Pianoteq forced me to abandon Enlightenment

[b3ta]

OK, so that title could be misconstrued , but I returned to XFCE for reasons of performance. Maybe my experience can help others.

When AV Linux went the Enlightenment route I thought I might as well adapt and adopt it, but it's been a real pain, with official (Enlightenment) documentation not as detailed as I was wanting. Still, I slogged on.

I went for a very deep dive with everything I tried, but I could not get Pianoteq to work without audio drop-outs, while it was working perfectly before — "all" I did was upgrade AV Linux.

Although there were a number of tweaks I made which did help (mostly switching off eye candy), in the end the killer was that something was changing the Pianoteq nice value from -19 to +3 or higher.

So my root-set process priority was being changed by another process.

The takeaway for me is that on older hardware (see below), Enlightenment looks great and is very snappy because it decides to slow down non-UI elements so that the UI can shine. That's nice if you're a User busy Interfacing with some interactive application, but terrible if you're using your machine to do something like turn live MIDI events into audio.

Maybe most people have more up-to-date hardware and won't run into this specific problem, but for me the only solution was to go back to XFCE, where it seriously out-performed Enlightenment in this application: Pianoteq did better on XFCE using a single core than when I gave it access to everything under Enlightenment. Sure, every now and then some UI element takes 1/10 of a second to open, but I honestly don't care about that.

Here's the low-down:

