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A comment on Linux 4.10 is out.

Re:Linux 4.10 is out by Zpalmtree on Sunday February 19, 2017 @08:16PM (#13683442)
Hopefully the improved writeback management will mean my music doesn't start cutting out while I copy a huge file.
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Re:Linux 4.10 is out by trome on Sunday February 19, 2017 @09:25PM (#13683764)
Yeah, I wonder how much of an improvement it will be on small, cheap, low I/O devices, any insight if you can prioritize some I/O over other I/O (like user interactive stuff vs Nautilus or cp duplicating a file)?
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Re:Linux 4.10 is out by McCirculaire on Sunday February 19, 2017 @09:57PM (#13683904)
Use or compile a kernel with BFQ and that kind of stuff takes care of itself without manually having to prioritize I/O. I don't get why BFQ hasn't been mainlined yet, it has the most sane I/O behavior for desktop use and stops all the issues you can have on linux of the desktop slowing to a crawl or music stuttering because you're compressing a 40gb folder or copying files.

Here's the page on the BFQ I/O scheduler: http://algo.ing.unimo.it/people/paolo/disk_sched/

Here's a list of precompiled kernels that have been patched with BFQ (and often some more desktop-use tuning): https://liquorix.net/#install for ubuntu and debian

https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/linux-zen/ for archlinux

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/tiwai:/bfq/ for opensuse, BFQ as a kernel module

If you're wary of installing things outside of official repositories or compiling your own kernel, then archlinux is the only distro with a kernel option that has BFQ.

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Re:Linux 4.10 is out by osandov on Monday February 20, 2017 @02:18AM (#13685124)
> I don't get why BFQ hasn't been mainlined yet

BFQ hasn't been mainlined because it is written for the legacy block layer in the Linux kernel, which will be replaced entirely with the new block multiqueue implementation. It doesn't make much sense to replace CFQ or add a brand new scheduler only to rip it out in a few releases. Linux 4.11 will have support for I/O scheduling for blk-mq. BFQ is currently being ported to blk-mq; that work is the first big hurdle to getting it merged.

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Re:Linux 4.10 is out by toyg on Sunday February 19, 2017 @11:01PM (#13684191)
> I don't get why BFQ hasn't been mainlined yet, it has the most sane I/O behavior for desktop use

You've answered yourself there: for desktop use. Desktop is a very low priority in the Linux world, as proven by the long history of ignoring desktop-friendly schedulers over and over.

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Re:Linux 4.10 is out by anoother on Monday February 20, 2017 @08:44AM (#13687112)
> If you're wary of installing things outside of official repositories or compiling your own kernel, then archlinux is the only distro with a kernel option that has BFQ.

From the page you linked:

> BFQ is the default I/O scheduler in Manjaro, Mageia, OpenMandriva, Sabayon, Arch Linux ARM (for Marvell Kirkwood) and ROSA ...

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Re:Linux 4.10 is out by Filligree on Sunday February 19, 2017 @09:31PM (#13683785)
Linux has an 'ionice' command. YMMV on whether it helps.
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