CPU usage is too high in 2.0
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I recently uninstalled the old Launchy and installed Launchy 2.0. I found that 2.0' CPU usage is unacceptably high. Windows Task Manager often reported that Launchy.exe was using 60% to 70% of my CPU, even though I'm busy using some other application. I have turned off automatic indexing. I set opaqueness to 100% and turned off fade in and fade out. I can't think of anything else that would cause Launchy to gobble up CPU cycles like that. So maybe it's a bug? For now, I'm downgrading back to 1.2.5. :(
I really like Launchy, so I'm hoping someone can look into this for an explanation. Thanks!
I'm running Windows XP SP2. Processor is Pentium II 450 MHz (don't laugh!). RAM is 1 GB. Video processor is NVIDIA GeForce2 MX. Number of indexed items is around 5000.
I have the same observation. I have turned off automatic indexing, but still Launchy kicks in every 10minutes with 2min burst of 50-70% CPU usage. This shouldn't be necessary, I can't really understand what it is doing.
I'm also considering downgrading - Launcyh 1.* is still a very good program...
This is on Vista, Intel Core2 Duo 2.4GHz, 3GB RAM.
Loved new version, great features BUT I too had to revert to Launchy 1.25.
CPU running up to 100% pretty quickly (within minutes). Tried memory cleaner like Sweepram, but didn't help.
I have almost 1600 MP3's and a few hundred files and folders, nothing crazy.
Runs on laptop with XP, 3Gb ram. 80Gb disk.
Any suggestions?
im almost joining your crowd and going back to 1.X
2.0 for me has:
* slow response time (i have to notably wait for the window to appear)
* slow focus grab (i cant hotkey->start typing, it has a lag before i can star writing, not 1.x)
* memory and cpu hogging (more than 1.x which sometimes did it)
* the algorithm doesnt seem to be as precise (other threads have more on this)
all in all this is a musthave software for me, but 2.0 it's too sluggish :(
i wonder if we're being listened to ?
I have the same problem with 100% cpu. I have posted more information on the 2.0 alpha board. I think it's a simple bug. For other purposes it works fine (ram is about 25Mb which is a lot but ok, no problems with response time or focus or algorithm).
[rant]
None of this come as a surprise to me. I was excited when I heard there was a new 2.0 version of Launchy available. But as soon as I found out on the release notes that Launchy 2.0:
- Uses QT;
- My old skins / plugins wouldn't work.
Any of the nicer things about Launchy 2 became meaningless to me. Mind you, I still tried it to give it the benefit of doubt and tested it, but I was back to 1.25 in no time.
It's not that I don't like QT: it's a nice widget toolkit - for Linux. The only point on using it on Windows though is for portability, and I see that was what the author had in mind, but yet I think QT is a bad approach to portability. I'd have gone with a simpler and cleaner design for GUI portability, like WxWidgets. IMHO, using QT for portability is only excusable if you already had an application written using QT (on Linux), and want to minimize the work on porting to Windows and other platforms, and even in that case you'd get a sub-optimal solution, because using QT on Windows for your application would make half of the resources used by your application being used for QT (see how memory usage more than doubled from 1.x?), and when you weight in the inneficiency of how it all works on Windows (that is, QT basically reimplements from scratch a lot of the widgets already available natively on Windows), things don't look so good performance-wise.
The fact that that old skins and plugins doesn't work also doesn't help. I have a couple of skins I've made myself, and though the skinning system is supposed to be better, I have yet to see a 2.0 skin that can do anything that the older version couldn't, so I see that as another case of "change for the sake of change", only harming those contributors that will have to spend time rebuilding their skins for no real benefit (if they even find motivation to do so, that is). The same goes for plugins, though in that case it's not so bad since there wasn't that much plugins available anyway. The author could at least have put in place a compatibility layer for skins/plugins... but I guess I can't complain since, afterall, he's doing it for free, right?
So, that's it. I'm sticking with Launchy 1.25 for as long as I can. If I had the time, I'd even fork it and keep working / improve on the 1.x codebase. Right now I can't... maybe later this year...
[/rant]
I do agree with some points that luiz fernando made.
Using QT has shortened and simplified the code, but the end benefits are very little.
Launchy 2 does more or less what 1.25 does, with some features of 1.25 broken.
