[sugar] Performance

[J.M. Maurer]

On Thu, 2008-07-24 at 06:16 -0400, Greg Smith wrote:
> Hi All,
> 

> I just got word from a decision maker in Uruguay that they are very 
> concerned about "performance". They say that Sugar is slow.

The sugar & activity developers have been for 2.5 years as well :)

[snip]

> - Activity or main GUI responsiveness to cursor
> It seems to me that the activities are a little slow. e.g. when I try to 
> draw a line in paint, it takes a little while (maybe 100s of ms but 
> noticeable) for the line to show on the screen. Similar with cursor 
> placement in write or in the journal/home. Has anyone else noticed that? 
> Is that due to CPU cycles or screen refresh or something else?
> 
> - Hardware
> Can anyone evaluate how much faster it would be with twice the RAM? Is 
> the NAND slowing us down?
> 
> This may cost us significantly if we don't show improvement. Send me 
> ideas. Any quick wins would be considered, even if they have a downside 
> in another metric.

Quick wins are ofcourse fine, but *please finally* also invest in a
fundamental solution to the problem. Hire/contract someone to properly
investigate all the performance issues down from the kernel all the way
up to the sugar/activity level.

As long as I've been around (2.5 years or so), I've been hearing from
developers that they are really eager to work on the performance issues,
but have 'always' being held back by being forced to go for the quick
wins/hacks.

Cheers!
  Marc