#2278 BLOC Future : Memory pressure

[Zarro Boogs per Child]

#2278: Memory pressure
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   Reporter:  cjb          |       Owner:  cjb           
       Type:  defect       |      Status:  new           
   Priority:  blocker      |   Milestone:  Future Release
  Component:  performance  |     Version:                
 Resolution:               |    Keywords:                
Next_action:  communicate  |    Verified:  0             
  Blockedby:               |    Blocking:                
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Changes (by thomaswamm):

  * next_action:  => communicate


Comment:

 Perhaps this is a sacriligious suggestion, but can memory paging/swapping
 be switched off?  Can we just force users to operate within a fixed RAM
 budget of 256MB, and not rely on virtual memory?  Operating my G1G1 XO, I
 have never seen a message of the sort: "Insufficient memory; please close
 one or more activities then try again."  What happens is my XO lets me
 open several activities, it gets slower and slower, hangs, then I get fed
 up and power cycle to reboot.  Actually, sometimes it seems to hang, but
 is just glacially slow.  If I leave it alone overnight it sometimes
 recovers.

 I have learned to not open more than 3 activities at one time, preferably
 less.  Why can't the XO itself decide when enough is enough, rather than
 leave it mysteriously fuzzy?  The old Macintosh (680x0 hardware with
 System 7.5.5 MacOS) worked pretty well by making the memory budget very
 clear.

 As an extra observation, while fiddling with the Seamonkey web browser,
 for a while I set cache to zero (0 MB), and did not notice any difference
 from 10 or 50 MB.  But I have 5mbps cable Internet.

 Virtual memory and swapping were invented decades ago when 32 kilobytes of
 RAM was expensive and programs were much smaller and one CPU was time-
 shared among multiple users.  Things are different now.  An XO is intended
 to be a very interactive tool for one child, and the activities are pretty
 much each optional and discretionary; they don't all need to run or be
 loaded simultaneously. The XO should be optimized to do a few things very
 well, rather than a lot of things poorly.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/2278#comment:20>
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