Make your system run more efficiently

I hate it when apps hog too much memory, or cpu cycles. In many cases, if you have an application that’s doing this, there’s an alternative out there that is way leaner. There’s an easy way to determine where to trim the fat.

In this example I’m going to be comparing the memory usage of Totem Movie Player, and VLC. These applications play media files, both video and audio. OK, for this test I used a Survivor Man DVD. I played the DVD, and then checked the memory usage of each app once the video began playing. I did each test separately, and repeated a few times to confirm the results, which were very consistent. Oh, I also tested these applications with more than one DVD.

Getting the memory usage numbers

While the program is running, or doing whatever it is you want to test the memory usage of:

1. Open up the Gnome System Monitor. System > Administration > System Monitor.
2. Scroll down until you find the entry for the program you’re testing. In this case, its Totem, & VLC.
3. Look to the far right, under the Memory heading, and you’ll see the amount of memory that your program is using.

Totem

This isn’t my favorite application, in fact, I pretty much dislike it. However, if it uses a considerable amount less memory than other media players, I might just fall in love with it. Sadly, it failed miserably. Totem averaged 49 MB of memory usage while playing a DVD, whether it was Survivor Man or Transformers. That might not seem so bad, but lets see what VLC can do.

VLC

Aside from being my favorite media player, VLC is a memory usage champ as well. It only used 13 MB, or less, during all of the tests, regardless of the DVD that it was playing.

Conclusion

Well, this is a pretty easy one, as you can see from the pics above, VLC uses less than a third the memory that Totem does. Not only is VLC my favorite, its the leanest as well. Now, you may be wondering why this even matters. I mean, we’re talking a difference of 35 – 37 MB at the most. Well, those little bits of memory can add up. If you were to use the biggest memory hog applications on your system, you’d notice sluggish performance at times. This is especially true if you’re a serious multi-tasker. I know that I routinely have a browser (with 10-20 tabs open), music or a video playing, Compiz effects, Conky, Rainlendar calendar and appointment application, and OpenOffice, or Gnumeric running at the same time. With all of that, especially if you have pages running flash in your browser, cutting the fat from your system’s resources can make a big difference in the overall usability of your Ubuntu machine.

This process can be used for any application. Say you want to see who’s got the leanest spreadsheet OpenOffice, or Gnumeric. It’s Gnumeric by the way. You can use this method. The one thing to keep in mind is that you should keep in mind that applications using less memory may provide less features. Take that into account when choosing your software.

VLC is available in the repositories, meaning you can get it in Add/Remove. You must first enable the community repos, check here for how to do that..