PDA

View Full Version : Has anyone here used "preload"?



diablo75
April 10th, 2008, 06:36 PM
I used to have it installed when I was running 7.10, but after I installed 8.04 Beta... well, things just run so fast, ha ha, I haven't felt very compelled to put it back on.

But I was wanting to hear from people who have used it before and if there might be any drawbacks about the program?

dicecca112
April 10th, 2008, 06:53 PM
made a difference on 7.10, none on 8.04 like you said. There is some discussion, that the devs tweak everything to the highest performance, and using this does nothing. I haven't noticed any issues running it

Akre
April 10th, 2008, 09:10 PM
I am using this on desktop running gutsy, on laptop running hardy havent yet tried - trying to keep system as clean as possible until final get out.

On gutsy it seems to add faster startup to many apps (the slow one would be firefox)
Perhaps that was placebo effect, I did not make any tests or benchmarks.

Kingsley
April 10th, 2008, 09:50 PM
I used it for a few weeks (on Fedora 8) but noticed no increase in performance or speed.

Tundro Walker
April 12th, 2008, 08:02 PM
I run it on my main Linux box running Gutsy. I haven't noticed any performance increases. But, it uses up such minimal resources, I just leave it on.

I think, much like MS Windows prefetch/superfetch, the idea is for it to collect user program metrics over time, and with that optimize things getting preloaded into RAM.

So, for instance, a majority of my time in Linux is spent surfing the net in Firefox. So, it would preload that when booting up. It might take a fraction or two longer to boot when preloading stuff, but when you actually fire off the program, it should be very fast.

But, like I said, I haven't really noticed the difference. And, as fast as computers are (and Ubuntu getting optimized), you might have to run some kind of benchmarking software to actually see the performance increase. If that's the case, then it's nigh-imperceptible to the user and they could probably do without it.

Preload is probably most noticeable on an older system (p2, p3). It's not as optimized as Windows Vista superfetch, though, which is actually one of the coolest things in Vista.