One big difference that I’ve noticed between Windows and Linux is that Windows does a much better job ensuring that the system stays responsive even under heavy load.
For instance, I often need to compile Rust code. Anyone who writes Rust knows that the Rust compiler is very good at using all your cores and all the CPU time it can get its hands on (which is good, you want it to compile as fast as possible after all). But that means that for a time while my Rust code is compiling, I will be maxing out all my CPU cores at 100% usage.
When this happens on Windows, I’ve never really noticed. I can use my web browser or my code editor just fine while the code compiles, so I’ve never really thought about it.
However, on Linux when all my cores reach 100%, I start to notice it. It seems like every window I have open starts to lag and I get stuttering as the programs struggle to get a little bit of CPU that’s left. My web browser starts lagging with whole seconds of no response and my editor behaves the same. Even my KDE Plasma desktop environment starts lagging.
I suppose Windows must be doing something clever to somehow prioritize user-facing GUI applications even in the face of extreme CPU starvation, while Linux doesn’t seem to do a similar thing (or doesn’t do it as well).
Is this an inherent problem of Linux at the moment or can I do something to improve this? I’m on Kubuntu 24.04 if it matters. Also, I don’t believe it is a memory or I/O problem as my memory is sitting at around 60% usage when it happens with 0% swap usage, while my CPU sits at basically 100% on all cores. I’ve also tried disabling swap and it doesn’t seem to make a difference.
EDIT: Tried nice -n +19, still lags my other programs.
EDIT 2: Tried installing the Liquorix kernel, which is supposedly better for this kinda thing. I dunno if it’s placebo but stuff feels a bit snappier now? My mouse feels more responsive. Again, dunno if it’s placebo. But anyways, I tried compiling again and it still lags my other stuff.
Lots of bad answers here. Obviously the kernel should schedule the UI to be responsive even under high load. That’s doable; just prioritise running those over batch jobs. That’s a perfectly valid demand to have on your system.
This is one of the cases where Linux shows its history as a large shared unix system and its focus as a server OS; if the desktop is just a program like any other, who’s to say it should have more priority than Rust?
I’ve also run into this problem. I never found a solution for this, but I think one of those fancy new schedulers might work, or at least is worth a shot. I’d appreciate hearing about it if it does work for you!
Hopefully in a while there are separate desktop-oriented schedulers for the desktop distros (and ideally also better OOM handlers), but that seems to be a few years away maybe.
In the short term you may have some success in adjusting the priority of Rust with nice, an incomprehensibly named tool to adjust the priority of your processes. High numbers = low priority (the task is “nicer” to the system). You run it like this:
nice -n5 cargo build.Obviously the kernel should schedule the UI to be responsive even under high load.
Obviously… to you.
This is one of the cases where Linux shows its history as a large shared unix system and its focus as a server OS; if the desktop is just a program like any other,
Exactly.
Obviously… to you.
No. I’m sorry but if you are logged in with a desktop environment, obviously the UI of that desktop needs to stay responsive at all times, also under heavy load. If you don’t care about such a basic requirement, you could run the system without a desktop or you could tweak it yourself. But the default should be that a desktop is prioritized and input from users is responded to as quickly as possible.
This whole “Linux shouldn’t assume anything”-attitude is not helpful. It harms Linux’s potential as a replacement for Windows and macOS and also just harms its UX. Linux cannot ever truly replace Windows and macOS if it doesn’t start thinking about these basic UX guarantees, like a responsive desktop.
This is one of the cases where Linux shows its history as a large shared unix system and its focus as a server OS; if the desktop is just a program like any other,
Exactly.
You say that like it’s a good thing; it is not. The desktop is not a program like any other, it is much more important that the desktop keeps being responsive than most other programs in the general case. Of course, you should have the ability to customize that but for the default and the general case, desktop responsiveness needs to be prioritized.
Even for a server, the UI should always be priority. If you’re not using the desktop/UI, what’s the harm?
When you do need to remote into a box, it’s often when shit’s already sideways, and having an unresponsive UI (or even a sluggish shell) gets old.
A person interacting with a system needs priority.
The Linux kernel uses the CPU default scheduler, CFS, a mode that tries to be fair to all processes at the same time - both foreground and background - for high throughput. Abstractly think “they never know what you intend to do” so it’s sort of middle of the road as a default - every CPU cycle of every process gets a fair tick of work unless they’ve been intentionally
nice’d or whatnot. People who need realtime work (classic use is for audio engineers who need near-zero latency in their hardware inputs like a MIDI sequencer, but also embedded hardware uses realtime a lot) reconfigure their system(s) to that to that need; for desktop-priority users there are ways to alter the CFS scheduler to help maintain desktop responsiveness.Have a look to Github projects such as this one to learn how and what to tweak - not that you need to necessarily use this but it’s a good point to start understanding how the mojo works and what you can do even on your own with a few sysctl tweaks to get a better desktop experience while your rust code is compiling in the background. https://github.com/igo95862/cfs-zen-tweaks (in this project you’re looking at the set-cfs-zen-tweaks.sh file and what it’s tweaking in
/procso you can get hints on where you research goals should lead - most of these can be set with a sysctl)There’s a lot to learn about this so I hope this gets you started down the right path on searches for more information to get the exact solution/recipe which works for you.
“they never know what you intend to do”
I feel like if Linux wants to be a serious desktop OS contender, this needs to “just work” without having to look into all these custom solutions. If there is a desktop environment with windows and such, that obviously is intended to always stay responsive. Assuming no intentions makes more sense for a server environment.
Even for a server, the UI should always get priority, because when you gotta remote in, most likely shit’s already going wrong.