Code: Select all

System:
  Kernel: 6.6.12-1-liquorix-amd64 [6.6-16~mx23ahs] arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 12.2.0 parameters: audit=0
    intel_pstate=disable rcupdate.rcu_expedited=1 BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-6.6.12-1-liquorix-amd64
    root=UUID=<filter> ro threadirqs quiet resume=UUID=<filter> resume_offset=81104896
    init=/lib/systemd/systemd
  Desktop: Xfce v: 4.18.1 tk: Gtk v: 3.24.36 info: xfce4-panel wm: xfwm v: 4.18.0 vt: 7
    dm: LightDM v: 1.26.0 Distro: AVL_MXE-23.2-20240405_x64 Enlightened April 5  2024 base: Debian
    GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Dell product: Precision M4700 v: 01 serial: <superuser required> Chassis:
    type: 9 serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: Dell model: 035JKV serial: <superuser required> BIOS: Dell v: A13 date: 10/09/2014
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 83.6 Wh (99.9%) condition: 83.7/86.6 Wh (96.7%) volts: 12.4 min: 11.1
    model: Samsung SDI DELL P8TC727 type: Li-ion serial: <filter> status: charging
CPU:
  Info: model: Intel Core i7-3840QM bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Ivy Bridge gen: core 3 level: v2
    built: 2012-15 process: Intel 22nm family: 6 model-id: 0x3A (58) stepping: 9 microcode: 0x21
  Topology: cpus: 1x cores: 4 tpc: 2 threads: 8 smt: enabled cache: L1: 256 KiB
    desc: d-4x32 KiB; i-4x32 KiB L2: 1024 KiB desc: 4x256 KiB L3: 8 MiB desc: 1x8 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 3239 high: 3687 min/max: 1200/2801 boost: enabled scaling:
    driver: acpi-cpufreq governor: performance cores: 1: 3687 2: 3679 3: 2785 4: 3674 5: 2801 6: 3685
    7: 2801 8: 2801 bogomips: 44654
  Flags: avx ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
  Vulnerabilities:
  Type: gather_data_sampling status: Not affected
  Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: VMX disabled
  Type: l1tf mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: conditional cache flushes, SMT vulnerable
  Type: mds mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable
  Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI
  Type: mmio_stale_data status: Unknown: No mitigations
  Type: retbleed status: Not affected
  Type: spec_rstack_overflow status: Not affected
  Type: spec_store_bypass mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl
  Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
  Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Retpolines, IBPB: conditional, IBRS_FW, STIBP: conditional, RSB
    filling, PBRSB-eIBRS: Not affected
  Type: srbds status: Vulnerable: No microcode
  Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics vendor: Dell driver: i915 v: kernel arch: Gen-7
    process: Intel 22nm built: 2012-13 ports: active: LVDS-1 empty: VGA-1 bus-ID: 00:02.0
    chip-ID: 8086:0166 class-ID: 0300
  Device-2: NVIDIA GK107GLM [Quadro K2000M] vendor: Dell driver: nvidia v: 470.256.02 non-free:
    series: 470.xx+ status: legacy-active (EOL~2023/24) arch: Kepler code: GKxxx process: TSMC 28nm
    built: 2012-18 pcie: gen: 1 speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 16 link-max: gen: 2 speed: 5 GT/s
    bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 10de:0ffb class-ID: 0300
  Device-3: Microdia Laptop_Integrated_Webcam_E4HD type: USB driver: uvcvideo bus-ID: 1-1.5:4
    chip-ID: 0c45:6449 class-ID: 0e02
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.7 compositor: xfwm v: 4.18.0 driver: X:
    loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa dri: crocus gpu: i915 display-ID: :0.0 screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 508x285mm (20.00x11.22") s-diag: 582mm (22.93")
  Monitor-1: LVDS-1 model: ChiMei InnoLux 0x15b1 built: 2012 res: 1920x1080 hz: 60 dpi: 142
    gamma: 1.2 size: 344x194mm (13.54x7.64") diag: 395mm (15.5") ratio: 16:9 modes: 1920x1080
  API: OpenGL v: 4.2 Mesa 23.1.2-1~mx23ahs renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 4000 (IVB GT2)
    direct-render: Yes
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel 7 Series/C216 Family High Definition Audio vendor: Dell 7 driver: snd_hda_intel
    v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1b.0 chip-ID: 8086:1e20 class-ID: 0403
  Device-2: NVIDIA GK107 HDMI Audio vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: gen: 1
    speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 16 link-max: gen: 2 speed: 5 GT/s bus-ID: 01:00.1 chip-ID: 10de:0e1b
    class-ID: 0403
  API: ALSA v: k6.6.12-1-liquorix-amd64 status: kernel-api tools: alsamixer,amixer
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.0.0 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse status: active
    2: wireplumber status: active 3: pipewire-alsa type: plugin 4: pw-jack type: plugin
    tools: pactl,pw-cat,pw-cli,wpctl
Network:
  Device-1: Intel 82579LM Gigabit Network vendor: Dell driver: e1000e v: kernel port: f080
    bus-ID: 00:19.0 chip-ID: 8086:1502 class-ID: 0200
  IF: eno1 state: down mac: <filter>
  Device-2: Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel modules: wl pcie: gen: 1
    speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:422b class-ID: 0280
  IF: wlp3s0 state: down mac: <filter>
  Device-3: Dell DW5560 miniPCIe HSPA+ Mobile Broadband Modem type: USB
    driver: cdc_acm,cdc_mbim,cdc_wdm bus-ID: 2-1.6:3 chip-ID: 413c:818e class-ID: 0202
    serial: <filter>
  IF: wwan0 state: down mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Dell BCM20702A0 Bluetooth Module type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8 bus-ID: 1-1.4:3
    chip-ID: 413c:8197 class-ID: fe01 serial: <filter>
  Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 5 state: up address: <filter> bt-v: 2.1 lmp-v: 4.0
    sub-v: 220e hci-v: 4.0 rev: 1000
  Info: acl-mtu: 1021:8 sco-mtu: 64:1 link-policy: rswitch sniff link-mode: peripheral accept
    service-classes: rendering, capturing, audio, telephony
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 447.13 GiB used: 50.94 GiB (11.4%)
  SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required.
  ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: Hikvision model: HS-SSD-C100 480G size: 447.13 GiB
    block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s type: SSD serial: <filter> rev: 8A0
    scheme: MBR
Partition:
  ID-1: / raw-size: 446.11 GiB size: 438.04 GiB (98.19%) used: 50.86 GiB (11.6%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/dm-0 maj-min: 253:0 mapped: luks-<filter>
  ID-2: /boot raw-size: 1024 MiB size: 973.4 MiB (95.06%) used: 82.7 MiB (8.5%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/sda1 maj-min: 8:1
Swap:
  Kernel: swappiness: 10 (default 60) cache-pressure: 100 (default)
  ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 28.38 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2 file: /swap/swap
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 49.0 C mobo: 32.0 C sodimm: SODIMM C
  Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 0
Repos:
  Packages: 2684 pm: dpkg pkgs: 2666 libs: 1507 tools: apt,apt-get,aptitude,synaptic pm: rpm
    pkgs: 0 pm: flatpak pkgs: 18
  No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list
    1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list
    1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
    2: deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kopia.list
    1: deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/kopia-keyring.gpg] http://packages.kopia.io/apt/ stable main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list
    1: deb http://mxrepo.com/mx/repo/ bookworm main non-free
    2: deb http://mxrepo.com/mx/repo/ bookworm ahs
Info:
  Processes: 359 Uptime: 5m wakeups: 2 Memory: 23.38 GiB used: 1.19 GiB (5.1%) Init: systemd v: 252
  target: graphical (5) default: graphical tool: systemctl Compilers: gcc: 12.2.0 alt: 12
  Client: shell wrapper v: 5.2.15-release inxi: 3.3.26
Boot Mode: BIOS (legacy, CSM, MBR)

