desktop May 2004

desktop@lists.stg.fedoraproject.org

61 participants
32 discussions

Performance tuning the Fedora Desktop
by William Cohen 13 May '04

13 May '04

I work on performance tools at Red Hat. I have been told there is interest in tuning the desktop to improve performance. I have a number of questions to help identify the work needed in this area. I would be interested in any answers that people have for the following questions. What is the set of software in the "Desktop" (executable names and/or RPM packages)? What specific performance problems have people observed so far in the desktop? For example heavy CPU or memory usage by particular applications. Another example long latency between event and resulting action. What metrics were used to gauged the effect of software changes on performance? What performance tools have people used so far to identify performance problems with desktop applications? How well or poorly did the performance tools work in identifying the performance problem? Were benchmarks used to test performance of desktop applications? If so, what type of benchmarks were used (e.g. micro benchmarks or measuring the amount of time required to do something in an application program)? Were the benchmarks runnable in batch mode without human assistance? -Will

18 34

window managers
by Havoc Pennington 12 May '04

12 May '04

Hi, I'm triaging my bugs and there are a few sawfish issues that I know I won't get around to fixing. Also at this point I think most people wanting a more featureful WM are using a more maintained one, there's a list of EWMH compliant WMs at http://freedesktop.org/standards/wm-spec Even of those included with FC2, there's a good chance KWin and xfwm both work OK with GNOME. So suggestions: 1) if we have a random more-features WM in Core, I think it should probably be one of the more maintained ones instead of Sawfish 2) maybe the right path instead is to put extra WMs in Extras and only the full desktop envs - gnome, kde, xfce, and classic (twm/xterm) - in Core 3) either way, pretty sure someone other than me should be maintaining the package Havoc

