Multitasking

[elitistlinuxuser]

I would like to know how the Open Pandora handles multitasking and theoretically how many apps it could run at once. Does the Pandora's os limit what apps can or do they just run freely in the background I would like to know.

 

[SomeGuy99]

Ed showed some videos of three or four apps at once, including a web browser and an emulator running at together (I think).

I would be highly suprised if they imposed some limit on the amount of simultaneous apps you can run. I guess you'll have to find out yourself what the limits of the Pandora are. It's all a matter of available CPU and RAM.

 

[neko]

It handles multitasking the same as any other Linux system.

 

[elitistlinuxuser]

So it has full multitasking didn't know I think I will put it to test when I get the Pandora see if I can get 30 apps running at once. Also Steve Jobs taking some notes telling us the iPad with a 1ghz processor can't fully multitask lame. However that cool to know the Pandora can multitask.

 

[droneb]

So it has full multitasking didn't know I think I will put it to test when I get the Pandora see if I can get 30 apps running at once. Also Steve Jobs taking some notes telling us the iPad with a 1ghz processor can't fully multitask lame. However that cool to know the Pandora can multitask.

one more ammo pack against SW's comments.

 

[SomeGuy99]

[quote name='linuxftw' date='24 May 2010 - 12:05 AM' timestamp='1274659550' However that cool to know the Pandora can multitask.
[/quote]

Well, Pandora was a girl...


...and Darwin was a man.

 

[atomicthumbs]

we don't get multitasking until Pandora OS 4

 

[SomeGuy99]

we don't get multitasking until Pandora OS 4

No, we're working backwards like the OS release names. By the time we get to Pandora OS 'Altered Beast' it won't even have application support.

 

[kingoddball]

If you can get some virtual ram (just cause you can!) it should handle multitasking like any other OMAP3.

There is a samsung phone (Omnia, maybe?) that has 80 applications running at the same time!

N900 has had 50+ running at the same time.

It depends on how heavy/resource hungry the OS is, ram usage, what's running, etc, etc.

 

[SomeGuy99]

If you can get some virtual ram (just cause you can!) it should handle multitasking like any other OMAP3.

There is a samsung phone (Omnia, maybe?) that has 80 applications running at the same time!

N900 has had 50+ running at the same time.

It depends on how heavy/resource hungry the OS is, ram usage, what's running, etc, etc.

50-80 apps? No way.

Yes way?



Is virtual ram another name for swap file?

 

[greendots]

Look at the videos on youtube of the N900. They show videos, emulation, web browsing, music and more simultaneously. Set up a small swap partition on the SD and run lite applications when possible and you should be fine.

 

[SomeGuy99]

It's all true.

 

[kingoddball]

Yeah, Sorry. Swap file.

The app's for these phones are pretty small though. But yes, the OMAP phones can pull out a huge number for multitasking.

But I am not sure how it handles these.

If may freeze the application into a "save state" so it's not using much cpu time.
My N900 does not freeze programs, they are all still fully running in the background.
The samgsung may freeze then, the Pandora may.

With the iPhone (4.0) it WILL freeze the apps that are running in the background (excpet iPod, safari, etc like now)

 

[lulzfish]

I'm sure if the "apps" in question were just command-line programs that did nothing, you could spawn a few hundred easily.
But if they had a GUI, used the network, did anything useful... It would start to slow down.
The only hard limit is 256 MB of RAM. The soft limits are how many GUI windows can be handled on a Cortex A8, and how much CPU time a foreground application will get if a background application decides to consume the CPU entirely. Which depends on the scheduler.

As long as you aren't trying to run a bunch of heavy-duty games or emulators all at once, it should always have enough power to at least maintain several applications, and let you interact with them.

tl;dr: I wouldn't worry about it. Pretend it's a normal desktop.

 

[SomeGuy99]

In that video, the guy claims any desktop PC would choke with 30 apps running.

Well, I just launched 30 apps in Linux Mint, and it didn't even break a sweat. Must be a Linux thing? I was running out of apps to launch, and the task bar entries just became little dots!

1.6ghz Pentium M, 1GB of RAM. Obviously a bit better than an Omap3.

 

[urjaman]

My assumption(I'm 99.9% sure ) is that regarding multitasking it will run lots of stuff just as well as the N900 in that video (I didnt watch it now but I recall an N900 multitasking video), and it will not freeze any applications (in the background). I'd say most propable/easiest way (if you forget you're not on a big PC) to hit the pandoras resource limits is to run some browser with too many tabs (eg. ATM i have total 55 tabs open in two firefox windows... i just forget to close them, really).

 

[greendots]

I can't find the video now but it showed the N900 running an snes emulator, youtube in a browser, a video player and audio player simultaneous. It was a bit choppy but it was really running everything at the same time. A more realistic scenario would be to only have one of these CPU intensive programs in the foreground and the rest living in ram until you want to use them again.

 

[kagato]

Well in desktop mode, it obviously multitasks the same as any other Linux desktop.

I'm curious how (if?) multitasking is handled in pmenu / minimenu.

Do the dedicated app launchers actually implement any sort of task switching?

 

[Exophase]

I blame Apple for making it seem like multitasking on a device newer than an Apple II is a big deal.

 

[EvilDragon]

Well in desktop mode, it obviously multitasks the same as any other Linux desktop.

I'm curious how (if?) multitasking is handled in pmenu / minimenu.

Do the dedicated app launchers actually implement any sort of task switching?

Not yet. At the moment, they're purely designed for gaming - and you don't play more than one game at once.

It's possible to implement a taskswitcher, though. They all run X, so switching is possible.