Killing activities when memory gets short

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 19:31, Bernie Innocenti <bernie at codewiz.org> wrote:
> El Sat, 07-08-2010 a las 18:14 +0200, Tomeu Vizoso escribió:
>
>> So we would have a periodic wakeup? The test would be the amount of
>> free memory plus buffers and caches?
>
> A polled design is clearly inferior to a proper notification system, but
> it has the advantage of being simple and not requiring a particular
> kernel. Once this is done, switching to a better solution should not
> require extensive changes to the UI code.
>
> BTW, looking at top, it seems that Sugar and other processes wake up
> quite frequently when the system is supposed to be completely idle. It
> may be background checks for updates, NetworkManager updates or the
> presence service. Plus, there are a bunch of cron jobs that run in the
> background, inclding the ds-backup and olpc-update.
>
> All these things drain battery power and cause the UI to become jerky,
> so we should try to limit them if possible.

NM is particularly active when there are more than a few APs
available, wonder if it would be possible to tune it to group updates
in batches.

Regards,

Tomeu

>> > Or, maybe, we could make this a manual process: pop up a notification
>> > when memory is short and ask which activity should be closed.
>>
>> I would just close one of the background activities, the LRU or the biggest one.
>
> +1.
>
> This, however, makes non-sugarized activities more dangerous to deal
> with. One more reason to demand proper sugarization.
>
> --
>   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
>  \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/
>
>