Ubuntu

How to have a more responsive desktop system?

Asked by Uqbar

HI all.
I'm running KUbuntu Gutsy on a fairly powerful modern laptop (Centrino DUO with 1 GB RAM).
What's puzzling me is that with heavy disk I/O (large file copy) or CPU intensive tasks (large file compression, DB re-index) the responsiveness to interactive tasks like editors is very looow.
In these cases I'd prefer to have the interactive task steal that 0.01% of CPU time in order to allow me to type those few characters a second.
Is there any way to tell the scheduler to do so?
Thanks.

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marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#1

From the first install menu http://i5.tinypic.com/27xq9w8.jpg
First try to check your self-made Ubuntu 7.10 install cd with the "Check CD for defects" item

HTH

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marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#2

sorry this answer is not for you wrong answer.... :-(

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Uqbar (uqbar) said : 		#3

No problem.
I just wait for a reasonable answer.

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Vaida Bogdan (vaidab) said : 		#4

I disabled the search indexer on my laptop (for KDE: Strigi desktop search).
You can also use renice (# man renice) on CPU intensive tasks or edit System->Preferences->Sessions to remove some programs you don't use.

I have a Centrino 1.5 with 512MB Ram with an encrypted harddrive and it doesn't lag so the problem may be elsewhere.

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Uqbar (uqbar) said : 		#5

I've already tried approaches like the ones you have suggested: enabling the DMA for disks, disabling unwanted services and processes and so on.
The point is that normally my laptopn is idle at 99%. When I run CPU intensive tasks I cannot even type commands.
Those tasks (like file copy) cannot be reniced effectively as the CPU power would be eaten by the kernel code, not the user one.
So i was thinking about some tuning in the scheduler to say, for example, interactive processes can steal the CPU to I/O tasks.
I know this could be done in theory, but don't know how.

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Uqbar (uqbar) said : 		#6

So there's no way to somewhat "tweak" the scheduler to give more time to interactive tasks?

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Uqbar (uqbar) said : 		#7

Not really solved, just bored to wait.