2 1

Shared Calendars
by Jon Orris 12 May '04

12 May '04

After reading http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2004-April/msg00035.html I've been taking a look at groupware/calendaring solutions, and wanted to share my thoughts on it: System requirements: Performance & scalability: The system should scale to hundreds, and ideally thousands of users. It should be easy to purchase better hardware or add servers in a clustered environment to improve performance and support large numbers of users. Community: Ideally, the project should already have a strong Open Source community around it. Standards: The product needs to support common open components and standards. The use of standard protocols for storage & exchange of data is important. There are some projects that use standard components, but in very unusual ways with no standard protocol for exchange. Some relevant standards are: (The below lists of standards & features, excepting Evolution integration, are from http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2004-April/msg00058.html) http://www.imc.org/ietf-calendar/index.htmliCalendar/iCal (RFC2445) http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2445.txtxCal (iCalendar DTD document) http://xml.coverpages.org/iCal.htmlCalendar Server Extensions for WebDAV (CalDAV) http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-dusseault-caldav-00.htmliTIP (RFC 2446) Transport-independent Interoperability protocol http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2446.txtiMIP (RFC 2447) Message-based Interoperability Protocol http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2447.txtCalendar Access Protocol (CAP) transport over BEEP http://www.beepcore.org/beepcore/home.jsp http://beepcore.org/beepcore/docs/profile-cap.htmlICAP (extension of IMAP 4 to support CAP) http://www.wirs.aber.ac.uk/spk/Diary/icap-draft.htm#Overview Features: * Single-Sign On (usually via Directory integration) * user management via "address book users" rather than "system users" * Group scheduling/Meeting creation * Resource scheduling (ie. room availability, notebook checkout...) * Free/busy time * Merging of multiple calendars * import/export iCal * synchronization: * to handhelds/phone * to notebook * to other calendar servers * notification/reminder mechanism * Evolution Integration Anyone have other requirements we haven't thought of here? As an alternative to adopting a particular project, we could build something. The WAF framework, for example, contains numerous infrastructure components that would facilitate building such a system. http://redhat.com/software/rha/tech/waf/ Community Projects: The ones I've looked at so far were mentioned in http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2004-April/msg00058.html My overall conclusion is that Open Groupware and Horde are the strongest existing options. k5n.us (http://www.k5n.us/webcalendar.php) License: GPL Features: Decent PHP calendar implementaion. Does not appear to have groups, but allows creating calendar entries for multiple individuals in 'Waiting for Approval' State. Allows Export as iCal, vCal, or CSV. Allows import as vCal or CSV. Supports LDAP authentication. Database: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, DB2, Interbase or ODBC. Documentation: Pretty good documentation. Good documentation on the DB schema. UCal from the University of Washington (http://www.washington.edu/ucal/) License: BSD Style http://www.washington.edu/ucal/bsd.html Features: Java Servlets based calendar implementation. Allows import & export in iCal. Has users & groups. Code is of adequate to poor quality. Academic implementation. No built-in authentication mechanism other than simple plaintext passwords. Database code spread throughout as raw JDBC calls. Open Groupware (OpenGroupware.org) License: GPL & LGPL Features: Group Collaboration system descended from the SKYRiX groupware server. Supports group workspaces, calendaring, some document management. Integrates with IMAP for mail and LDAP for authentication. Written in Objective-C, some XML-RPC APIs for Java & perl being developed. Calendar integration works with Mozilla Calendar, Apple's iCal.app and generic WebDav. There is an OGo specific Evolution plugin being developed; I tried it on 1.4.5 and it was able to create entries on the server, but not view them in Evolution. OGo works with Ximian's Exchange Connector v1.2. The version recently released as Open Source by Ximian is 1.4.7, which does not work, but there is strong interest on the OGo lists in supporting it. OGo has a plugable database architecture, and currently supports PostgreSQL and FrontBase. OGo has basic localization support for Latin-1 charsets, but doesn't currently support language such as Chinese or Japanese. This is a planned feature. Horde (http://www.horde.org/) License: GPL & LGPL PHP based groupware system. Supports POP3/IMAP integration for mail, LDAP & SQL for contact management, and has calendaring. The calendar system now support import/export of iCal. It doesn't yet support group calendaring, but this is in development. Supports MySQL and PostgreSQL databases. KGroupware (http://kgroupware.org/) License: GPL Groupware/calendaring solution focusing on KDE frontends. Calendaring supports vCal standard. Calendar entries, like everything else, are stored on the IMAP server as a special type of 'mail' message. This does not fit well with most other software. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2003-October/msg00588.html Chandler (http://wiki.osafoundation.org/twiki/bin/view/Chandler/WebHome) License: GPL, other OS licenses in the future. Interesting project, but is in a very early stage. It doesn't look like full Full iCal compliance isn't scheduled until the 1.5 release, and it is currently on 0.3. It isn't clear if even this allows external clients such as Evolution to access calendar functionality. Currently, development focus is on building out the application framework. The project has full time developers being funded by OSAF. Egroupware: License: GPL & LGPL community Egroupware is a fork of phpgroupware. Some people were dissatisfied with phpgroupware development so they forked. The calendar application is actually on a fork of the PHP-based WebCalendar (separate project).The project is pretty popular as a download on sourceforge. features Reasonable calendar. Primitive "CMS". Webmail app (strangely not based on Horde; based on Anglemail). There is also a Wiki, Bookmarks, Forum, and "Infolog" (notes/todos).The UI isn't very good (lots of clicking around to figure out how to do things, and it's slow so it's a bit frustrating). It looks pretty, though.The documentation is pretty abysmal. There is work with LDAP. technical Written in PHP. It runs very slowly on a test system at Red Hat. Supports MySQL and PostgreSQL only with embedded SQL statements.They have made an attempt to separate out business logic from the UI. Given the scripting language base, I don't know if this is scaleable. Interoperability with existing systems (e.g., IMAP stores) does not seem to be a focus.They do not have real standards support (e.g., iCal).

2 1

Fedora cd artwork: Covers, CD-labels etc.
by Sindre Pedersen Bjordal 12 May '04

12 May '04

I was wondering, do any of you know of any Fedora artwork that can be made into a cover and CD-label for my Fedora CD-set or maybe even some finished covers or cd-labels? If someone not as artistically retarded as me decided to make something like this, will it be ok (as in legal) to distribute it?

