Apple users

DJ VAKIS · Post by **DJ VAKIS** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 10:46 am

A question for you guys.Whats the windowserver?I saw today at the activity monitor that it uses a lot of cpu,when i run live.I have a song in live the activity monitor say 24%cpu use and then the windowserver 12% use.Can some one tells me whats the windowserver?And do we need that?

Thanks.

netchaiev · Post by **netchaiev** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 10:58 am

Weird, dunno what that windowserver is exactly... got 1% on it though....

DJ VAKIS · Post by **DJ VAKIS** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 11:00 am

Try to run live and then you will see.I also have 1% but without run live.

DJ VAKIS · Post by **DJ VAKIS** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 6:39 am

No one?

buddhabelly · Post by **buddhabelly** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 6:48 am

It's what draws the windows on the screen.

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 4:32 pm

i don't know mac but if i had to guess i'd say it was part of the unix gui stuff. "x11" or desktop environment or whatever, i barely grasp unix/linux

gomi · Post by **gomi** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 5:10 pm

DJ VAKIS wrote:No one?

it's displaying all your desktop.

hence the name
windowserver

try killing it with and you'll see what i mean.

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 6:06 pm

longjohns wrote:i don't know mac but if i had to guess i'd say it was part of the unix gui stuff. "x11" or desktop environment or whatever, i barely grasp unix/linux

No, it's not X11, it's Apple's own system called Quartz. It does more or less what X11 does on POSIX systems, though.

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Sun Feb 19, 2006 1:15 am

ah yes, posix...

forgie · Post by **forgie** » Sun Feb 19, 2006 6:48 am

Perhaps this is the cause of some of the issues in Live 5 CPU wise? Perhaps Live 5 is doing way to much in the way of updating screen information, and it's causing shit to slow to a halt....

Any thoughts from someone who knows more about Windowserver specifically? (I'm a CS student and programmer, but I don't know anything about Windowserver in OSX or whether or not this would be likely to cause the issues Live 5 is having)

SubFunk · Post by **SubFunk** » Sun Feb 19, 2006 12:32 pm

mmhhh... that makes me think, i am not a programmer type of person and basically have very, very little clue about computers, except where to find the power up button...LOL

but that what forgie said might be the case, i am using logic, and there must be *priority* differences in the way an apps is programmed, because if you run logic on a slow mashine and load it up to the max, then the GUI becomes bruttally slugish, switching a screenset for example can take up to 6-8 seconds and more, but audio is just playing damn fine, no probs, no glitches, no crackling, nothing... just sweet music, if you do the same with ableton then you have audio playback problems, but the GUI is still super responsive, switching from session to track view for example is instantly... i tested it on really old / slow computers... and have to say that in that term i like logics behaviour more... who is interested in a responsive GUI for music... *ok it's nice but the audio side has to have priority!!*

just a thought, i basically know nothing.

DJ VAKIS · Post by **DJ VAKIS** » Sun Feb 19, 2006 12:55 pm

javascript:emoticon(':idea:')

DJ VAKIS · Post by **DJ VAKIS** » Sun Feb 19, 2006 1:44 pm

gomi wrote:
DJ VAKIS wrote:No one?
it's displaying all your desktop.

hence the name
windowserver

try killing it with and you'll see what i mean.

Do you want to do it first?And then let us know what happend.

Cheers

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Sun Feb 19, 2006 3:32 pm

SubFunk - you're right, it's is about the priorities of different threads. This could be one of the places where we can see just how cross platform Live's codebase is, as something like that will (I think) be very OS dependent.

By default, OSX rates GUI responsiveness as a very priority (and if you used OS7 and 8, you'll know why!) but this can be changed with programming. I'd hazard the guess that Live doesn't do much of this.

BTW - Killing the windowserver from a terminal just dumps you to a loginwindow, as the loginwindow (which has to be running while you're logged in) depends on the windowserver so killing that kills the loginwindow and logs you out and takes all your running processes with it.