Peter Penz blogged this morning about the new views in Dolphin, dubbed "Dolphin 2.0". The big push: speed. The code is now in master, so I figured I should try it out and see what this very new code can do. I expected regressions and bugs given that this is the first drop of a huge bunch of code, but was hoping for the performance improvements Peter was talking about.
It just so happens that less than two weeks ago I did some rough measurements of file listing performance in Dolphin (and Konqueror; they share the code for this) after reading a posting about how bad file listing times in popular Linux file managers were. The writer had asserted that unlike say, on Microsoft Windows where large directories list almost instantly, both KDE's and GNOME's file managers were very slow on directories with a lot of entries.
Indeed, with previews on Dolphin would take up to 15 seconds to list directories with 3000-5000 entries in them, as /usr/bin and /usr/lib on my laptop do. Ugh. Certainly not great.
After pulling the new code from git and trying it out: I'm now getting between 1 and 2 second load times for these same directories. That means the difference between horrifically unusable and beautiful. It also means that Dolphin and Konqueror are now faster at listing directories than the file dialog, which now takes about twice as long on these larger directories.
Peter: my hat is off to you!
There are some regressions in the current code drop: no rubber banding, clicking on white space then release on an icon will activate it, no drag and drop, no icon overlays, scrolling with the mouse wheel or track pad (I die a little inside without my two-finger scrolling :) is very slow. So if you go to use it now, expect some steps backwards in the functionality department, but these should all be resolved before 4.8 comes out with this new view engine.
Also important is that Peter paid a lot of attention to making the code much easier for people to understand and contribute to. So if things like "awesomely faster and clearer code" turn you on and you'd like to help make KDE's filemanager rock like Freddy Mercury with a mic in his hands, now is a perfect opportunity to get in there.
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13 comments:
That sounds absolutely f*ckin' amazing! I'd sooner die than I could wait till first usable KDE 4.8 snapshots are available to try this out. What do I need to do without breaking (too much) my whole environment? What's the minimum to compile?
I'll be extremely grateful for some advice.
I'm not getting -> I'm now getting
In the blog you state:
After pulling the new code from git and trying it out: I'm not getting between 1 and 2 second load times for these same directories.
is that meant to be I'm NOW getting ?
@Manuel & me-g-blog
You'd better tell me how to try this out on KDE 4.7. Cut your petty typo-remarks
Please :)
Got it!
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2011/08/shout-out-to-dolphin.html
I'm very glad that just standard configuring and building did the job and that all went absolutely painless.
Listing large directories in dolphin is indeed many times faster now. I like the new animations too. There are some issues but I'll hold my horses for now..
the correct link:
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/j_BkeWMGw8glqb-kEktYMQ?feat=directlink
Thanks Aaron for this nice feedback! It's great to hear that the performance improvements are already noticeable.
I think there is still room for speed improvements but first I'll need to take care for fixing all the current regressions (but the good news is that this is a lot fun with the new code-base ;-))
You da man Peter! I only recently found out about the grouping feature (silly I know), but was discouraged because I'm a Details mode kind of guy :) So happy to hear that the grouping will work with all modes in 2.0.
Keep up the awesome work.
Well, I have to use Windows and even without large numbers of files in a directory it can sometimes take _minutes_ to access a directory (while Windows looks up all kinds of other stuff).
Still hats off to Peter! We'll whip them even more.
I made my own unofficial and "not so technical" tests about folder management with explorer (Windows 7 & up to date) and Dolphin (Arch Linux, up to date).
First I created 10 directories. Then I moved them to one. So I had one directory with 10 sub-dirs.
Then I copied it 10 times and moved it to one (one directory with 10 sub-dirs with every having 10 sub-dirs).
And I continued this so that I ended to have over 76 thousand (76 000) sub directories in one directory!
When I made this with Explorer (NTFS of course) it started to slow down about 7 000 directory amount so I needed to wait many seconds to get it respond to accept new copy order. In the end, it toke about 50-60 seconds to copy a last sub-dirs.
Then deleting that single directory where all over 76 000 sub-dirs were, toke 12 minutes.
Then I made same thing with Dolphin. Ext4 filesystem (defaults).
No lagging, no time outs or anything when creating them.
Deleting the main dir (all over 76 000 dirs) toke under 10 seconds.
And everything was done on same HD (Windows partition at end what can give small bonus for shorter I/O searches when diskhead moves)
And when I tried to move (cut and paste) the directory (and all sub-dirs) it toke just a second with Dolphin. While with Explorer, I got blue screen.
Yes, the dolphin can be slow and other problems (like terrible search functionality!) but what actually matters even more is the operating system.
Linux is much better operating system than NT is.
Ext4 filesystem is much better than what NTFS is.
When ruling out much as possible other non-OS softwares like filemanagers and desktops and moving so low-end level and close to OS (Linux or NT) then doing such file actions can bee noticed even easier.
Just OS + command interpreter (Linux + Bash) follows orders without problems. But with windows it is impossible to get only a command interpreter (powershell) to run top of the OS (NT) as it is closed source and anyway impossible (AFAIK) without using the failsafe boot affecting process.
But really, thumbnails slows down the process a lot. And different MIMETYPE icons slows down as well a lot. Thats why I hope KDE implents a function to change all file types at once to same icon look (you could have just folder icon and empty file -icons) to speed up older computers and have better usability.
Is this Qt Interview Framework, responsible for the poor dolphin performance, likewise used as the view-engine in Gwenview?
I ask because i work 3D animation company that uses linux workstations with a choice of Gnome or KDE, and our lead artist feels compelled to use the former because image browsing applications in KDE are far to slow to deal with folders containing thousands of rendered images.
If Itemviews-NG was equally a solution to the problems we have with Gwenview then you could claim back one more user..........
Kind regards
JBT
Peter Penz, you're my hero!!!)
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