[AVLinux]

Hi,

Well that's disappointing news, and the first such specific complaint, Pianoteq is not among the demos and I haven't tested it for many years but it is indeed an excellent Plugin. I work in our Studio with Ardour and my workflow is about 80% Audio and 20% MIDI and I vetted Enlightenment for a long time and produced at least two full albums without noticeable performance bottlenecks it before flipping AV Linux over to it. It seems this is yet another edge-case that blemishes its already dented reputation. I had sincerely hoped with Thunar keeping most XFCE4 fans in familiar territory that I had something with nice efficient compositing, frugal memory usage and the familiarity of Thunar and the numerous handy Custom Actions. It seems for as much as I like Enlightenment personally it has not scaled to being robust enough across the board in the wild... I obviously need to dig deeper and make some tough choices for the next major release, so much for running a dark horse I guess..

[b3ta]

Hi,

It is of course entirely possible that there is a setting somewhere which stops Enlightenment from changing the priority of other processes, and then it might be fine. It could even be something installed alongside Enlightenment, but I just didn't find it when I looked.

It's not as if XFCE is panacea. For example, it's happened about three times that the panel went crazy, displaying only some status icons and not others. I ended up in a situation where the battery status was shown, yet (amongst others) not the network applet, so I had to use nm-tui or nm-cli to change any network settings. The only way I could fix it was a rather long-winded manual process involving using a text terminal to make the fixes.

So, who knows? It might be a simple change documented somewhere in a dungeon dark, dank, and donk (if you'll excuse the Goon Show humour).

[kimyo]

i just loaded the latest avlinux and i find enlightenment to be serious overkill and am having some trouble understanding why it was selected for a music machine.

doubly so if the above is true and it prioritizes display over audio.

isn't this why many of us are looking to replace windows10/11? the dpc latency issues are basically the result of giving framerate priority over audio.

i want my operating system to be like a dignified old english butler. lurking silently in the shadows until the moment he's needed, discreetly dealing with the task at hand, disappearing back into the shadows.

enlightenment is a lot more like an apple i-genius-bro who won't ever shut up.

[AVLinux]

Hi,

I can appreciate the concept you are talking about but what we had previously with XFCE4 and Compton also had some compositing bling (fades, shadows, etc.) and yet used significantly MORE resources than Enlightenment. Yes, Enlightenment has more in the way of animations etc. (pulsing dock items etc.) but on my development system Enlightenment uses on the average about 120Mb less RAM than XFCE4 did and the compositing is better, smoother and the ability to properly scale to large displays is something XFCE4 seemingly can't even do without outside tweaking.

I would say the situation above with Pianoteq is an extremely rare edge-case and certainly some in-depth study of all related factors is needed to determine exactly what's at fault, other than that Enlightenment might blink at you a little here and there but look at it as an English butler with fancier bowtie and a waxed moustache that's costing you less than the previous guy did... Oh, and if the bowtie and moustache annoy you you can always turn the fading and shadows off (the animations will remain).

