seed changes

[Eero Tamminen]

Hi,

On Tuesday 12 February 2008, vidd wrote:
> > I don't see how it integrates better, but in any case,
> > gnome-system-monitor has a lot of advantages. As I've mentioned
> > before, just listing Xubuntu's version in the System tab is a huge
> > benefit when trying to help people. Next to that, the Resources tab
> > also provides useful information that you'd have to miss in
> > xfce4-taskmanager.
>
> I ran both g-s-m and xfce4-taskmanager side by side
>     g-s-m is
>         visually more appealing
>         using between 19-52 % of my CPU
>
>     xfce4-taskmanager is
>        more spartan
>        using between 5-17 % of my CPU

I'm using Feisty on 1Ghz machine.  Xfce4-taskmanager is taking 1-2% CPU.

g-s-m is taking 1-2% in system and file systems tabs, 3-4%[1] in resources
tab and 7-8% in processes tab.

[1] Settings affect this.  It's <2% if I change update interval to 2 secs.


> Why would the user need this application except to shut down an
> out-of-control app?

To monitor applications CPU, memory and network usage?

Note that g-s-m can show also Writable and X server resource memory columns
which are usually the only really relevant numbers on applications memory
usage.


> Granted,  as  a  tech  support  tool,  it  may  have  some  benefit. But
> for the average user,  how often are they actually going to use this
> system tab once the system is running? The resource tab is a nice touch
> that some users may find appealing....but those users are more likely
> going to display that info in panel plugins or some other method,

Panel applet doesn't give the per process specifics and it wastes memory,
*especially* if it runs out-of-process.  (AFAIK gnome panel applets are all
out-of-process for reliability reason I think, but I think XFCE has also
in-process applets).

What other method?


g-s-m uses more memory when running than xfce4-taskmanager, but considering
that people don't use them *that* often nor for long time, and the large
amount of useful additional functionality, the memory usage is really
insignificant difference.  I don't see any reason why I would run
xfce4-taskmanager.  I'm an advanced user though, others might not
have use for the extra functionality.

I think the system information thing is the killer though.  There should be
some easy way to ask users for this information.  If it's not in gs-m, then
something else should provide it.


> rather then open g-s-m and leave it up. Does the File systems tab do
> anything but give you a less detailed output of the cli command "df"?


	- Eero