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Re: Performance tuning the Fedora Desktop
by Brian Ledbetter 11 May '04

11 May '04

As many others have pointed out rythymbox uses insane amounts of RAM after about one day of use. On May 6, 2004, at 10:00 AM, fedora-desktop-list-request(a)redhat.com wrote: > > From: Will Cohen <wcohen(a)redhat.com> > Date: May 5, 2004 3:11:27 PM MDT > To: fedora-desktop-list(a)redhat.com > Subject: Performance tuning the Fedora Desktop > Reply-To: Discussions about development for the Fedora desktop > <fedora-desktop-list(a)redhat.com> > > > I work on performance tools at Red Hat. I have been told there is > interest in tuning the desktop to improve performance. I have a number > of questions to help identify the work needed in this area. I would be > interested in any answers that people have for the following > questions. > > > What is the set of software in the "Desktop" (executable names and/or > RPM packages)? > > What specific performance problems have people observed so far in the > desktop? For example heavy CPU or memory usage by particular > applications. Another example long latency between event and resulting > action. > > What metrics were used to gauged the effect of software changes on > performance? > > What performance tools have people used so far to identify performance > problems with desktop applications? > > How well or poorly did the performance tools work in identifying the > performance problem? > > Were benchmarks used to test performance of desktop applications? If > so, what type of benchmarks were used (e.g. micro benchmarks or > measuring the amount of time required to do something in an > application program)? > > Were the benchmarks runnable in batch mode without human assistance? > > > -Will

4 3

Help Needed: Firefox 0.8 and Thunderbird 0.6
by Warren Togami 11 May '04

11 May '04

https://bugzilla.fedora.us/show_bug.cgi?id=1460 Please assist Fedora Extras in preparing revisions of the firefox-0.8 and thunderbird-0.6 packages before the release of FC2. These packages are patched with Blizzard's xremote fixes which finally allow perfect integration with both firefox & thunderbird running simultaneously. We have also spent a great deal of time making sure they work within the newly fixed Preferred Application framework of FC2. Only minor changes are needed to both packages before publication. Also it would help if Fedora Desktop volunteers can help to contact upstream developers to either act as liasons, or work directly with Fedora Extras development. https://bugzilla.fedora.us/show_bug.cgi?id=1443 Even non-programmers can help by searching upstream mozilla.org bugzilla and talking to firefox or mozilla developers about this issue. It is very likely that there already exists a patch or workaround for this issue, but the developers are too busy to search for it. You can help! For example, we have made this kind of very successful partnership with three upstream gaim developers. They are automatically added to all Fedora gaim bug reports, and have helped us immensely to be very responsive to user bugzilla reports and package fixing. (Currently there are ZERO open gaim reports in FC!) Warren Togami wtogami(a)redhat.com

1 0

LTWinmodem
by Warren Walker 10 May '04

10 May '04

I recently successfully installed Fedora on an old IBM Aptiva [Amd k6-2 366, 64 Mb Ram, 3.1Gb HD]. What can I do to get Fedora to recognize the LTWinmodem? Can Fedora recognize a Speedstream 5200 USB DSL modem? Warren____________________________

1 0

Bluecurve Sound Theme?
by Bruce A. Locke 10 May '04

10 May '04

Has any thought been put into a Bluecurve sound theme for the GNOME and KDE desktop environments over in the new Red Hat Desktop office? Just curious. :) -- ------------------------------------------------------------------ Bruce A. Locke blocke(a)shivan.org

1 0

System Freezing Completely
by Parameshwara Bhat 09 May '04

09 May '04

Hello List, I had very bad freezing of the system,twice today morning - the kind one usually associates only with MS Windows and not Linux - quite unexpectedly. I was running Opera Browser-7.23 version and wget-1.8.2-15.3 at the time.I have used Opera earlier and not seen this kind of problem.This problem repeated when wget was running alone too. Only change in my system since installation was new modemboard based on smartlink chipset and driver slmdm-version 2.7.14. I could not change over to either commandline-mode (ctrl+alt+F1) or invoke sysguard program to kill anyof these applications.Keyboard and mouse were dead too. I didnot anything else to do.What else is there to do in such a situation? Has anybody had this kind of problem in Fedora or Linux in general ? Parameshwara Bhat -- Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/

1 0

Core 2 test 3 display problem
by mace 07 May '04

07 May '04

Hi, I have just installed core2 test 3. The system defaults to 640x480 for the screen resolution. I have tried changing it, reboot, and it stays at 640. When I go back into display, it shows the changed in resolution. Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong. Under preferences for display it only shows 640x480. I am running a tyan s2466 motherboard with dual mp2200+ 512 meg ram 60gig hd, Ati 8500, 19" monitor. This makes the system almost unusable. Thanks

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desktop May 2004