Re: Gnus' speed

[Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no>]

>>>>> Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>:

> Kevin Ryde <user42@zip.com.au> writes:

>> I never understood why startup takes quite so long (with those
>> newsgroups check bits set to nil, and only a dozen or so local nntp
>> and nnml subscribed, but lots unsubscribed).  Maybe it's just the
>> quantity of code loaded.  Did someone profile it a few years ago?

> On my work machine, Gnus startup is slow because my home directory and
> mail directories are on NFS, and NFS is an insane dog (operations that
> don't require much I/O to my homedir are all quite fast).

Heh... I had a 1996/1997 vintage DEC HiNote Ultra, with 24MB of RAM and
1GB of HD, running debian, as my personal machine.

Around 2001 it had become cumbersome to use for Gnus.  The XEmacs
process with Gnus quickly used too much memory for the little machine,
and I had to switch back to using GNU Emacs for Gnusing.  XEmacs+Gnus
became too slow.  And even GNU Emacs+Gnus became slow (when the machine
started paging),... and web pages started using too much huge JPEGs and
GIFs and flash animations... so the machine that had been sufficient
until then, became too slow for web browsing, and ended up in a drawer,
where it still is. 

But right now I'm running Gnus in GNU Emacs (which has all of the
multimedia capabilities, and more, as the old XEmacs), on an Acer Aspire
One 110.  Physically as small as my old HiNote Ultra, but performance
wise a lot faster, with its 1GB of RAM and 8GB of SSD.  The processor is
a lot faster also of course, but the 1GB of RAM is probably the most
important thing.

But heh... the screen size and resolution, is about the same as the old
HiNote Ultra (it was a small and *sweet* machine).  The keyboard is
better, and the AA1's touchpad is better than the HiNote's rollerball.

But I digress... Gnus performance, right... acceptable.

There used to be a problem with sparse IMAP groups, or was it just the
size of the group?  Anyway, my main inbox is pretty large, and
performance hasn't become enough of an issue yet, that I've expired its
content to the archive group.