Re: Mathematica front-end very sluggish under Linux
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg108609] Re: Mathematica front-end very sluggish under Linux
- From: Herman Kuun <oomkoos1 at gmail.com>
- Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2010 04:24:57 -0500 (EST)
Leo I can understand your frustration. Been there myself. 1) If not already use the Xfce GUI instead of KDE or GNOME. You should get a noticable improvement because Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment. Configure it and cut out the frills like animation effects and such. 2) Mathematica performs better with Umbuntu 8.xx than 9.xx. In general Mathematica does not do well in the Debian-Linux environment that Ubuntu is based on. That goes for both GUI and kernel performances. Switch to CentOS or RedHat You will experience the difference. 3) If (2) is not an option and you have a Mathematica service subscription, there are java modules available that improves the Mathematica Benchmark test by 18-23 percent on Ubuntu 9.xx. After a few weeks of the above gyrations and many Mathematica password requests for different hard-drives and operating system combinations I decided to use Gentoo-linux and from that day never look back. Here are the reasons why: - You start with a minimal basic operating system. - Only add applications and utilities you need thus cutting down on CPU and operating system overhead. - For ultimate performance and using the gcc compiler everything is targeted and compiled specifically for the computer hardware. Instead of the general one glove fits all linux-x86_64 bit kernel, it is now compiled to extract every ounce from an AMD dual core K8-architechture cpu. Which also holds for all applications and utilities. - Use J/Link to point to the locally compiled java Sun-JDK-1.6. The Mathematica Java hierarchy has the Java module downloads installed as well. Benefits: - No GUI Notebook or Palette lags. Compares favorably with Mathematica-7 installed on Windows XP. - Test result for the Mathematica Benchmark shows a 39-48 percent gain compared to the Ubuntu-9 configuration test results. Wish you success. Best Herman. On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 11:42 AM, Leo Alekseyev <dnquark at gmail.com> wrote: > For a few months now I have been using Mathematica 7.0.1 under Ubuntu > 9.10, and I'm finding the front end to be very sluggish. Scrolling is > slow, and when I am editing a part of a large code block, it sometimes > takes a few seconds for the characters displayed to catch up with my > typing. Sometimes I am tempted to switch to my old Windows laptop for > long Mathematica sessions, or to simply use Emacs to edit files and > load them into the math kernel's CLI. (This is not to mention > frequent crashes when copying/pasting large cell groups, or the fact > that Mathematica seems to always have a couple of Java processes > running even when it's idle that take up about 15% of CPU each). > > I am wondering if other Linux Mathematica users are observing > similarly sluggish behavior of the front-end. Is it common? Is it a > misconfiguration of some sort on my end?.. I'd appreciate any > insight! > > --Leo > >