Preload

[lacriz]

Has anyone used "preload" on the pinephone? (link: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Preload)

I have
At first I was very optimistic that this background daemon greatly reduced the start-up time of e.g. Firefox.
I tried different configurations and let it run for about 1 week. I never got it to use up more than about 220 MB of RAM. This seems a lot but I really tried to make it use up as much free RAM as possible but could not manage.

So then I did some clock-wall measurements and found that the whole thing makes no (real) difference (to me). On the other hand, the CPU load it causes every 20 seconds is a) feelable (even the Terminal lags shortly, UI more so) and hearable (!): there is a short cracking sound every 20 seconds. I could not find a configuration which does not cause this behaviour (I thought I found it but the next day the cracking went off again).

I really hope someone finds this more useful than me and shares results. I still have preload installed, but it is now disabled.

FWIW here are my measurements; all measurements are done with runs on 60% battery, after a fresh restart (done only between turning preload ON/OFF):

firefox (non -esr):
/w preload: 17-24 seconds until loading of 1 URL starts
w/o preload: 19 seconds until loading of 1 URL starts

weather:
/w preload:  5 seconds until current weather is loaded
w/o preload: 5 seconds until current weather is loaded

settings:
w/ preload: 5 seconds until settings finished 'rendering'
w/o preload: 5 seconds until settings finished 'rendering'

signal-desktop:
w/ preload:  36 seconds until the conversations list is loaded
w/o preload: 36 seconds until the conversations list is loaded

geary:
w/  preload: < 8 seconds until inbox is shown (paused the
stop watch while entering password into keyring)
w/o preload: < 8 seconds until inbox is shown (paused the
stop watch while entering password into keyring)


And here is my (final) configuration:

[model]
cycle = 20
usercorrelation = true
minsize = 2000000 -> 1000000 -> 500000 [!] -> 2000000
memtotal = -10
memfree = 50 -> 75 -> 100 [!] -> 50
memcache = 0 -> 30 [!] -> 0
doscan = true
dopredict = true
autosave = 3600 -> 600 -> 3600
mapprefix = /many/paths -> (empty) -> !/dev
exeprefix = /many/paths -> (empty) -> !/dev
processes = 30
sortstrategy = 3 -> 0