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Ask HN: Is there any tool for benchmarking responsiveness for Linux?

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Re: Ask HN: Is there any tool for benchmarking responsiveness for Linux?

#41

Post by beardog »

sgc wrote: post #15
assemblylang wrote: post #12

IIRC the Zen Linux kernel[0] is designed to be more responsive for desktop usage than the mainline Linux kernel. I wonder what metrics these tools would provide on the same exact system except with the 2 different kernels. (also see Liquorix patch set for additional patches on top of Zen[1]) [0] https://github.com/zen-kernel/zen-kernel [1] https://liquorix.net/

Anybody out there using this? Thinking of trying it on my older thinkpad.

I use it on a "just works" Garuda install. No issues for it that i haven't experienced with standard Linux

Re: Ask HN: Is there any tool for benchmarking responsiveness for Linux?

#42

Post by jcelerier »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #20
jcelerier wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AFAIK you'd have to have a pretty bad keyboard for it to have a significant role in latency https://danluu.com/keyboard-latency/ puts a lot of keyboards >= 30 ms which is an insane amount of latency

So if you check the appendix section, they say they're measuring latency not when the keyswitch makes contact, but when the finger first begins pressing on the key. So they're taking key travel time into account, and that ends up being the majority of the "latency". It's a fair point for the gaming argument they make, if you want to jump 30ms quicker you'll need shorter keys. But it's not really correct to say the ke…

> So if you check the appendix section, they say they're measuring latency not when the keyswitch makes contact, but when the finger first begins pressing on the key. So they're taking key travel time into account, and that ends up being the majority of the "latency".

The key travel time on https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000U1DJ2/ and https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DGJALYW is substantially the same, yet one has 20 ms of latency, and the other 55 ms.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any tool for benchmarking responsiveness for Linux?

#43

Post by timpattinson »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #24

That would be some tough things to measure. How much can you slow down a cpu anyway? Can you slow it to 1/10th its clock speed? I would think the best way to measure things like this is to slow down the overall system speed as much as possible.

Yeah you can generally underclock a modern intel or amd chip down to 400MHz, but of course other bottlenecks (storage, RAM, networking) will be massively out of proportion

Re: Ask HN: Is there any tool for benchmarking responsiveness for Linux?

#44

Post by techietim »

sgc wrote: post #15
assemblylang wrote: post #12

IIRC the Zen Linux kernel[0] is designed to be more responsive for desktop usage than the mainline Linux kernel. I wonder what metrics these tools would provide on the same exact system except with the 2 different kernels. (also see Liquorix patch set for additional patches on top of Zen[1]) [0] https://github.com/zen-kernel/zen-kernel [1] https://liquorix.net/

Anybody out there using this? Thinking of trying it on my older thinkpad.

I use Zen on a newer Thinkpad T14, but I feel there is a difference. Applications like Firefox and Intellij feel snappier than with the standard Kernel.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any tool for benchmarking responsiveness for Linux?

#45

Post by jonahbenton »

My major latency hangups are not around happy path input to response in a single app but around memory management across multiple apps including multiple browser hosted apps. Optimizing swap to occur AHEAD of the user's next task switch is an entirely unsolved problem.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any tool for benchmarking responsiveness for Linux?

#46

Post by Underphil »

gfd wrote: post #25
Underphil wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or use the caps lock key and have that reflected on screen.

Is the caps lock LED even implemented in hardware? I feel like I remember them not responding if my computer freezes but I could be wrong.

I only really suggested that because any OS can detect the presence of the CAPS LOCK key (see 'CAPS LOCK is on' during Windows login) and it would make a potentially good marker.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any tool for benchmarking responsiveness for Linux?

#47

Post by Underphil »

jrockway wrote: post #6
Underphil wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or use the caps lock key and have that reflected on screen.

Caps lock doesn't magically skip the matrix scan.

Nothing on the keyboard does. I'm trying to suggest an alternative that already has visual feedback.

Re: Ask HN: Is there any tool for benchmarking responsiveness for Linux?

#48

Post by sgc »

timetraveller26 wrote: post #21
sgc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody out there using this? Thinking of trying it on my older thinkpad.

I use it on my w530. It feels fast and responsive, but I haven't done a proper test or anything. One of the good things it's that includes patches that allow Anbox to run so I can use Android apps.

The Anbox support is a big plus. Do you find it is actually fast enough for daily use of any android apps? I have one I use all the time on a tablet, but have not had luck getting a performant solution on my laptop.
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