Re: code bloat [was Re: Semaphore assembly-code bug]

[Z Smith <plinius@comcast.net>]

Alan Cox wrote:

> My X server seems to be running at about 4Mbytes, plus the frame buffer
> mappings which make it appear a lot larger. I wouldn't be suprised if
> half the 4Mb was pixmap cache too, maybe more.

At first sight that sounds like a plausible explanation, however
the facts in my case suggest something else is going on:

My laptop's framebuffer is only 800x600x24bpp VESA, or 1406kB.
But look at what X is doing:

root       632  6.1 17.5 22024 16440 ?       S    12:05   0:17 X :0

The more apps in use, the more memory is used, but at the moment
I've only got xterm, rxvt, thunderbird, xclock and xload. My wm is
blackbox which is using 5 megs.

Also, just curious but why would memory-mapped I/O be counted
in the memory usage anyway? Shouldn't there be a separate number
for framebuffer memory and the like?

> I've helped write tiny UI kits (take a look at nanogui for example) but
> they don't have the flexibility of X.

In my experience, most of the flexibility is not necessary for
97% of what I do, yet it evidently costs a lot in memory usage
and speed.

Zack