From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1755123AbZECToP (ORCPT ); Sun, 3 May 2009 15:44:15 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751483AbZECTn7 (ORCPT ); Sun, 3 May 2009 15:43:59 -0400 Received: from smtp01.udag.de ([89.31.137.29]:35388 "EHLO smtp01.udag.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751303AbZECTn6 (ORCPT ); Sun, 3 May 2009 15:43:58 -0400 X-Greylist: delayed 1066 seconds by postgrey-1.27 at vger.kernel.org; Sun, 03 May 2009 15:43:58 EDT Message-ID: <49FDEFD1.8020608@nico22.de> Date: Sun, 03 May 2009 21:26:09 +0200 From: =?ISO-8859-15?Q?Nico_Sch=FCmann?= User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.21 (X11/20090503) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: CFS not suitable for desktop computers Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Dear Linux developers, I have been using Linux for some years now and for me, the best thing about 2.6 was that Linux ran desktop applications just smoothly. I was able to compile in the background, while all applications under X11 were just usable as if the machine was in idle mode. This was due to the priority of gcc being set to 30, for instance. Then, somewhere around 2.6.19 or 2.6.21, I do not remember exactly, the CFS was introduced, which removed all those "latency-based" scheduling policies. Now that I use 2.6.29 (I did not write earlier because I though it was a regression issue) I have to say: Linux is not as perfectly usable as before. End users do not want to experiment with nice levels and stuff, they just want that the system stays responsible even if there is a cpu-consuming process in the _background_. For me, this had been the greatest benefit from using Linux . Now what can we do, so that foreground applications are smoothly usable during hard cpu load? Is there any way to restore the old behaviour that cpu-consuming processes get a lower priority? It had always worked until this new scheduler was introduced. Regards, Nico Schümann