Analyzing and improving GNOME startup time

[Vincent Trouilliez]

On Thu, 2005-10-06 at 09:04 -0400, Chris Peterman wrote:
> Just a thought, have you tried prelinking?
> 
> I have it enabled and there is no problem with GNOME response time
> (even calling up Evolution's Preferences)


I have not tried pre-linking (is that to do with "readahead" ? I thought
it was already enabled/implemented in Hoary hence Breezy ?), but I don't
think it would improve the slightest bit the situation. This would only
(as I understand it), preload some files, for a faster load time. But,
Gnome apps are not slow just on start-up, but all the time, no matter if
you have already called a particular function 200 times, it will always
be slow to execute.
When I ask Evolution for the preference dialog, it's slow the first
time, and just as slow the next time, despite at this point it should
all be in RAM. 

I can't see a cheap workaround like this sadly, I don't think there is
any replacement for a ground up rewrite of Gnome/GTK or whatever part of
Gnome causes it to be sluggish ! Obviously a huge job, hence why I don't
expect any significant improvement in the near future sadly...
Obviously, I am dying to be proved wrong ! :o)


--
Vince