Re: [gentoo-user] Nice level for X11

[Josh Cepek]

Abraham Gyorgy wrote:
> Well I did a little Google'ing, and i found a blog. There the author
> wrote:
>
> lapitopi gyuszk # snice -15 X

As already pointed out, running process with a nice value less than 0 
can only be done by root, and it's usually a really bad idea to run your 
entire X session as root. X (and applications running under X) involve a 
lot of code, and vulnerabilities can exist in this code. You don't want 
any vulnerabilities to be potentially exploited as the root user. Take 
the multiple X-terminal vulnerabilities reported last week by the Gentoo 
security team that could allow local attackers to hijack X11 terminals 
of other users. The moral is don't run as root unless you actually need 
to (and I'd argue that you should never need to run X sessions as root.)

> After doing this, I ran htop and it told me that my X11 was running
> with -15 niceness. I experience better "responsiblity" under all of
> X11 (kde, firefox, konsole, anything). For example switching from an
> existing Firefox window to (for ex.) Konsole or Xchat is much faster.
> I have to add, I own a very slow computer, so I have to do everything
> to speed up my system. It is very slow even with WinXP+official drivers.

If the goal is to lower the priority of other tasks the computer may be 
doing at the same time, perhaps setting a higher nice value for them 
would offer similar results. In the case of compiling, portage provides 
an easy way to lower the priority with the PORTAGE_NICENESS value.

> 2008/5/14 Uwe Thiem <uwix@××××.na <mailto:uwix@××××.na>>:
>
>     On Tuesday 13 May 2008, Andrey Falko wrote:
>     > On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 4:02 PM, Uwe Thiem <uwix@××××.na
>     <mailto:uwix@××××.na>> wrote:
>     > > On Tuesday 13 May 2008, Abraham Gyorgy wrote:
>     > >  > Hello guys, in which configuration file can I set a nice level
>     > >  > for X11? (this makes all graphical software run much faster,
>     > >  > at least when I used Debian).
>     > >
>     > >  Nice factor for X makes graphical software run fater? I don't
>     > > thinl so. Not at all.
>     >
>     > Nice factor gives X priority, so if you are compiling something and
>     > X's priority is high, you'll be using X as if nothing was being
>     > compiled.
>
>     Only if you are root. As a normal user, you can only lower the
>     priority of a process.
>

-- 
Josh