An Epiphany of sorts

[crazysquirrel]

Now I see why Mx is so fast and smooth.

They coupled a low resource desktop with a RAMDISK to make it that way. Sneaky but effective lol.

Too bad there is a flaw in that. When I launch 2 different browsers (firefox and Opera) running the same flash based internet browser game at the same time it gets HORRIBLY slow. As if it were starving for RAM. And yet I have 8gb of dual channel ram and Mx only uses MAYBE 2?

If they want to make it faster there is something in the Kernel that will do just that - auto allocate up to 50% of your ram for temporary items (like browser cache and such). And dev's could automatically put NOATIME in the FSTAB to make it even faster. Don't need timestamps on data drives or even my home partition. No one NEEDS timestamps unless they are doing some funky business app that needs to know the time down to the nanosecond for some peculiar reason.

How about editing the OS to accommodate that? And load the browser (ANY OF THEM) into it and when closing browser save the browser state back to the hard drive by virtue of a question asking if you want to save the browser session or not?
Actually you could almost load the entire system (root) into ram. And save on shutdown. Dunno. Just a thought.

This can save wear and tear on an SSD as well.

Thinking Sparky or Puppy or DSL or tiny here. Or close to it. Or even a full on live version of some linux.

I compared Mx to multiple others. Mx is GREAT for single tasking. Not so great for multitasking I am afraid. Oh and it STILL beats hands down others when playing Avatar Movie for some reason. (Chose that one due to the large amount of detail and movements) Sparky gets really close to Mx as well. Mint 17.3 KDE has awesome detail BUT colors are a bit washed out like contrast is off or color saturation is not up where it should be)

Mx shows GREAT promise! Dev's need to tweak it a little lol.


I guess you all can see WHY I need Multisystem now?

Oh and I finally got it working on my system. Had to use synaptic to download somesuch thing or another. And add the account to admin,

Want a small download for Mx? Stop adding in Office. Put in abword. If they need Libreoffice out that in the tools as an option for them to download.

For some unknown reason all the Linux distro's want to set the download size at 1.2gb or so (which coincidentally is about the exact same size as a ripped/endoded dvd movie). Just something really ODD about that.....

A conspiracy perhaps? LOL Conspiracy to get people to pull their hair out waiting for a download so hair transplant doctors can make more money and developers get more kickbacks? LOL

Waste of a DVD and far too big for a CD. And uneven sizes for even distribution onto a flash drive.

FYI: running Mx from DVD does NOT require turning off secure boot. Only running from flash or similar.

[Stevo]

MX does not sneakily use a ramdisk. You may be confusing caching in RAM for that, but all distros have that.

Yes, we know a Live Session runs with Secure Boot enabled, too.

Too bad there is a flaw in that. When I launch 2 different browsers (firefox and Opera) running the same flash based internet browser game at the same time it gets HORRIBLY slow. As if it were starving for RAM. And yet I have 8gb of dual channel ram and Mx only uses MAYBE 2?

Flash games can also use most of your CPU cycles, too. How much of your resources are being used in just one browser when the game has stuff moving all over the place, anyway? Running two instances will then bog down your machine.

Depending on your hardware, you may also be able to get hardware-accelerated video playback working, too. That's impressive--I can watch 4K videos and the CPU uses goes up only a couple percent and it stays at the lowest idle speed. If you have some CPU cycles to spare, you can also install the freeware Smooth Video Project Linux program, and it will improve older videos at frame rates such as 24 fps to 60 with the mpv from the test repo, and I can really see the difference. Aquaman at 1080p and at 60 instead of 30 fps--really nice!

[Head_on_a_Stick]

When I launch 2 different browsers (firefox and Opera) running the same flash based internet browser game at the same time it gets HORRIBLY slow. As if it were starving for RAM. And yet I have 8gb of dual channel ram and Mx only uses MAYBE 2?

Well then it can't be the RAM, can it?

If they want to make it faster there is something in the Kernel that will do just that - auto allocate up to 50% of your ram for temporary items (like browser cache and such).

50% of the RAM is already automatically allocated to tmpfs via /dev/shm, this is required by glibc for POSIX shared memory (shm_open, shm_unlink).

More here: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentatio ... /tmpfs.txt

And dev's could automatically put NOATIME in the FSTAB to make it even faster.

Do you have any benchmarks to back up that claim? If there is any speed advantage to noatime then it is very small.

All filesystems use the relatime mount option automatically anyway (since kernel 2.6.30) and that should be quite sufficient.

No one NEEDS timestamps unless they are doing some funky business app that needs to know the time down to the nanosecond for some peculiar reason.

The noatime option breaks mutt, which is rather popular with many old-school GNU/Linux users.

you could almost load the entire system (root) into ram

But that would delay the startup of the desktop and most people wouldn't want to use all of the desktop all of the time.

