[plug] X11 performance under RH8/9

[Craig Ringer]

> NVdrivers? Not nvidia?

I'm using the latest binary drivers from nvidia.com , but have tried the 
ones that come with XFree - which I found to be even slower.

> notice that KDE does WEIRD things at times (etc eating cpu, stalling)
> yet open console and use mc or generic window program to do same, almost 
> nudda.

I won't use KDE (2 or 3) or GNOME (1.4 or 2) . Too big and slow for my 
needs. I'm happy with XFCE4 (rc1). The same issues are present under 
GNOME, KDE and IceWM though - this is not a WM specific problem. It is 
text rendering speed. For example, a 'find /' takes 4 1/2 minutes under 
gnome-terminal with AA fonts (XFree86 uses ~75%CPU, gnome-terminal 25%). 
Under xterm it takes ~1 minute, with xterm using 75% CPU, X 5% and the 
rest appears unused. Xterm uses the old 'core fonts' scheme. If I 
disable AA fonts and use gnome-terminal, it still takes ~3 1/2 minutes 
so it's not just AA fonts but perhaps the client-side font rendering? If 
I use gnome-terminal but redirect output to /dev/null a 'find /' takes 
between 5 and 15 seconds.

Something is f**ed if it takes 4 minutes to list the entire set of files 
on a machine when the directory contents are CACHED IN RAM.

> still tinkering with different window managers (prefer speed, but like 
> the basic window features)
> console 150*80 plus scroll bars :)

Try out IceWM &/or XFCE 4.

Craig Ringer