Application Loading time in FVWM

Configuration General Questions
1

Hi All:

So, after spending much too long updating the window manager to FVWM from TWM (yes, I knew nothing about Xwindows/Linux/FVWM/TWM/etc) on the system here, I have a question regarding application start up time:

When the system ran on TWM, the applications that were started by it started up much faster than they appear to be under fvwm. One is a C++ app, and one is a Java application. I am surprised by the difference in instantiation time: the Java app starts up in ‘roughly’ (give or take 5 seconds) the same amount of time, but the C++ application takes almost 1 minute longer – anyone know why this might be happening? Is there a way to speed up instantiation time?

thanks,
Skender

2

Let’s first remember that TWM does next to nothing in terms of style decoration (that’s ultimately what defines the speed difference).

No, not really. Under the hood, FVWM isn’t doing that much to the window. Basically what happens is that FVWM actually creates the window. It does this so that it is able to adhere to the style lines a user might have, and to setup any borders, etc. (Remember that these are just window-hints, so it has to be done this way.)

– Thomas Adam

3

Thomas –

You’re absolutely correct. It is the decorating, etc. that is slowing things down.

After stripping down the FVWM .fvw2rc file to it’s bare bones, the speed appears to be ‘almost’ identical to that of twm.

thanks,
Skender

4

You’re welcome. I am slightly intrigued as to what made you enquire about the speed issue. I agree that FVWM possibly slows things down a fraction, but overall there’s a number of other contributing factors such as loading of shared library objects, etc.

You mentioned Java. You know, as well as I, that Java is notoriously slow. :slight_smile: I dread to think what it must feel like, getting the VM to wake up… :slight_smile:

– Thomas Adam