CFS not suitable for desktop computers

Nico Schümann
2009-05-03T19:44:15Z

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