Comment 4 for bug 876210

Thank you for your kind letter. I am not concerned with the performance of
this package. I have decided it is part of the "make Linux more usable by
non-computer people" endeavor. That is probably a good and noble cause and I
have no complaint abou that. However, I have just gotten accustomed to the
Synaptic Package Manager and it works much better than Software Center, so I
think I will just stick with that.

I gave Software Center a try because you never know whether something new is
going to be any good or not unless you try it. Most new stuff gets a "bleh,
useless", but occasionally you find something you like.

I am curious as to how one designs a program that is so very, very slow,
especially since it doesn't seem to be doing much of anything. Once upon a
time I was talking to a mainframe application programmer and the first thing
he put in every program was a loop that counted to a million or so. Then,
after the program was completed and put to use and the users came back with
their inevitable complaint that it was too slow, he could go away and "work
on it" for a week, spend a couple of minutes cutting the delay loop down and
deliver a massive performance improvement and the user's were overjoyed.

I kind of doubt whether such a simplistic scheme has been employed here, but
I do wonder just what is going on. I suspect object oriented programming has
run amuck and processes and possibly even complete virtual workspaces are
being invoked willy-nilly without regard to consequences. An analysis of
what this program is doing might be instructive for many programmers.

Cheers,

Charles Pergiel
Silicon Forest
www.pergelator.blogspot.com

On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 9:22 AM, Gary Lasker <email address hidden>wrote:

> Hi Charles, and thanks for your bug report. Indeed, the startup time for
> Software Center has regressed significantly with the change to the new
> user interface in Oneiric. Rest assured that the developers are well
> aware of this issue and it annoys them as much as it does you. ;) This
> is in fact the top priority usability fix for us right now.
>
> The good news is that we have a new version of Software Center, 5.0.2,
> currently undergoing the SRU process in oneiric-proposed, and this new
> version improves startup time quite significantly. On my machine,
> Software Center takes 11.2 seconds to launch with the current version
> 5.0.1.5, and with the 5.0.2 update it takes only 1.3 seconds to launch.
> For reference, the version of Software Center in Natty (with the old
> user interface) took about .5 seconds to launch on my machine, so we are
> much closer to closing this "regression gap" now in Oneiric.
>
> If you would like to test version 5.0.2 for yourself while it is still
> in -proposed, please do so using the procedure described at
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed, and let us know how it
> works for you.
>
> You can get a measurement of startup time in 5.0.2 (and 5.0.1.5) by
> launching software-center from the terminal as shown (note that this is
> only useful for making the measurement; startup time will be reported in
> the terminal output but the application itself will not launch):
>
> software-center --measure-startup-time
>
> I will leave this bug open as we continue to work on improving startup
> time.
>
> Thank you again!
>
>
> ** Changed in: software-center (Ubuntu)
> Status: Confirmed => Triaged
>
> ** Changed in: software-center (Ubuntu)
> Importance: Undecided => High
>
> ** Changed in: software-center (Ubuntu)
> Assignee: (unassigned) => software-center-developers
> (software-center-developers)
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/876210
>
> Title:
> Ubuntu Software Center takes a long time to load
>
> Status in “software-center” package in Ubuntu:
> Triaged
>
> Bug description:
> For a full description of the misery this bug is causing WORLDWIDE,
> see: Ubuntu “software-center” package Questions Question
> #174730
>
> This is basically identical to Bug #641899, and I could have just
> attached my name to that one, but somebody decided that bug was too
> broad and so made it invalid.
>
> Fine, I'll be specific. The UBUNTU SOFTWARE CENTER TAKES TOO DANG LONG
> TO LOAD on Zotac ZBOX with Intel Atom cpu 1.8 GHz and 2 GB RAM. By TOO
> LONG I mean more than 20 seconds.
>
> I would file another two dozen bug reports on miserable program but
> this trackball I am being forced to use (yes, there's a goon with a
> gun to my head) is driving me nuts.
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
> Package: software-center 5.0.1.4
> ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-12.20-generic 3.0.4
> Uname: Linux 3.0.0-12-generic i686
> NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
> ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu3
> Architecture: i386
> Date: Sun Oct 16 22:04:25 2011
> ExecutablePath: /usr/share/software-center/software-center
> InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release i386
> (20110427.1)
> InterpreterPath: /usr/bin/python2.7
> PackageArchitecture: all
> SourcePackage: software-center
> UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-10-15 (1 days ago)
>
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