5 ms·

Gnome IS slow. Have you used unity 7? It has more animations and effects but still performs way better than gnome3. Gnome3 isn't bloated, it's just written with

by devxpy 8y ago

Gnome IS slow. Have you used unity 7? It has more animations and effects but still performs way better than gnome3. Gnome3 isn't bloated, it's just written with js. Plain and simple. It's known that driver support is bad. But I think the main problem with gnome is that it uses js. Its runs a whole damn browser (firefox). It's js that owes to the numerous memory leaks that end up hogging extreme amounts of memory.

yellowapple 8y ago
To build on this: even KDE tends to feel snappier than GNOME3. That's even if I'm going crazy with transparency and wobbly windows and 3D-cube-virtual-desktop-switchers and desktop widgets and all that.
- Klover 8y ago
  Transparency, wobbly windows, 3D-cube-virtual-desktop-switcher and desktop widgets shouldn't make any impact on any computer with hardware made since like 2007. Windows Vista did it in 2006, and it's 2018 now. We have phones with better hardware than we had at the time.
jchw 8y ago
Gnome 3 isn't "written with JS." I am aware that a large amount of gnome shell is written in JS and I have my opinions about that, but they have their reasons. Either way, the bulk of important code (Gtk, Mutter, etc.) is written in C. Also, I don't think it's unlikely you found different desktops that perform better. I still find KDE on proprietary NVIDIA to be lackluster. Does it show it's possible to do better compositing on some setups? Yes. I am guessing GNOME relies on the existence of certain GL extensions to composite efficiently. Still: if it can perform well on super low end systems and poorly on high end ones, I doubt it has to do with JS.
- devxpy 8y ago
  I was not necessarily talking about performance when mentioning JS. It was the memory leak. Gnome performs "fine?" at bootup, but starts becoming sluggish as you use it because their JS interpreter doesn't automatically have GC. This kind of behaviour is fine for websites since nobody really uses it for an extended period. But for a desktop (which I for once, use for quite long stretches) is unacceptable. I've had cases where I had to forcefully reboot the machine because gnome froze. Even if you ignore the memory leak (and say that it's being fixed) I would argue that the overall latency of the desktop is just not there. I have used xfce, gnome3, unity7, kde, mate and budgie (daily driver) on the same machine, with the same Intel iGPU Mesa driver; gnome3 is the most sluggish. The time it takes for stuff to happen on the screen from when I press a button is quite high for my taste. P.S. I usually disable animations. The design of the desktop is definitely unique and admittedly refreshing to see (except the hamburger menus). However, the sluggishness just makes it impossible for me to use.
- devxpy 8y ago
  Oh, and Gnome3 is absolutely "written with JS" https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/graphs/master/charts https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/graphs/master/cha...
- devxpy 8y ago
  > bulk of important code (Gtk, Mutter, etc.) is written in C. Exactly why budgie desktop is fast. Uses Mutter as WM, and the gnome applications (like Nautilus, control centre). For instance, gnome-shell starts up at around 150MB of memory usage, climbs upto around 1GB, eventually halting. OTOH, budgie-wm stays at a cool 25-30 MB usage. More on how the budgie thing works : https://budgie-desktop.org/2017/01/25/kicking-off-budgie-11/ https://budgie-desktop.org/2017/01/25/kicking-off-budgie-11/

by devxpy 8y ago

yellowapple 8y ago

To build on this: even KDE tends to feel snappier than GNOME3. That's even if I'm going crazy with transparency and wobbly windows and 3D-cube-virtual-desktop-switchers and desktop widgets and all that.

Klover 8y ago
Transparency, wobbly windows, 3D-cube-virtual-desktop-switcher and desktop widgets shouldn't make any impact on any computer with hardware made since like 2007. Windows Vista did it in 2006, and it's 2018 now. We have phones with better hardware than we had at the time.

jchw 8y ago

Gnome 3 isn't "written with JS." I am aware that a large amount of gnome shell is written in JS and I have my opinions about that, but they have their reasons. Either way, the bulk of important code (Gtk, Mutter, etc.) is written in C. Also, I don't think it's unlikely you found different desktops that perform better. I still find KDE on proprietary NVIDIA to be lackluster. Does it show it's possible to do better compositing on some setups? Yes. I am guessing GNOME relies on the existence of certain GL extensions to composite efficiently. Still: if it can perform well on super low end systems and poorly on high end ones, I doubt it has to do with JS.

devxpy 8y ago
I was not necessarily talking about performance when mentioning JS. It was the memory leak. Gnome performs "fine?" at bootup, but starts becoming sluggish as you use it because their JS interpreter doesn't automatically have GC. This kind of behaviour is fine for websites since nobody really uses it for an extended period. But for a desktop (which I for once, use for quite long stretches) is unacceptable. I've had cases where I had to forcefully reboot the machine because gnome froze. Even if you ignore the memory leak (and say that it's being fixed) I would argue that the overall latency of the desktop is just not there. I have used xfce, gnome3, unity7, kde, mate and budgie (daily driver) on the same machine, with the same Intel iGPU Mesa driver; gnome3 is the most sluggish. The time it takes for stuff to happen on the screen from when I press a button is quite high for my taste. P.S. I usually disable animations. The design of the desktop is definitely unique and admittedly refreshing to see (except the hamburger menus). However, the sluggishness just makes it impossible for me to use.
devxpy 8y ago
Oh, and Gnome3 is absolutely "written with JS" https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/graphs/master/charts https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/graphs/master/cha...
devxpy 8y ago
> bulk of important code (Gtk, Mutter, etc.) is written in C. Exactly why budgie desktop is fast. Uses Mutter as WM, and the gnome applications (like Nautilus, control centre). For instance, gnome-shell starts up at around 150MB of memory usage, climbs upto around 1GB, eventually halting. OTOH, budgie-wm stays at a cool 25-30 MB usage. More on how the budgie thing works : https://budgie-desktop.org/2017/01/25/kicking-off-budgie-11/ https://budgie-desktop.org/2017/01/25/kicking-off-budgie-11/