Steps to a more responsive desktop

Apr 05, '01 09:45:17PM

Contributed by: Erik Toh

Try the following to maximize the speed of the desktop:

  1. Don't change the opacity of the terminal. [Editor: But it looks SO good!]

  2. Change the dock minimization effect to "scale" by typing defaults write com.apple.dock mineffect scale

  3. Increase the mouse tracking speed and the keyboard repeat rate through the System Preferences application.

  4. Set your colors to thousands, not millions. [Editor: Audion 2.1 looks so much better in millions!]

  5. Increase the priority of the Window Server. This requires root access. First type ps cx and look for the PID of "Window Manager". Now type sudo renice -(number between 20 and 0) (PID of Window Manager). You will be prompted for a password; enter yours (not root's). Take note that as root, a lower number means higher priority; try -5 or -10 as a start. The situation is reversed if you are just doing a renice as user.

    So if 'ps' returns the PID of Window Manager as 243, you'd type "sudo renice -10 243" to set set the window manager's priority at -10.NOTE: See the comments for proof that this speed-up is purely pyschological at this point ;-)
PS: Some applications are not threaded properly. A good example is MSIE, it exhibits the exact same behavior under Mac OS X as it does under Mac OS 9. e.g. animated GIFs are "locked" in a frame if the mouse button is held down.

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