24-core CPU and I can’t type an email • Hacker News Board

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#211

Post by alkonaut » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 9:44 AM UTC

madez wrote: post #209

alkonaut wrote: post #187

I don't mind so much when a single program that I'm using interactively has a pause, even though it's annoying as hell. What really bugs me is that regardless of how many cores I have, there is always one pegged by that annoying background service. If I start up windows, you can bet that windows update will first peg a core for a few minutes. Then the builtin windows antiviris takes over (perhaps because win update w…

Analytics about you and your machine won't get collected by themselves. Have you noticed this phenomenon with free software?

I don’t mind analytics/telemetry if done right, just don’t use my CPU when I need it...

As for free software: Game titles are rarely free and most don’t even run on a free OS so really using Linux or not switching on the gaming machine solves the problem of CPU use without me being able to run the app I want. But it’s just not a very good solution.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#212

Post by MaxBarraclough » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 9:49 AM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #194

bcaa7f3a8bbc wrote: post #167

It seems many comments missed the point. The article is not about how bloated modern software is, how many useless features and programs are wasting CPU cycles for pointless jobs, etc. ( Yes, modern software is bloated, for this reason, I'm using the MATE desktop on a minimum Gentoo installation, but this is not what the article is about. ) It is describing how web browser, a piece of software with extremely high inh…

I get what you're saying, but it seems you already have a place you want to go and are using the article to get there -- much like the other commenters. While these things are important, to me the critical phrase in the article is this: ...It seems highly improbably that, as one of the most qualified people to diagnose this bug, I was the first to notice it... My system hangs when typing text all of the time. Reading…

> a situation that's only gotten worse over time (for whatever reason)

The answer is ever-increasing complexity, no?

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#213

Post by Vogtinator » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 9:57 AM UTC

pantalaimon wrote: post #196

x3sphere wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu w/Gnome is possibly the worst offender. I actually like Gnome a lot but anytime I leave my PC on for more than a day the UI gets incredibly sluggish. Just moving windows around gets choppy and there is a annoying pause whenever I click the application launcher (happens even without the animation). I've also found macOS provides the smoothest experience. I haven't found W10 that bad, but I haven't used it that…

I just stayed with Mate with Compiz (Ubuntu Mate) and my desktop is still as snappy as it was during Gnome 2 days. I've recently given KDE Plasma a try and was really impressed by it's speed and smoothness. I think it shows when your desktop does not rely on interpreted langues so much.

KDE Plasma is written mostly in QML, so JavaScript.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#214

Post by Steve44 » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 10:08 AM UTC

bartread wrote: post #84

habosa wrote: post #46

I just kind of figured we'd stop having UI lag by now. I work on a 24 core workstation with 64GB of RAM and things lag all the time. Not slow to complete, like jittery key entry and non-responses. Haven't we figured out thread prioritization by now? Can't we make sure something draws 60 times per second while things are going on in the background? My Android Studio build should be totally isolated from my inbox. I kn…

This isn't meant to be an especially religious comment, but I regularly switch back and forth between OSX and Windows 10 and wanted to make mention of the differences. I also use Ubuntu fairly regularly but only over ssh so I'll discount it from this comparison. Both OSX and Windows 10 do suffer from UI lag but, in my experience, it is far worse on Windows 10 to the point where I have come to absolutely detest Window…

At work we've recently moved from XP to Win7 and they seem to perform about the same for heavy office use.

I'm playing with a Win10 machine at home, the CPU and RAM is far in excess of our work machines but it is so slow to use. It seems to regularly become unresponsive, programs take ages to start, it seems to be continually working away in the background doing 'nothing'. It's a truly horrible experience.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#215

Post by awiesenhofer » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 10:10 AM UTC

coding123 wrote: post #85

bartread wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't meant to be an especially religious comment, but I regularly switch back and forth between OSX and Windows 10 and wanted to make mention of the differences. I also use Ubuntu fairly regularly but only over ssh so I'll discount it from this comparison. Both OSX and Windows 10 do suffer from UI lag but, in my experience, it is far worse on Windows 10 to the point where I have come to absolutely detest Window…

Just curious, is that windows machine possibly not on an SSD? My windows 10 rig opens a profile faster than my MacBook

its not about opening the profile its about getting to enter your password from a locked screen - i love my w10 machine and its quite snappy when logged in but every unlock has this half-second or so lag until it lets me enter my password - i suspect the animation of the appearing login-form but who knows...

