Ubuntu 20.04 LTS To Optimize GNOME For Fast/Modern PCs, Ubuntu 20.10 For Slow/Older PCs

[royce]

I'm glad Canonical is working on Gnome performance because it used to be a mess, and nobody seemed to care much. Even Daniel got a lot of pushback from Gnome developers who kept doubting the performance numbers he showed (without testing his changes) and removing the "performance" label from his merge requests.

Indeed. You would think the developers whose code created the problems in the first place would be more humble, but the opposite is true. They've been blocking Daniel's work from day one with open hostility. Most of the work in gnome 3.34 could've been in 3.30 if it wasn't for gnome core developer's dithering on issues as vital as commit messages and variable names just for the sake of pushing back.

At this point, gnome would be better off reimplementing their DE over wlroots instead of fixing the spaghetti bowl mutter is.

[arQon]

I think people may misinterpret this as being about GNOME Shell, when it isn't, and TFA does stress that.

Aside from this

Seems backwards. The LTS should be optimized for slow machines and 20.10 for fast machines.

which is pretty clearly true, the problem is simply "bad code is bad". That's all there is to it. And the "bad code" in question here is GTK3 and its supporting pieces.

Updating a (fairly low-powered) machine running MATE (i.e. GTK-based, but not using GNOME Shell) from 16.04 to 19.10, if you change to a workspace with just 3 windows on it you can now see each one being painted in turn over what must be several hundred ms total, whereas under GTK2 the same switch was instant. Short of something incredibly stupid like a vsync wait on each region update, this points at a fundamentally broken design and/or implementation of the pipeline, and one that's still THAT broken even 5 years into GTK3.

GNOME Shell *itself* clearly has its own implementation issues on top of that, like the comedy gold linked in TFA, but the entire underlying architecture is also basically just broken, and the idea that it might be possible to pay off all that debt in just a few months is delusional.
"Make it fast on fast machines" is basically an acceptance of that, relying on horsepower to try to patch over the systemic issues once the Top X "LOL, IDK wut im doing!" bugs are fixed. And yeah, that's probably somewhat realistic as a goal.

"Make it fast on slower machines" though? That's never going to happen. If the GNOME team had the skill and desire to fix things, they'd have already done so. Since they haven't, even if Canonical does actually fix the problems they'll never get more than that first handful of patches accepted upstream. It's not "interesting" to the CADT, and that work will simply wither and die in the GNOME bugtracker before being RESOLVED OBSOLETE a few revisions from now, like hundreds of other GTK3 issues before it.
"This won't be a problem when we switch to Wayland". "This will be better in the upcoming GNOME Shell 5". "GTK4 should fix this". "We're not going to put resources into this because XYZ will replace Mutter / Clutter / whatever next year anyway".

I'd like to be proven wrong, and maybe I will be, but with so much evidence to the contrary I think I'll just wish Van Vugt luck and not hold my breath...

[GrayShade]

You probably need at least a 5GHz modern CPU to have GNOME run at bearable speeds anyway. If Cannonical wants people to hate GNU/Linux, using GNOME is a great way to accomplish their questionable goals.

At least he's honest about it:

To do this we first need to fix all real time delay issues. Because those might hurt you the same even with an infinitely fast CPU and GPU. You should be able to upgrade your hardware and actually experience some improvement.

(emphasis mine)

I'm glad Canonical is working on Gnome performance because it used to be a mess, and nobody seemed to care much. Even Daniel got a lot of pushback from Gnome developers who kept doubting the performance numbers he showed (without testing his changes) and removing the "performance" label from his merge requests.

What I "hear" when I read this, is that you will need a fast machine to have gnome work properly on 20.04 ...

You probably need at least a 5GHz modern CPU to have GNOME run at bearable speeds anyway. If Cannonical wants people to hate GNU/Linux, using GNOME is a great way to accomplish their questionable goals.

[SofS]

The way I read it is first they will focus on design and feature related optimizations, then they will focus on micro optimizations. The fast/slow machines choice of words is more of an analogy.

[GrayShade]

Yup. Today it doesn't "work properly" on anything:

“Make it fast” means maintaining the full frame rate of your monitor with no stutters. “Fast machines” means anything that could already run Unity or Gnome desktops usably. But admittedly that’s a little subjective.

20.04 might be fast on fast PCs, then 20.10 might be fast even on slower ones.

[berarma]

What I "hear" when I read this, is that you will need a fast machine to have gnome work properly on 20.04 ...

Then you'll need a slow machine for gnome to work properly on 20.10. Optimizations don't usually work that way when correctly implemented. It means that they'll focus first on the bottlenecks for fast computers, then the focus will shift to bottlenecks in slower ones. Slow computers will still benefit from some of the optimizations for faster computers, just no so much as they could because there's other bottlenecks that need to be worked out first.

[Brisse]

Seems backwards. The LTS should be optimized for slow machines and 20.10 for fast machines.

They need to get the real-time blockers away first, otherwise they may be wasting their time at working on optimizations which may have to be thrown out of the window later down the line, hence this approach. I can see why you would think it might be "backwards" but it really isn't. In the end it will be optimized for both fast and slow machines anyway, it's just that all that work isn't likely to be done in time for 20.04.

Anyway, thanks goes to all involved. The difference the last few years really have been massive.

[Volta]

Seems backwards. The LTS should be optimized for slow machines and 20.10 for fast machines.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in my opinion they'll optimize Gnome even further for 20.10, so it will be more usable even on older hardware. For 20.04 they'll provide less noticable optimizations. Title of the article seems to be very misleading.

[Hibbelharry]

Seems backwards. The LTS should be optimized for slow machines and 20.10 for fast machines.

Why? Don't people with a modern PC deserve best performance?