On Thu, 14 Dec 2006 13:44:08 +0000, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> OpenOffice gets pre-load, update notification
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| Programmers released OpenOffice.org 2.1 on Tuesday. The version
>| that a feature for Linux machines called Quickstarter, which
>| preloads the office suite into memory so it launches faster
>| when a user chooses to run it.
>|
>| [...]
>|
>| In addition, the new version includes an improved notification
>| system that alerts users to new versions of the software.
> `----
>
> http://news.com.com/2061-10795_3-6143359.html
>
> Trolls/shills who say that Microsoft Office starts more quickly than
> OpenOffice should realise that they have libraries which reside in memory
> and are loaded at startup. OpenOffice (and Linux) has that capability too.
No. This is stupid.
There's a reason Office starts so fast, and it's NOT because libraries or
what not are pre-loaded. (Also, I thought OOo already had such a "quick
start" tool). In fact, Office hasn't even had it's equivelent to this
since Office XP.
The reason Office loads fast is because Microsoft has profiled the
applications and used a technique called "rebasing" to ensure there are no
memeory address conflicts between loadable libraries, which cause the
library to have to be relocated somewhere else, which is an expensive
(timewise) operation during application load.
There's a similar technique for elf executables as well, though I don't
recall the name. From what I've seen, OOo doesn't do this (neither does
Firefox or other tools). I'm fairly certain this is what OSX does when you
install applications and it claims it's "optimizing performance".
I seem to recall Simon Cooke mentioning that he had managed to make Firefox
load as fast as IE simply by rebasing DLL's... Actually, it was back when
it was still called Firebird... but oh well..
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.advocacy/msg/be3f4feb2c0606ed
So the concept of "preloading" DLL's is absolutely stupid in this day and
age. It's just a hack to get around the fact that you're not spending any
time profiling and optimizing load times.
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