This can save wear and tear on an SSD as well.

Although the interweb is awash with recommendations about reducing writes to SSDs this is all obsolete advice for any modern production model.

See https://techreport.com/review/27909/the ... e-all-dead for more on this — those tests were performed way back in 2015 and I think it's safe to assume that the longevity may be even better now.

[crazysquirrel]

When I launch 2 different browsers (firefox and Opera) running the same flash based internet browser game at the same time it gets HORRIBLY slow. As if it were starving for RAM. And yet I have 8gb of dual channel ram and Mx only uses MAYBE 2?

Well then it can't be the RAM, can it?

Dunno WHY is does that. But acts like it is starving for RAM.

If they want to make it faster there is something in the Kernel that will do just that - auto allocate up to 50% of your ram for temporary items (like browser cache and such).

50% of the RAM is already automatically allocated to tmpfs via /dev/shm, this is required by glibc for POSIX shared memory (shm_open, shm_unlink).

If it takes 50% then why does conky report otherwise?


More here: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentatio ... /tmpfs.txt

And dev's could automatically put NOATIME in the FSTAB to make it even faster.

Do you have any benchmarks to back up that claim? If there is any speed advantage to noatime then it is very small.

That information was obtained years ago. ANY extra writes wear out SSD's faster. Also if you are working with 768K files that is a LOT of writes. (still haven't figured out the problem).

All filesystems use the relatime mount option automatically anyway (since kernel 2.6.30) and that should be quite sufficient.

NEVER fast enough....

No one NEEDS timestamps unless they are doing some funky business app that needs to know the time down to the nanosecond for some peculiar reason.

The noatime option breaks mutt, which is rather popular with many old-school GNU/Linux users.

Just do not add noatime to the /root directory or swapfile. Just the /Home and data drives.

you could almost load the entire system (root) into ram

But that would delay the startup of the desktop and most people wouldn't want to use all of the desktop all of the time.

Wouldn't a NORMAL user want that?

This can save wear and tear on an SSD as well.

Although the interweb is awash with recommendations about reducing writes to SSDs this is all obsolete advice for any modern production model.

ALL writes wear out an SSD faster. Built in wear leveling slows the lifespan shortening a bit BUT most use the whole drive and not sacrifice 20% or more of the drive space.
Each cell has a finite lifespan. That is the nature of SSD's. And traditional hard drive require more seek/write times for unnecessary data to be written/read.
Putting more into a ramdrive DOES save wear on SSD's and most things are done there.I have used noatime and indeed it did speed things up a bit. Depends on what I was doing.
Running software in a ramdrive made a HUGE difference in performance.
For me, making a computer last 20 years and be usable is just fine in my book. Don't like spending money for things like that if I don't have to.

I have an old Vista computer with a core2duo on it. Tossed linuxlite on it and can use it for another 5 years or so.
I did add in more ram to board max (2gb max) and a 64gb SSD.

When the one I use right now has fits, I can go to that one and it is reliable. Never any problems.
Also tweaked that one out too (noatime and a few other fstab adjustments) and NO tmpfs mentioned in fstab either.

It can play dvd movies with no problems so it must still be good.

You mention obsolete production model. Maybe maybe not. They assume you replace your rig every 3-5 years and WANT it to wear out by then.


See https://techreport.com/review/27909/the ... e-all-dead for more on this — those tests were performed way back in 2015 and I think it's safe to assume that the longevity may be even better now.

I guess no one here has ever worn out a hard drive? I have worn out several including one SSD drive.

Also if I can save 10-15 min of time a day by speeding up my rig, it is worth it to me. But NOT worth spending $5K to build a fast computer.

https://lonesysadmin.net/2013/12/08/gai ... -relatime/
https://www.pontikis.net/blog/tweak-ssd-ubuntu-16.04

(I have found that noatime on the / is a BAD idea. Had to restore fstab backups because it prevented the computer from booting properly)

There are a vast multitude of sites that all say noatime is a GOOD thing to do.

From my own experience it does seem to speed things up. Especially on traditional hard drive like in the computer I am using now (5400rpm platter drives).
But Mx won't let me use it in fstab

nodiratime has been included into noatime do you do not need to add that separately.

The only reason I can see for the atime is for someone ELSE to see when you last accessed a file.
Google very bad about stealing information so I don't trust them even on a linux box.

Every second you can save with an adjustment adds up over the course of a year or so.
If you saved 1 second a minute x 12 hours/day (family of 4 can use that much in a day), that is 12 min a day. Multiply that over a year and that is nearly about 73 hours of your time over a year. Or almost a 2 week vacation of sorts.

The little things do add up.


Oh and discard would be nice too. Can't add that either.

Not everyone has modern hardware.....

