Re: High CPU load from image slideshow screensaver

["Diego Escalante Urrelo" <diegoe gnome org>]

Hey!

On 5/29/07, Adam Rosi-Kessel <adam rosi-kessel org> wrote:
> The image slideshow screensaver in gnome-screensaver puts such a load on
> my laptop's CPU that the fan runs constantly and tasks such as music
> playing with totem become very choppy. Although it's an older laptop, I
> would hope it wouldn't be viewed as totally obsolete: it's a Pentium III
> 700 MHz with 512M RAM.
>
> The only way I can get music to play smoothly while the screensaver is
> on is to renice -1 the music task and +20 the screensaver task.
>
> Is there some reason the photo slideshow is so CPU intensive? At first I
> thought it was because it was resizing the images to fit the screen, but
> after converting all the images in my image directory to 1024x768 (the
> LCD resolution), the result is identical.
>
> Can anyone suggest a workaround for this? It doesn't seem like too much
> to ask for to be able to play normal bitrate MP3s and have the
> screensaver on at the same time.
>
> I'm using Debian Etch.
Have you checked if there's no other task running while the
screensaver is? I say this because maybe some app you are running
checks for idle time and starts some process.

Also I couldn't find the Image slideshow screensaver on my
gnome-screensaver preferences, maybe you refer to f-spot's one? If
that's the case I just tested my f-spot screensaver but my processor
stayed at it's lowest speed (600 Mhz).

Since 600 is almost 100% of your CPU, maybe we can suspect that f-spot
could be doing something nasty that requires some cpu?.

Please double-check the first thing I mention (other background processes).

Good luck!,

Diego