brainstorming for UDS-N - Performance

[Colin Watson]

On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 10:11:16PM +0200, Allison Randal wrote:
> The Performance track is about measurable speed improvements and also
> about snappy, responsive user experience, across all editions of Ubuntu,
> from older hardware to high-efficiency devices, and from boot experience
> through common user-facing applications and tools.

This doesn't quite fit neatly under performance, perhaps more
flexibility, but it seems closest.  I'd like us to revisit
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/foundations-karmic-swapfile
and actually finish it this time.  As noted in the whiteboard, the main
blocker is that once you start fiddling about with handling swap more
dynamically, you can hit VM thrashing.  Some experimentation and tuning
might be sufficient to avoid this.

One reason I care about this is that it would be easier and more elegant
if we only had to create one partition rather than two in the installer,
particularly when you look at multi-boot systems.  I'd also like it not
to be a scary expert task to expand or contract the amount of swap
you're using; ultimately, it should be possible to make it a slider.

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]