Analyzing and improving GNOME startup time

[Vincent Trouilliez]

> After what I have understood, it's because of the Cairo backend and that
> it is not optimized yet. 
> I hope the issues about this is sorted out before 2.14, because it seems
> that 2.12 isn't as usable for a little older machines as 2.10 is.

I don't think that's the real problem. Gnome apps have always been
sluggish to load and run, regardless of the release. 
About the recent introduction of Cairo, I am bit puzzled. Strangely, I
happen to find Breezy a little more responsive than Hoary, not the other
way around. But it's just a general feeling, I have not conducted any
formal tests. Maybe in some areas it's slower, but overall, I find it a
little more responsive, which I enjoy very much, but of course as I
said, so much more still needs to be done ! ;o)
Hardware wise, I did all I could to help my Gnome: a brand new hard
drive for better transfer rate and access time, and loads of RAM, so
that it never touches swap. 
I think there are some effort to do speed improvements on a per app
basis, which can't hurt. For example, Evolution is so sluggish, but I
came across a page on Gnome.org where they acknowledged the problem and
said they were actively working on making it more snappy.
My favorite "test" for evolution : simply open the preferences dialog...
feels like you asked it for the moon or something ! :-/



--
Vince, dreaming of a fast and super snappy Gnome...