One big difference that I’ve noticed between Windows and Linux is that Windows does a much better job ensuring that the system stays responsive even under heavy load.
For instance, I often need to compile Rust code. Anyone who writes Rust knows that the Rust compiler is very good at using all your cores and all the CPU time it can get its hands on (which is good, you want it to compile as fast as possible after all). But that means that for a time while my Rust code is compiling, I will be maxing out all my CPU cores at 100% usage.
When this happens on Windows, I’ve never really noticed. I can use my web browser or my code editor just fine while the code compiles, so I’ve never really thought about it.
However, on Linux when all my cores reach 100%, I start to notice it. It seems like every window I have open starts to lag and I get stuttering as the programs struggle to get a little bit of CPU that’s left. My web browser starts lagging with whole seconds of no response and my editor behaves the same. Even my KDE Plasma desktop environment starts lagging.
I suppose Windows must be doing something clever to somehow prioritize user-facing GUI applications even in the face of extreme CPU starvation, while Linux doesn’t seem to do a similar thing (or doesn’t do it as well).
Is this an inherent problem of Linux at the moment or can I do something to improve this? I’m on Kubuntu 24.04 if it matters. Also, I don’t believe it is a memory or I/O problem as my memory is sitting at around 60% usage when it happens with 0% swap usage, while my CPU sits at basically 100% on all cores. I’ve also tried disabling swap and it doesn’t seem to make a difference.
EDIT: Tried nice -n +19, still lags my other programs.
EDIT 2: Tried installing the Liquorix kernel, which is supposedly better for this kinda thing. I dunno if it’s placebo but stuff feels a bit snappier now? My mouse feels more responsive. Again, dunno if it’s placebo. But anyways, I tried compiling again and it still lags my other stuff.
While I ultimately think your solution is to use a different scheduler, and that the most useful responses you’ve gotten have been about that; and that I agree with your response that Linux distros should really be tuning the scheduler for the UI by default and let developers and server runners take the burden of tuning differently for their workloads… all that said, I can’t let this comment on your post go by:
If fast compile times are your priority, you’re using the wrong programming language. One of Go’s fundamental principles is fast compile times; even with add-on caching tooling in other languages, Go remains one of the fastest-compiling statically compiled, strongly typed programming languages available. I will not install Haskell programs unless they’re precompiled bin packages, that’s a hard rule. I will only reluctantly install Rust packages, and will always choose bins if available. But I’ll pick a
-gitGo package without hesitation, because they build crazy fast.Anyway, I hope you find the scheduler of your dreams and live happily ever after.
I only said as fast as possible - I generally think the compile times are fine and not a huge problem. Certainly worth it for all the benefits.
There’s no free lunch after all. Go’s quick compilation also means the language is very simple, which means all the complexity shifts to the program’s code.
That’s an interesting take - that Go program code is more complex than Rust - if I understood you correctly. I came across a learning curve and cognitive load readability comparison analysis a while back, which I didn’t save and now can’t find. I haven’t needed it before because I think this is the first time I’ve heard anyone suggest that Rust code is less complex than Go.
Your point about the tradeoff is right, but for different reasons. Go executables have a substantial runtime (with garbage collection, one of those things that make Go code less complex), making them much larger and measurably slower. And then there’s Rust’s vaunted safety, which Go - outside of the most basic compile-time type safety - lacks. Lots of places for Rust to claim superiority in the trade-offs, so it tickles me that you choose the one truly debatable argument, “complexity.”
Rust is simpler than Go or Python when a system scales.
A program with 1000 lines will be simplest in Python because it’s just 1000 lines right? Doesn’t matter.
A program with 1000000 lines will be much easier and simpler to work with in Rust than in Python or Go. The static analysis and the guarantees that the compiler provides suddenly apply to a much larger piece of code, making it more valuable.
Python offloads type checking to the programmer, meaning that’s cognitive space you gotta use instead of the compiler. Go does the same with error handling and for inexplicable reasons use the billion dollar mistake even though it’s a relatively modern language.
It is in this way that Rust is simpler than Go and Python. Also, because a system is likely to grow to a larger size over time in a corporate setting, Rust should be preferred in your professional workplace rather than Python or Go. That’s my take on it.
Honestly, Go is a weird language. It’s so… “basic”. It doesn’t really provide anything new that other languages haven’t done already, perhaps aside from fast static compilation. If it wasn’t because Google was pushing it, I don’t believe Go would ever have become as popular as it is.
You’re right that garbage collection makes Go simpler, and maybe other patterns do contribute to prevent complexity from piling up. I never worked with Go outside of silly examples to try it out, so I’m no authority about it.
What I meant was more of a “general” rule that the simpler a language is, the more code is necessary to express the same thing and then the intent can become nebulous, or the person reading might miss something. Besides, when the language doesn’t offer feature X, it becomes the programmer’s job to manage it, and it creates an extra mental load that can add pesky bugs (ex: managing null safety with extra checks, tracking pointers and bounds checking in C and so on…).
Also there are studies that show the number of bugs in a software correlate with lines of code, which can mean the software is simply doing more, but also that the more characters you have to read and write, the higher the chance of something to go wrong.
But yeah, this subject depends on too many variables and some may outweigh others.