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#216

Post by DanielBMarkham » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 10:15 AM UTC

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #212

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get what you're saying, but it seems you already have a place you want to go and are using the article to get there -- much like the other commenters. While these things are important, to me the critical phrase in the article is this: ...It seems highly improbably that, as one of the most qualified people to diagnose this bug, I was the first to notice it... My system hangs when typing text all of the time. Reading…

> a situation that's only gotten worse over time (for whatever reason) The answer is ever-increasing complexity, no?

Complexity is always the enemy, but only if you have to deal with it. My car engine is very complex and I don't ever think about it.

I don't want to over-state this, but it's a hell of a lot more important than people think, mostly because it attacks you in little bits here and there. It's never a direct assault. We are creating a consumer society in which we're becoming slaves to the tech. It entertains us, it connects us, it remembers for us, it guides us. All of that might be fine if that's your thing. But there are dark sides too. These kinds of hidden bullshit annoyances are one of the dark sides.

The root of the darkness is this: if you steal just a few minutes per day here or there with hung-up text editors and such, how many man-years of productivity are you stealing from mankind?

I really think we need to go back to the metal and start designing systems with separate fault-tolerant systems dedicated to being humane to the users by invisibly handling the kinds of things that keep wasting huge parts of our collective lives.

Or, as you said, we could just keep adding complexity. That's always the answer, right? sigh

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#217

Post by feintruled » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 10:15 AM UTC

habosa wrote: post #46

I just kind of figured we'd stop having UI lag by now. I work on a 24 core workstation with 64GB of RAM and things lag all the time. Not slow to complete, like jittery key entry and non-responses. Haven't we figured out thread prioritization by now? Can't we make sure something draws 60 times per second while things are going on in the background? My Android Studio build should be totally isolated from my inbox. I kn…

I remember back in the Amiga days, the processes for the GUI would be totally separate from the program logic. Add the pre-emptive multitasking and you would have GUI elements that would respond instantly always, even when the rest of your program was hung! Of course, the button callbacks wouldn't fire, but the button would appear to press, you could move windows, etc. Did a lot to reduce the perception of lag, whilst obviously introducing quite a few quirks of its own.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#218

Post by awiesenhofer » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 10:20 AM UTC

bartread wrote: post #84

habosa wrote: post #46

I just kind of figured we'd stop having UI lag by now. I work on a 24 core workstation with 64GB of RAM and things lag all the time. Not slow to complete, like jittery key entry and non-responses. Haven't we figured out thread prioritization by now? Can't we make sure something draws 60 times per second while things are going on in the background? My Android Studio build should be totally isolated from my inbox. I kn…

This isn't meant to be an especially religious comment, but I regularly switch back and forth between OSX and Windows 10 and wanted to make mention of the differences. I also use Ubuntu fairly regularly but only over ssh so I'll discount it from this comparison. Both OSX and Windows 10 do suffer from UI lag but, in my experience, it is far worse on Windows 10 to the point where I have come to absolutely detest Window…

i really like office 365 but the most productive thing i ever did was get rid of it on my work machine and install office 2010 again. it's just so much snappier there is no comparison. (although i also tried office 2003 for a day and boy it's blazingly fast. on a modern system you don't even see the startup screen, not to mention any input lag.)

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#219

Post by rasz » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 10:24 AM UTC

ndh2 wrote: post #133

jadavies wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTA: "I work on Chrome, on Windows, focused on performance. Investigating this hang was actually my job."

So? The two bugs uncovered were Windows bugs.

over 300MB per open tab is not a windows bug. Opera 12 does "legacy" Gmail just fine in ~5MB of ram.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#220

Post by KozmoNau7 » Fri, Aug 17, 2018, 10:31 AM UTC

EdiX wrote: post #157

x3sphere wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu w/Gnome is possibly the worst offender. I actually like Gnome a lot but anytime I leave my PC on for more than a day the UI gets incredibly sluggish. Just moving windows around gets choppy and there is a annoying pause whenever I click the application launcher (happens even without the animation). I've also found macOS provides the smoothest experience. I haven't found W10 that bad, but I haven't used it that…

You should try cinnamon. There's no accounting for taste, but after using gnome 3 for three years I tried cinnamon (version 3.6, older versions weren't good) and I found it better across the board.

I've been very happy with Cinnamon for a while on Mint 18.x, and since I upgraded to Mint 19 last night, Cinnamon is even better. It's just a bunch of small improvements all over, that just make the overall experience that much better.