Sure 2 might have the potential in the future, but for now this is the case. And josh has not been seen in the forums lately ..
Breaking the 1.25 plugins was not a good decision but like Luiz said there weren't many plugins. However someone should undertake to re-write thos plugins for 2. Otherwise some people like me will stay with 1.25
Forking 1.25 is a possible solution. It would be good for someone who's got time for it.
However it's a bit of an extreme decision and might be better to wait and see what happens with 2
( I use a combination of 1.25 and 0.99 running side by side to mimic the funtionality that I need from launchy )
by the way, a 'competing' commercial program, enso has become free of charge and might be going open-source in the near future. I don't use it because launchy is much better for me, but it might be good for some people.
- end of rant
I am a new user, having had experience only with the 2.0 version, and was appalled to see that it was coming close to 100mb of RAM usage while building the first index.
I came here looking for info on the subject, and read somewhere that Launchy only uses around 6mb of memory while it's running, so I waited for it to finish indexing to check again.
Now, a few days later, it's stabilized at around 25mb. Still very far from the 6mb mentioned here, and a lot more than I assumed it would be, since it is widely regarded as a lightweight app.
Is this normal? Is the 1.25 version lighter? I'd give it a try, but I'm afraid of losing my specifications.
Not sure why it ever got up to 100. That is indeed bad. The reason everyone is having problems with cpu usage is because the "duration between indexes" option is broken in the 2.0 release. It reindexes every 10 minutes no matter what you say. The next release will fix that. For people with abnormal memory problems, that's being worked on. I can't replicate it on any of my machines so that slows down progress.
Josh
Thanks for looking into it. I don't know if that helps, but my machine is:
Pentium 4, 3.20 ghz, 1gb of RAM with an up to date install of Windows XP MCE.
I have a problem where if I play a game like half-life, Launchy in the background will start using 50% of cpu resources on my dual core processor. Not sure why but once I quit the game, launchy returns to 0 cpu usage.
Absolutely. I've seen my CPU cycles climb to 50% with a ton of disk thrashing thrown in for good measure. I've set the "indexing frequency" to 0 to enable manual indexing, also. Launchy 2.0 continues to update; if I set the field to 99999 the program behaves the same. It seems like Launchy ignores the parameter.
I'm running Win XP SP2 on a dual-core P4 running at 3.0 GHz; graphics card is an ATI Radeon Xpress 200. Perhaps Launchy has an issue with running on dual-core machines. I think Firefox 1.x or 2.x had an issue running on dual-cores - although I don't know if it was CPU hogging like Launchy 2.0 does - until the team issued a patch.
The problem is indeed that Launchy 2.0 rebuilds the database every 10 minutes no matter what you set it to do, and Josh already has it fixed. He wants to finish tracking down a RAM-hogging problem before he issues another release, and he just got back to working on Launchy a couple of weeks ago after taking a break.
If you just can't wait, see this thread:
https://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=4825707
That build stopped the CPU-thrashing for me.
Cheers,
Joe
Hi, I came here searching for a solution to the high CPU usage. I recently installed Launchy 2.0 and every now and then the CPU maxes and I'm unable to continue doing anything for a little while (usually around 15-30 seconds). This is extremely annoying when you're in the middle of writing and such, because you lose your train of thought. But it's an otherwise great application.
How can I fix this? Sourceforge doesn't allow me to access the URL provided in this post:
https://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=4825707
"Access to this page is restricted (either to project members or to project administrators) and you do not meet the requirements to access this page. Please contact the administrator of this project for further assistance. "
Is there another way to get access to the CPU fix?
Thanks!
Josh released a beta version 2.1 not too long ago.
https://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=2051050&forum_id=827410
(It was the "database update timer").
Cheers,
Joe
This is great. I'm installing it now. Thanks for the URL, Joe!
thanks for the build Joe!
I have another problem however, when i type in letters into launchy it is very unresponsive, for instance, each character i type, it takes a few seconds for each letter to come up. Is Josh aware of this issue?
Hi all. Launchy's cpu usage is when it's rebuilding the index. It's put on a low priority thread so it shouldn't interfere with your work much. As Joe said, the next version will allow controlled rebuild times. As for excessive cpu/memory usage, it turns out that peoples indexes are simply too big. Try to keep it down to ~10,00 files in your index. Launchy is meant to index particular files, not your whole system ;)
Josh