Note for users with preempt patches

[adnans]

If you are experience sluggish performance and/or huge slowdowns during GL operations make sure your XFree86 server process is not reniced to a negative value. While this trick enhances the user experience on non-preempt kernels, it has the exact opposite effect on kernels with preempt! So beware! Some Linux distributions renice the XFree86 process to -10 by default (Debian).

-adnans

[konsti]

I experinence too that games (general GL apps) lags, when dpkg install some deb's afetr downloading them. Is that the issue you mean?

Well, I found a nice Value of -10 in /etc/X11/Xwrapper.conf

Well, what nice value do you szggest (-19?) or is a Kernel without preempt patch better for nvidia users/gamers?

Konsti

[adnans]

Well, what nice value do you szggest (-19?) or is a Kernel without preempt patch better for nvidia users/gamers?

A nice value of 0 is better for preempt I think. The preemptive kernel should provide better response without the -10 nice on the XFree86 process because it can preempt other app to service your mouse/keyboard input faster.

The dpkg/dselect slowdown is another thing. I haven't figured out that one myself either. Even when you nice dselect and friends to 10 and higher it still causes considerable interference to other applications. Perhaps it's fsync()'ing like mad or something. Any ideas?

-adnans

[konsti]

what I especially meant was that I blame HardDisk I/O activity for the game lags. I "use" dpkg only for a special test case, because one can't trigger special I/O when gaming. But when I trigger a debian download (56k) modem and start game then, the package gets installed when I am in the game for 5 minutes...
This seems to me not to be normal, I have an athlon xp 1800+ with a KT333 chipset, installing a simple debian package should not decrease game performance or cause lags I think.