(ps this MOBO is 9 years old! )

EDIT: about mutt - just how many NORMAL people actually use thunderbird or similar apps???
Most use web emails. Hard to take mutt with you if you use internet in multiple places.

I stopped using outlook express when I left XP for linux.
Went only to web based emails I could check anywhere and at any time without leaving my computer on and susceptible to hackers and other problems.

noatime is an option. No one HAS to use it but it should be available for those who want to use it.

The core i5 I have if I were to get another one costs more than I paid for this mobo, cpu, heatsink, fan, cables and ram (got the whole set for less than the cost of the cpu alone).
So I am good for another 5 years-ish....

I generally upgrade about 5-10 years depending on what I need (usually upgrade the hard drive or toss in a vid card).

So keeping things speedy without paying for JUNK you buy today is what I am after.

[crazysquirrel]

I just went to amazon. A similar rig but modern costs a whopping $800 not counting vid card or much else.
And it will only let you plug in 3 sata devices.
I have 6 sata on this board plus an ide for my dvd burners and it has built in video card.

$800 can buy a LOT of beer and pizza

I do wonder why Mint isn't using ram like MX does.
Seems a lot slower than MX. Mx is pretty fast and smooth (so long as you only single task)

Let's say I am encoding a dvd and want to surf or play a game online or even watch a movie while waiting.

Mx does seem to slow down quite a bit.

Is there a setting off someplace I can adjust?

I will give it 4 stars for file transfers though. It transfers usually at 30mbps steadily depending on the file.

Mint DRAGS along at maybe 30 starting then slowing down to 10-15.
Mx doesn't seem to do this.

Still have to see if Mx does transfers properly.
Preperly meaning that when it says it is done it is DONE and not have to wait to remove a flash drive. Mint lies and makes you wait. Grrr...

See why I am here? Trying to find one that actually WORKS for what I need and no hassles.
Mint is good but Mx beats it for reliability and speed and video.
Not bashing anything just from my experience.

I guess dev's utilize the settings differently? Or is it the OS itself that is different?
Systemd slowing mint down? Not using it here speeding things up?

Dunno.

[Stevo]

Encoding to the DVD format usually takes up almost all of your CPU cycles. It's multithreaded, so will use all available cores, too, so it's no wonder that other applications might slow down. I'd suggest that you add the "CPU Graph" item to the taskbar, so you can monitor your CPU use.

We do offer Liquorix kernels as an option, which might be more responsive under a load.

Mint offers Cinnamon as a default desktop, which is much "heavier" and can be slower than MX's XFCE.

[crazysquirrel]

I can encode and watch a movie at the same time and the movie play without (internal) buffering.
Of course that was BEFORE Mx made me get 'updates'.

Have to test ubuntu run dialog box here tonight.

Point click orange box came up. Click execute, run, etc. Input password and a program would install (so long as no dependencies were needed).


chmod is a PITA.....Too much work to install a simple program that way.

[sunrat]

I've used noatime for / since I first got an SSD 8 years ago after reading the optimisation guides at the time. It doesn't save any noticeable time, seconds per year would be optimistic. I still use it as I don't need atime on my personal computer. And atime is unlikely to wear out a modern SSD anyway, some of which have been tested to have petabytes of write endurance.
Recent advice seems to be that using discard can be detrimental for some SSDs. It's better to run fstrim weekly with a cron job (or systemd timer).

[Head_on_a_Stick]

If it takes 50% then why does conky report otherwise?

Because conky is reporting the wrong value :-)

Try this instead and check the /dev/shm line:

Code: Select all

df -h

ANY extra writes wear out SSD's faster.

The difference between noatime & relatime is *tiny*, just a few bytes every time a file is altered.

Just do not add noatime to the /root directory or swapfile. Just the /Home and data drives.

That would still break mutt...

Wouldn't a NORMAL user want that?

Would a normal user want their desktop to take a long time to start? No, I don't think so; it would certainly irritate me (but I'm not normal, obviously).

discard would be nice too

Not really: the discard option slows down drives because they then trim at every delete operation.

And there was that nasty RAID bug that killed SSDs with the discard option: https://blog.algolia.com/when-solid-sta ... hat-solid/

It's better to enable trim as a periodic option, the util-linux package supplies a systemd .timer unit to do this automatically with fstrim.

Can't add that either.

Yes you can, just edit /etc/fstab and add the option.

noatime is an option. No one HAS to use it but it should be available for those who want to use it.

It is available, just edit /etc/fstab and add the option.

[sunrat]

It's better to enable trim as a periodic option, the util-linux package supplies a systemd .timer unit to do this automatically with fstrim.

This is MX, systemd is optional. A cron job can be used for sysvinit boot to run fstrim.

sunrat begins the n00b hazing for H_O_A_S. Seriously, nice to see you here Head.