Two Years With Linux BFS, The Brain Fuck Scheduler

[kebabbert]

Would someone care to explain how somebody like Con-man Kolivas who goes out of his way to burn bridges and insult players... still manages to get press releases?

Oh, and RealNC, don't make me step back in here and smack you around some more. Seriously, if all you can come up with is a one liner retort that such and such a kernel version is "insert explicative here" you haven't learned anything over the years.

I dont know if you read the Con interview? He explained that Linux et al were not to nice.

So, it seems that Linus has some attitude problems, and that Con got in his way. There are numerous unpleasant stories about Linus and his ego. Maybe you missed them?

[RealNC]

@RealNC

I dont do benchmarks with my Atom netbook, but without BFS the kde 4.4.5 gui is fast enough. I dont see your problems. Maybe you enable too many effect which i dont use.

With 4.4.5 I also don't see problems with mainline.

Btw, "fast enough" for me means it shouldn't drop below 50FPS. If it does, it's not acceptable because it's distracting. Also, as a Gentoo user, I want the GUI to continue to be 100% fluid and be able to watch 1080p videos even if I'm compiling in the background with 100% CPU utilization. For me, only BFS delivers here.

[Kano]

@RealNC

I dont do benchmarks with my Atom netbook, but without BFS the kde 4.4.5 gui is fast enough. I dont see your problems. Maybe you enable too many effect which i dont use.

[XorEaxEax]

I've been using BFS for about a year on one of my machines, and yes it certainly feels more responsive when I do many cpu intensive tasks (rendering, encoding etc), however I'm using two other systems aswell with cfs and it's not like they are in any way unuseable, even under heavy load. So can we please pull back a little on the exaggerations? Also, as for the kernel shipping with cfs, is that surprising? AFAIK the main areas where Linux is used is where throughput is favoured over responsiveness. Having both schedulers available is great, so why fight!?

[codestation]

it's just too bad that BFS + systemd is still a no go :/ (no cgroup support).

Not sure what do you mean, i have been using BFS + systemd since almost a year ago without problems.

And yes, i have cgroups enabled (what bfs doesn't support is cpu load balancing inside the cgroup and other things, who isn't needed if you are using BFS anyway).

[RealNC]

I stopped using BFS when i did benchmarks with i7-880. With an E8400 BFS improved compile speed, but with HT it did not matter at all if BFS was used or not. Also desktop performance improved a lot with mainline kernels. Basically i see no specific reason to patch a kernel, maybe increase HZ for better reaction time, but thats all.

Yeah, but that's just people using powerful systems. Try a 2.4GHz E6600. Without BFS the GUI gets really bad.

[RealNC]

Did you try Linux 3.0 with automatic cgroups enabled? It is very good in that release. It should improve that situation.

Yep, automatic grouping was enabled.

[Kano]

I stopped using BFS when i did benchmarks with i7-880. With an E8400 BFS improved compile speed, but with HT it did not matter at all if BFS was used or not. Also desktop performance improved a lot with mainline kernels. Basically i see no specific reason to patch a kernel, maybe increase HZ for better reaction time, but thats all.

[ChrisXY]

I don't get why so many people are talking about these benchmarks being "useless" because they are missing the point of BFS.

I think, it is interesting to see how much raw performance you sacrifice (or even gain) when changing to BFS. These benchmarks suggest it's mostly a pretty good deal. Just maybe not for apache.

[Shining Arcanine]

So I understand BFS fixed your slow OpenGL and Kwin crashes? Simply brilliant!*

If BFS appears to fix kwin crashes, then that could indicate race conditions in kwin.

Maybe it's not Jack itself, but the whole audio chain, from the synths up to Jack. Lots of processes involved. With BFS, I can use 64 frames/period, no problem and no audio drops. Total latency of everything combined is well under 6ms. With CFS, it craps out as soon as I actually start playing some synths and CPU load rises. I have to raise latencies up to 15ms to make it work reliably.

It's really like day and night.

Did you try Linux 3.0 with automatic cgroups enabled? It is very good in that release. It should improve that situation.