12k square at 32bpp (RGBA or RGBX) isn't that bad in RAM @ 550MB. AFAIK
Linux should toss out disk cache in RAM before it tosses GIMP data to swap.
Undo's don't have to store the entire image, unless its an image wide
effect. They'd probably just store the dirty areas.
Image size shouldn't affect program responsiveness unless it's actually
doing something, ie shouldn't take a lot of time to "select a tool,"
although it may to actually use it. Sounds like something funky is going on.
If your disk is thrashing, try messing with your swappiness
(/proc/sys/vm/swappiness, set it lower to get it to swap less - ie echo "5"
> /proc/sys/vm/swappiness, range is 0-100). I realistically don't see this
helping, though its worth a shot.
You can check a few things, try logging vmstat/mpstat output:
vmstat 1 >> ~/vmstatlog &
mpstat 1 >> ~/mpstatlog &
sleep 60;killall -9 vmstat;killall -9 mpstat
^^ Yes, it's sloppy. I know. I dare say I'm not very good with the shell.
But now you have 60 seconds of mpstat/vmstat to look at and show us.
Check gimp's memory usage:
ps -e -o user,pid,%cpu,%mem,rss,vsz,cmd | grep gimp
Part of me wants to boot my fast machine up into Slack and see how it does,
compile GIMP with profiling, it'd be very interesting to see where it was
getting caught up. But at least that will give you some information to work
with, if you want to post it up on the mailing list.
Anything else eating RAM or CPU? What's top look like while it's being
unresponsive?
CPU speed should not be an issue for basic tasks, until you get into the
realm where you need to modify the entire image - ie an image rotate would
be somewhat CPU intensive, but still much harder on memory bandwidth and
allocation. An i7 probably isn't going to help you here, IMHO.
6GB of RAM may or may not be adequate, depending on exactly what you're
doing. The output of vmstat/mpstat/ps should give you an idea, though. It
might be time for an upgrade to 12-16GB. :)
-Frank
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Mike Kershaw" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2009 3:32 PM
To: <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [mhvlug] slow gimp.
_______________________________________________
Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org
http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug
Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium
Dec 2 - MythTV
Jan 6 - Git
_______________________________________________
Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org
http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug
Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium
Dec 2 - MythTV
Jan 6 - Git
