[Sugar-devel] Vision

[Tony Anderson]

James

If you have an image you want tested that can be installed on an SD card 
for the XO-1, I'll make the time. Since the XO-1 has an early version 
installed,
it should be possible to measure time for various operations. I probably 
won't realistically be able to devote time until mid-May.

I generally advise teachers to have the students close the lid rather 
than shutdown between lessons. I also show them the frame and the number 
of running activities. Many impatient kids will have 10 or more 
instances running. So restoring the throttle we once had would be very 
helpful - possibly more than swap.

The Apple II was very successful in schools - anyone want to compare its 
performance with an XO-1? Generally, students at deployments did not buy 
the XO and do not have any other computer available. Here in the 
Philippines, smartphones and tablet are common. However, in Rwanda, the 
Nokia still reigns.

Most importantly, the XO gives the students a chance to learn that they 
can make the computer do what they want it to do and not just accept 
what they are given.

Tony

On 04/21/2016 06:27 AM, James Cameron wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 05:22:21PM -0400, Dave Crossland wrote:
>> On 20 April 2016 at 16:46, James Cameron <[1]quozl at laptop.org> wrote:
>>
>>      the performance ratio between our low-cost
>>      low-power hardware and the competition was already evident on Fedora
>>      Linux; it didn't need Windows to expose it
>>
>> Sorry if this is an obvious question, but, can anything done to make
>> Sugar feel faster on XO-1s today?
> Yes, and I've been doing some of that in the past few months.  With
> 13.2.7 you have my latest work, which added swap and removed several
> animations.
>
> Adding swap has mostly removed memory pressure.  Under memory
> pressure, activity startup is roughly doubled, as the CPU spends time
> thrashing in the memory management.  Disadvantage is higher power cost
> and possibly decreased Flash endurance, although the endurance of a
> set of heavily used XO-1 has shown no sign of the deterioration
> expected by now.
>
> Removing animations has allowed CPU cycles to be better spent on
> responsiveness.  At one stage we had 50/50 competition between the
> activity launch animation and the starting activity.  Instrumenting
> the frame and transition box animations showed there was enough time
> for only one or two intermediate animation states before the final
> state; which turned out to the cost of handling the function key
> release event.  Some of these changes are not in Sugar master yet, but
> in an OLPC branch; one such was proposed, but immediately closed with
> appeal to process;
>
> 	https://github.com/sugarlabs/sugar/pull/619
>
> As for what to do next; ideas are welcome, but here's a few;
>
> - profiling, of startup, of interactive response, (i've used xdotool
>    for interactive response tests),
>
> - upgrade Gtk3, and GObject, to fix the memory leaks,
>
> - record metrics of response, deidentify, aggregate, and report.
>
> Although at this stage the interest in XO-1 should have degraded as
> the units have degraded, and any return on investment is doubtful.
>
> Plenty of people left who whinge about XO-1, but ask them to test a
> patch or release and no response.
>
> So it's more about people wanting their rainbow pooing unicorns.
> Unrealistic expectations, polarised framing, denial, and consequent
> unwillingness to be involved.
>
>> [...]