[dreamer]

i want my operating system to be like a dignified old english butler. lurking silently in the shadows until the moment he's needed, discreetly dealing with the task at hand, disappearing back into the shadows.

enlightenment is a lot more like an apple i-genius-bro who won't ever shut up.

Pretty funny, I laughed - however, it's easy to install your preferred DE from MX Package Installer. On my respins I usually keep Xfce. It's not perfect, but it's cozy and Thunar has many custom actions that can be useful in any DE.

I don't think an extra DE like Xfce adds much bloat. Most of the apps that come with the vanilla MX Xfce iso are really useful. Thunar, Xfce terminal, Featherpad (save as root), Xfce Task Manager etc.

[nudiecrudi]

i want my operating system to be like a dignified old english butler. lurking silently in the shadows until the moment he's needed, discreetly dealing with the task at hand, disappearing back into the shadows.

enlightenment is a lot more like an apple i-genius-bro who won't ever shut up.

Pretty funny, I laughed - however, it's easy to install your preferred DE from MX Package Installer. On my respins I usually keep Xfce. It's not perfect, but it's cozy and Thunar has many custom actions that can be useful in any DE.

I don't think an extra DE like Xfce adds much bloat. Most of the apps that come with the vanilla MX Xfce iso are really useful. Thunar, Xfce terminal, Featherpad (save as root), Xfce Task Manager etc.

maybe it would be neater to create a specific pack, a la - ubuntu studio tools - , as it was discussed in a previous glen's post that would let people to install onto a regular mx release. i think that would leave much freedom to users.
i am not an it tech, do not know how doable and difficult it could be, but i reckon it could be a great idea.

[Aceediq]

Hi,

I can appreciate the concept you are talking about but what we had previously with XFCE4 and Compton also had some compositing bling (fades, shadows, etc.) and yet used significantly MORE resources than Enlightenment. Yes, Enlightenment has more in the way of animations etc. (pulsing dock items etc.) but on my development system Enlightenment uses on the average about 120Mb less RAM than XFCE4 did and the compositing is better, smoother and the ability to properly scale to large displays is something XFCE4 seemingly can't even do without outside tweaking.

I would say the situation above with Pianoteq is an extremely rare edge-case and certainly some in-depth study of all related factors is needed to determine exactly what's at fault, other than that Enlightenment might blink at you a little here and there but look at it as an English butler with fancier bowtie and a waxed moustache that's costing you less than the previous guy did... Oh, and if the bowtie and moustache annoy you you can always turn the fading and shadows off (the animations will remain).

Yeah, for compositing, XFCE was a pain for me. AVL is an audio first kinda distro, for me it was graphics first, then screen recording...so working using Inkscape and the likes was close to a horrendous experience for me on XFCE, I did not want to switch to KDE despite it's perks, GNOME was a no no...Enlightenment, I would use any day...So I would prefer that the enlightenment variant of AVL should still be kept, if you later decide to switch to another DE...

FGS, I couldn't do screen recording on any scale apart from 1 on XFCE, fractional scaling on XFCE leaves more than enough to be desired...

Downsides to Enlightment are:
- it is a lesser known GUI
- No option of having the newer minimalistic (flat or flat based) UI
- Documentation could be better
- very few users

Linux has only one practical DE which is KDE, (since Gnome is a no no for obvious reasons) Enlightenment is a far second...

[Resume]

Linux has only one practical DE which is KDE

You're painting in awfully broad strokes, aren't you?
I find XFCE very practical after some 20 years of exclusively using Linux.

[Aceediq]

Linux has only one practical DE which is KDE

You're painting in awfully broad strokes, aren't you?
I find XFCE very practical after some 20 years of exclusively using Linux.

Awfully broad? i don't think so...when I mean practical DE, I mean KDE doesn't only cater for my usecase but it also caters for, if not all, other usecases the most, than other DE's, for other usecases in the Linux ecosystem...

Edit: I don't think being lightweight is a topic in linux DE's any longer, XFCE uses similar RAM to KDE, any one who is still serious about DE RAM consumption should go for Openbox, fluxbox and the likes...