GNOME Desktop, Settings and Metacity Optimization

[Erast Benson]

On Thu, 2006-05-11 at 19:00 +0800, Joel Bryan T. Juliano wrote:
> This is another script I made to optimize the XML, SVG files that GNOME
> use.
> 
> By optimizing the XML files, white spaces will be removed between the
> tags, all of the tags will be compacted to 1 line, optimization will
> compress the XML and make the filesize smaller, Making a less effort for
> the application to parse those files.
> 
> There are 2 scripts, 
> 
> gconf-optimize: this script will optimize the Gconf XML settings and
> schemas within /usr/share/gconf, /etc/gconf, $HOME/.gconf and
> $HOME/.gnome2 directories. Effects are visible in the panel menus and
> gnome applications that uses gconf. With the changes, they will be much
> faster in loading times and navigation.
> 
> gnome-optimize: this script will optimize Metacity Themes, GDM, Pixmaps
> Rendering, SVG Icons, and mime. Significant effects will be visible in
> theme changer, that themes can be switched almost instantanously, icons
> will display more faster, and windows will render much faster.
> 
> attachment:gconf-optimize
> attachment:gnome-optimize

Joel, what you are doing is effectively reducing first-time load
expenses. But once the data loaded and parsed, it most likely will be
cached out. So, subsequent access to the same data will not be
noticeable at all. The downside of this sort of game is that resulted
XML files are modified and not readable any longer in text editor.

This is not usually how people optimizing stuff. As of today, the best
tool for optimization is DTrace. Look how Moinak optimized BeleniX
(OpenSolaris-based OS) at [1]. Once I have some more free time I will do
the same with NexentaOS [2] (which is Ubuntu/OpenSolaris-based OS) for
overall boot optimizations and later on for GNOME2 and OpenOffice2 and
see what we could improve.

[1] http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/moinakg/20060426
[2] http://www.nexenta.org

-- 
Erast