Re: [gentoo-user] Choppy video playback

[James Ausmus]

On Jan 28, 2008 5:57 PM, Walter Dnes <waltdnes@××××××××.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 28, 2008 at 10:29:47PM +0900, Mike Mazur wrote
>
> > But the list of packages being recompiled have mostly to do with
> > video, audio and transcoding. I understand it's the --newuse flag
> > that's causing those, not the additional parameters in CFLAGS. Will
> > the CFLAGS have benefits on other packages? Such as Firefox or maybe
> > netscape-flash? For those I might want to do an emerge --emptytree
> > world...
>
>   If all the other stuff isn't being re-compiled, "-march=prescott"
> probably includes them by default, so there's no point in re-building
> your system.  The CFLAGS were probably included by default.

Portage *does not* look at CFLAGS in determining what to rebuild (even
with -uDN) - portage only looks at USE flags and dependency
upgrades/versions. Mike is correct in saying that, for packages to be
recompiled with the new CFLAGS, he would have to recompile that
package directly. emerge -e world is a good way to do this.\

-James


>
>   If you need a speed boost in Firefox, there is some additional
> tweaking that can be done.  The pango library allows Firefox to
> simultaneously render US English text (if that's your system locale)
> *AND* Chinese, and other similar text.  It slows down Firefox in the
> process. If you're willing to give up on Asiatic text, you can cause
> Firefox to not link against pango, by including the line...
>
> www-client/mozilla-firefox moznopango
>
> ...in /etc/portage/package.use  It's your decision whether occasional
> Asiatic scripts or a faster Firefox is worth more to you.

Removing Pango will almost definitely increase the render/scroll speed
of Firefox.

However, from the symptoms that Mike is describing (system-wide
momentary pauses, after which the system resumes normal
responsiveness) sounds much more like a kernel-level issue - either
I/O speed issues (check to make sure your hard drive is running at
full speed and you have native controller supported compiled in to
your kernel - also, what is your I/O scheduler set to by default?) or
the Scheduler (process scheduler). What version of which kernel are
you running? What does your .config look like?

I had similar issues with momentarily frozen responsiveness on my
laptop, until I upgraded to 2.6.23.x, which has the new CFS scheduler
in it - seems to help responsiveness quite a bit.

HTH

-James
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