[ILUG] RH9 Gnome-terminal

[Brian Foster]

  | Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2004 13:58:25 +0100
  | From: Bryan O'Donoghue <typedef at eircom.net>
  | 
  | I've found gnome-termnial to be a real resource hog, especially with
  | transparent backgrounding, in comparison to something like aterm...
  | which... well.... just works.

 interesting.  I've been using mlterm(1), which I know
 is "heavyweight" (as in large), presumably due to its
 extensive multi-lingual support.  however, I just did
 an experiment, using all but one of the X11 terminaks
 available on my home SUSE 9.1 (kernel 2.6) system,
 with reasonably identical conditions:

   + gnome-terminal --version   Gnome gnome-terminal 2.4.2
   + konsole -version           Konsole: 1.3.1, KDE: 3.2.1, Qt: 3.3.1
   + mlterm -version            mlterm version 2.8.0 post/cvs-1.637
   + rxvt (no -version option)  Rxvt v2.7.10 - released: 26 MARCH 2003
   + xterm -version             XFree86 4.3.99.903(184)
   + `vte' not included since I could not find any documentation
       and it does not seem to have a `-geometry ...'-ish option.
   + no `aterm' because I do not (yet) have it.  ;-(
   + geometry 88x40 screen (my preferred size).
   + UTF-8 if possible (however the fonts varied); no XIM.
   + one screen/session/whatever per X11 terminal.
   + transparent backgrounding (if possible).
   + only considered the RSS and SZ from ps(1).
   + ( but I neglected to control the number of lines in the
       scroll buffer, which I nominally configure to c.5000. )

 results, sorted by SZ (3rd column), which as it so
 happens is also a sort by RSS (2nd column):

     PID    RSS    SZ  CMD
   30846   2592  1074  rxvt -geometry 88x40
   30763   2616  2462  xterm -geometry 88x40
    3761   3744  3410  mlterm -geometry 88x40
   30737  10528  6475  gnome-terminal --geometry=88x40
   30820  16124  7494  konsole --vt_sz=88x40

 except for the mlterm(1), which has been running and
 in active use for c.40 days, all instances are newly
 fork(2)ed/exec(2)ed and "not used".

 I am surprised `mlterm' is not "heavier", but more
 astonished both `gnome-terminal' and `konsole' are
 noticeably larger than the rest.  both also fail to
 implement the usual X(7) `-geometry' option.  ;-(

 anyways, the above does tend to support the usual
 claims:  `gnome-terminal' is a heavier user of memory
 than rxvt(1), which in turn is a lighter user than
 the benchmark xterm(1), but perhaps not as lighter
 as people say (look at how close the RSS is).
 obviously, yer kiloage will vary.

cheers!
	-blf-
-- 
«How many surrealists does it take to    |  Brian Foster      Montpellier,
 change a lightbulb?  Three.  One calms  |  blf at utvinternet.ie      FRANCE
 the warthog, and two fill the bathtub   |    Stop E$$o (ExxonMobile)!
 with brightly-colored machine tools.»   |        http://www.stopesso.com