On 24 Apr 2002, Christopher Keller wrote: > In the hopes of achieving more MS Windows like desktop responsiveness, I > thought I'd try the trick of bumping the priority of the X server. I've > heard the rationale is that windows bumps the priority of UI type stuff > in order to feel 'fast'. If you really want MS-style responsiveness, all I can recommend is that you launch enough background processes to fill up your available RAM and consume a substantial amount of CPU time unnecessarily. That might slow it down enough ;o) Seriously, it's actually quite tricky; Windows gives priority to any task that has its window in the foreground, near as I can tell; there isn't really any easy way to approximate this under X without hacking the window manager to dynamically adjust priorities for the running clients depending on which have their window(s) "on top" ... > Strangely enough, it seemed to work pretty well. My desktop does feel > more responsive. I've also heard the new pre-empt kernel patches do > wonders in conjunction with this, though I waiting on rawhide for those. The best improvements are apparently due to the "low latency" work on the kernel. The latest "2.4.18" RH kernels seem to have improved the responsiveness of my system, too; not sure why. Not sure what the best route to changing the X server priority is. I can't in all honesty see it making an awful lot of difference in most cases anyway, but it may help graphics-intensive stuff look smoother, like Flash animations or whatever. Maybe start looking at xinitrc and places like that?
