On Thursday, December 29, 2005 @ 3:39 PM, Carlos Robinson wrote:
The Thursday 2005-12-29 at 18:29 -0500, Ken Schneider wrote:
Actually, the cache/buffer memory makes the system go faster. The more you have there, the faster.
That's why the second time you load OOo, without the quickstarter, it loads faster: it doesn't need to read from disk, it is already in memory.
But -that- is the whole problem with "perception" with -new- users. They load a program like OO and it takes them forever the first time and they then think that -everything- runs slower. If there was a limit to how much ram was used by cache/buffer, programs would load faster the -first- time because memory would be available the first time it was started.
No, you are wrong there; cache memory is freed instantly, the worst problem is disk I/O. OOo is huge, and has to be loaded.
You can try very easily: start up your system, get in to X mode with a small memory footprint environment - almost anyone except kde (if you have 1GB, then use kde if you like). Start an xterm with "top" running on it; watch the free free memory display, you should have a lot still, and litle memory dedicated to cache; then start up OOo. You will see little or no diference compared to when the chache is in use, provided there is enough free memory. In fact, it may be slower.
The "perception" that new users need to have is that linux is as fast as MS Windows or better yet faster. The cache/buffer use needs to be a tunable parameter.
No, the kernel knows better than you (we) in this respect.
- -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson
So when are the binaries cached, when you exit the program? I've really never explored this in Linux, but on 'dose, the application binary is cached the first time you open it. That's why if you open something like, say, EXCEL, turn right around and close it, then open it again, it comes up almost instantly the second time. You can also go to task manager and watch the memory hits. If an app is, say, 100K, the first time you open it you take a 200K memory hit. If you close it, memory goes down by 100K (leaving the 100K cached copy). The only time that cached copy would go away is if you needed the memory for some other app. Then it would be aged out. Does Linux work differently? Greg Wallace