From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Mar 7 4:49:41 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from draco.over-yonder.net (draco.over-yonder.net [198.78.58.61]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5E90037B417 for ; Thu, 7 Mar 2002 04:49:36 -0800 (PST) Received: by draco.over-yonder.net (Postfix, from userid 100) id 23F9CFC4; Thu, 7 Mar 2002 06:49:27 -0600 (CST) Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 06:49:27 -0600 From: "Matthew D. Fuller" To: Stephen McKay Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Browser wars (was Re: Taming Netscape Navigator?) Message-ID: <20020307064927.I3880@over-yonder.net> References: <3C7FB956.18428.510B414@localhost> <20020301201318.C3880@over-yonder.net> <200203051407.g25E7WF10805@dungeon.home> <20020305105330.H3880@over-yonder.net> <200203061331.g26DVFe15485@dungeon.home> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5-fullermd.1i In-Reply-To: <200203061331.g26DVFe15485@dungeon.home>; from mckay@thehub.com.au on Wed, Mar 06, 2002 at 11:31:15PM +1000 X-Editor: vi X-OS: FreeBSD Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Wed, Mar 06, 2002 at 11:31:15PM +1000 I heard the voice of Stephen McKay, and lo! it spake thus: > > I haven't yet seen a current generation window manager I can stomach, > and vtwm is good for a couple dozen windows, not hundreds. Actually, > even so-called modern window managers are poor at handling 100 windows. Frankly, I despise all those "modern window managers" :P ctwm works very well for me. I've got a seperate icon manager on the right side of my screen for Netscape windows. I currently have 15 open on this desktop, and by my hand-estimate, that's taking up just a touch over 1/3 the height available to it. So, call it 35-40 per desktop with room to spare. I have 6 virtual desktops split up by function (one is for working on programs, one is for managing systems, etc), which gives a reasonably good distribution. So, if we take 20 windows per desktop, that gives 120 total (presuming, of course, that NS would live long enough to open that many ;), while taking up maybe half of the available space to manage 'em. Other stuff like xterms has the other icon manager on the left side of the screen. > Maybe more of my peculiar habits are relevant: I run a virtual desktop > and Opera gets 100% of one of them (ie it runs in full screen mode). > Within Opera, I only look at one page at a time, so it gets all the > screen minus the tab list. At 1600x1200 with 100 windows open you > still have lots of visible window left. Interleaving my browser > windows with other windows is not of interest to me. When I'm working on a web front-end in 2 xterms (with a third for referencing other bits), and have 1 NS windows open on the PostgreSQL docs, 1 on the PHP docs, 1 looking up bits in the HTML spec I manage to forget, and 1 testing the output, interleaving is kinda a necessity. I don't have ANYTHING full-screen. I run 1280x1024, my Netscape windows are set to 840x695 (there's no magic reason for those dimensions, it's just what I've gotten used to). I very much treasure being able to see more than one thing at a time. I s'pose in the end, as always, it comes down to individual preference. At least we use an environment that gives us choices. > >But in a X11 environment, when you can pick and choose among a number of > >WM's with great configurability and scalability... what's the point? > > I await your recommendation for a window manager that will do all the > things I like as well as these new fangled things you like. Er, what new-fangled things? Using a 5-year-old piece of festering crap web browser? ;) > I'd rather not *pay* for a dual 1400. Regardless, it is an interesting > idea to hard limit all processes to at most 1/2 the cpu. I don't know of > anyone who has done this already. And I don't know how much of the feel > of a real dual cpu box this would have. Maybe one of us will have to > code up a hack and find out. It does make you curious. On the one hand, the context switch overhead would hurt. On the other, though, you don't have to worry about inter-processor synchronization or bus arbitration. The context-switch is part of the problem; I keep NS nice'd down, but even then you'll still have a problem, because you have to wait for it to finish its quantum before the scheduler is ready to schedule another process, even once you hard-limit it to 50% of the cycles. (the "even nice'd processes get CPU" problem is obliterated when you set the limit). -- Matthew Fuller (MF4839) | fullermd@over-yonder.net Unix Systems Administrator | fullermd@futuresouth.com Specializing in FreeBSD | http://www.over-yonder.net/ "The only reason I'm burning my candle at both ends, is because I haven't figured out how to light the middle yet" To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message