stream)
5) staroffice for short document and latex for user
6) acrobat reader
7) perl, java and prolog
and poor me I have sometimes to use eclipse (with 256 meg, I have to shut down every other apps but mozilla)….
and the worst is that evey wmmaker dockapps on my desk use
10% of the memory of their gnome counterpart (even in gnome 1.x to be fair)………
However, if you load OOo, Firefox *or* Evolution (not all at the same time), the machine SWAPS LIKE HELL.
What – you mean the sorts of applications that any PC or office worker would have open? Wow. These people will have Evolution (Outlook) and several Firefox (IE) sessions open in your average environment, and they’ll leave them open all day. Yes I know it does this, and it’s excruciating. You can’t even get anything out of a 256MB machine with Gnome, Evolution, Firefox and OO, let alone one with 128. Try opening Evolution, OO and several Firefox sessions, leaving them open, and using them for several hours a day.
Is it me, or does anyone else feel that as good as Open Office is functionally it is now simply too large and unwieldy to fix or optimise effectively? Again, open source projects have to be maintainable given limited resources and Open Office is a pretty large mess. They haven’t even got a database application or anything else in it yet – that’s the basics.
Firefox on Windows doesn’t do too badly, but Firefox on other platforms for some reason leaks like a sieve. Something to do with available development tools perhaps? However much this may hurt some people, Firefox today is first and foremost a Windows application because that’s where all of the usage is.
It just seems as though all these fashionable applications on Linux aren’t as up to the job as many people thought they were, despite the massive amount of hype and investment.
We all know that you hate Ximian running desktop development over at Novell; that you hate Mono and Gnome, but that’s ok you’ll live.
They don’t run desktop development (whatever that is these days), as has been pointed out on many occasions in the past (what is Nat’s new job title these days?). They act as if they do, but they quite obviously don’t. If you want to swallow that whole, fine by me.
You haven’t answered the question of what ROI Novell gets out of this though – that’s the issue. What do they sell in their core business and markets (that would be servers, not some blue-sky desktop division that you’ve deluded yourself into thinking exists) that justifies any investment like this other than a few people in one division (whatever that happens to be these days) who like to spend money?
You don’t answer it by shouting foul, crying and throwing your sweets out of the pram.
Why in the hell is a bounty even necessary? Why doesn’t Novell just take care of it? They went ahead and bought Ximian when they could have been using it free like everyone else.
Oh yeah, and you 128 people… the nineties are over. No matter how broke ass you are, you can afford a little more RAM. And if not, do as Lumbergh says, get a VIC 20.
I installed XP Home complete with SP2 and updates and everything on a p3 500 Mhz with 256 mb of ram and I was really really surprised to see that machine rocking fast! Granted my sister uses it to surf, do her homework and listen to music, play some sims and so on and she loves it. I had Linux on it, and it ran at a similar speed but the zippiness was not there. I thought XP used to be the king of resource hogs but this kind of proved me wrong. I have a top of the line XPS laptop with a gig of memory and I have Windows tweaked with the XP code being loaded up into mem at startup and a few other useful processes and i still only use 140 mb of mem
I installed XP Home complete with SP2 and updates and everything on a p3 500 Mhz with 256 mb of ram and I was really really surprised to see that machine rocking fast!
XP will run absolutely fine inside 256MB of memory. By that I mean using it for several hours a day, e-mail, web browsing, office stuff and playing games. The only time 256MB of memory becomes an issue with XP is if you install something as large as Doom 3. Intensive use of Gnome, a large GTK app like Evolution, Firefox and Open Office will eat all of your 256MB and swap around like hell.
> XP will run absolutely fine inside 256MB of memory.
> By that I mean using it for several hours a day, e-mail, web browsing, office stuff and playing games.
Not only that, it can also act as spambot at the same time in the background. Now that’s what I call efficient multitasking. 😉
>> Firefox on Windows doesn’t do too badly, but Firefox on
>> other platforms for some reason leaks like a sieve.
>> Something to do with available development tools perhaps?
Probably not. There’s actually a lot of tools on Linux that’s _better_ than their Windows counterparts.
People just have to start using it.
Re: err…
By Anonymous (IP: 213.205.196.—) – Posted on 2005-03-08 14:06:17
I installed XP Home complete with SP2 and updates and everything on a p3 500 Mhz with 256 mb of ram and I was really really surprised to see that machine rocking fast!
….. Intensive use of Gnome, a large GTK app like Evolution, Firefox and Open Office will eat all of your 256MB and swap around like hell.
Open Office is not a GTK app.
Firefox is only kind of a gtk app by that it uses hints from GTK and such but deep down its not a gtk app like say Epiphany.
Do you even have DMA turned on?
Evolution is too much of a hog but then again so is Outlook imo.
I can use Abiword and Gnumeric and Firefox even while running say Castle Wolfenstein or some other big game and not really have issues at all unless I do not wait for Evolution to finish snagging my mail from the exchange server.