[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Displaying the current status of system resources (such as memory, cpu)

[Bernie Innocenti]

El Tue, 15-06-2010 a las 18:03 -0400, Benjamin M. Schwartz escribió:

> I personally think that per-activity numbers are often more interesting
> than system-wide numbers.  As such, I would associate the resource
> utilization statistics with each running activity's icon in the taskbar
> (top frame bar).  The problem is how to display the information in a way
> that is discoverable but not intrusive.

I agree that per-activity statistics are more useful, but as you say
they're harder to compute correctly and harder to display in a
meaningful way.

<retro>
I grew up with the AmigaOS, a multitasking system which provided no
resource tracking. However, the total amount of free memory in bytes was
always visible at the top of the main screen.

All users could easily tell how much memory each application was eating
up by looking at the numbers before and after launching it. Memory leaks
were so easy to notice that even non-technical users would report them.
</retro>

So, to keep the code and the UI simple enough, I'd propose starting with
a very basic chip icon, whose palette would display two gauges
representing an approximation of free memory and free cpu, computed
from /proc/meminfo and /proc/loadavg, like free(1) and uptime(1) do.

Any further refinement could come later, if someone finds the time and
motivation. If we come up with extravagant solutions now, chances are
good that nobody will do it and we won't have anything in time for the
next release.

-- 
   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
 \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/