Tiny hint for linux sun java users on slow pcs

[sinnerk]

Hi all,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm fairly new to linux hence corrections, providing they're correct, are very welcome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The story starts about a month ago when I decided to try out linux. Everything worked fine ( except for the 2 weeks I spent figuring out sound card issues :x ) apt-get'ed mozilla, downloaded sun jre yadayada and when I actually fired up rs... It seemed to work twice slower than on windows, really shattered my enthusiasm. Firefox and nearly all applications were half as responsive while a java applet was running. After some days of searching the net I've found out nothing at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This eve, I've finally got it in a blinding epiphany of DUH. It seems that on my $100 computer ( specs below ), java maxes out cpu usage, which leaves little resources for firefox and other apps. The solution is rather simple, yet it took close to a month for a newbie like myself to figure it out, call me stupid -.-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you're having similar trouble, try the following;

 

 

 

Use `top' utility renice the java_vm process to 19

 

 

 

or via a terminal issue the following;

 

 

 

 

 

 

miz@mystic:~$ ps -A|grep java

 

 

 

3265 ? 00:00:11 java_vm

 

 

 

miz@mystic:~$ su -c "renice 19 -p 3265"

 

 

 

3265: old priority 0, new priority 19

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using the PID(3265 in this case) you get from the first command in the second and entering your root password when prompted. Java will now be 'more nice to other apps', and in my case, speeded up firefox and overall system responsiveness in double.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just in case it's hardware/software specific, I'm running debian sid on ecs k7som+ motherboard with socketless duron 1ghz, custom 2.6.13-rc3-mm1 preemptible kernel compliled with gcc 4.0.1, Xorg 6.8.2(no drm for sis cards) and fluxbox 0.9.12. JRE version is 1.5.0_04, firefox 1.0.4 through 1.0.6.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also I'm interested in a method of renicing the jvm process when firefox fires up it's java plugin automatically, since I must wait through all the lag of jvm loading and then renice manually, if you have any tips for the above issue, or any tips to speedup jvm for slow computers please post here or pm me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just a side note, before doing anything of the above read the manpages related to the subject since it is possible to irreversibly bork your system using root account.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It might be some specific issue to some of my hardware or software, however if anyone would be willing to try it and having visible results, please let me know. Hopefully mods won't delete this post for irrelevance and it'll help newbies like myself who nearly turned down on linux because of a measly game. :P