Bryan's Dtrace vs GNOME vs GNOME myths
Tuesday Jul 12, 2005
Bryan Cantrill has some interesting dtrace data on which processes perform the most I/O and what filenames or file descriptors the I/O is associated with. It appears that at least some of our suspicions, including those mentioned in Rob Love's GNOME optimization talk can be validated or disproved with this technique.
While Gconfd-2 appears to use significant I/O and CPU resources, neither Bryan's nor my own dtrace investigations show bonobo-activation as particularly I/O heavy. I've only used GNOME for about 4 years but I lost track of how many times I've heard, "GNOME is slow because...{something something B.S. ...something} BONOBO-ACTIVATION!" I've even heard rumors that there is a plan to replace bonobo-activation in future versions of GNOME. There may be good reasons to replace bonobo-activation, but performance is unlikely to be one of them. Especially when compared to the potential gain from replacing gconf's backend or even gnome-vfs. I wonder how often a major piece of software is rewritten because of such superstitions? How much does this costs in money, time, stability and market share (since stability and market share are related?) With dtrace and similar tools, we no longer have to rely on divining rods and tarot cards to know what our software is doing.
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