How to start OOo REALLY FAST?

DViant · General User Joined: 27 Oct 2005 Posts: 8

I signed up on this forum for that same question... will disabeling Java speed up OO? At the office we're only using Calc, Impress & Write to create, save, modify and open MS Office files.

taylormc · Power User Joined: 27 Apr 2005 Posts: 56

If I run up Writer for the first time in a session, it takes 15-20 seconds to start. If I then close it, and *without making any changes* start it again, it takes about 1 second to start.

I suspect that a lot of the delay is caused by OOo code being progressively swapped out to vrtual memory (like any other application), while the corresponding code for MS applications may well be locked down in memory as part of the operating system. BICBW.

taylormc · Power User Joined: 27 Apr 2005 Posts: 56

Further to this...

In Windows NT/2000/XP, it's possible to supply a non-default value in the Registry for the size of I/O memory buffers - see http://www.windowsnetworking.com/kbase/WindowsTips/WindowsNT/AdminTips/Miscellaneous/WindowsNTMemorymanagementparameters.html for details.

At work I'm running a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 under XP with 256MB of memory. I'm not sure what the default value for this parameter would be, but I've set it for 8MB of buffers, and found that OOo speeds up significantly, both when loading and when opening documents. So far I've noticed no undesirable side-effects.

Martin Taylor

DViant · General User Joined: 27 Oct 2005 Posts: 8

I've increased the default memory usage of 9MB to 64MB. It does make OO appear more snappy. Wish they had this ON by default.

esperantisto · Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 10:51 pm Post subject:

DViant, thanks! I neve paid attention to that parameter Sad

. Now (I've done the same as you) OOo is lightning-fast.

9point9 · Moderator Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 3875 Location: UK

DViant · General User Joined: 27 Oct 2005 Posts: 8

System Req is 128MB as stated at http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/source/sys_reqs_20.html

So why limit yourself to 9MB? This is just me but the way OO.o 2.0 handles memory reminds me of Mac OS 9 and older.

sanelson · General User Joined: 15 Nov 2005 Posts: 16

Regarding Java, I tried turning it off, and it seemed to load a little faster, but it didn't really make a huge difference. On my system, it loads in a few seconds no matter what, about the same as Word. I didn't use the quickstart loader for either OOo or MSO, either. What I did notice, though, was without Java, I was unable to use the Wizards (Letter Wizard, etc.), and the macros would not work in Calc, so I turned it back on.

The 9MB of memory that you are referring to is the graphics cache. It would only speed things up if you were working with files with more than 9MB of graphics in them.

taylormc · Power User Joined: 27 Apr 2005 Posts: 56

Following on from my earlier suggestion for taking advantage of Windows memory management features (see above), I've done a bit of further experimenting.

I've mentioned elsewhere that Windows XP seems to pursue an opposite strategy to Windows 98 in balancing I/O cache requirements against VM paging requirements, and that this militates against good performance by OOo. This can be remedied in Windows 2000 and Windows XP by setting the registry value HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\LargeSystemCache to 1. This restores load performance to something more like what I see with Windows 98.

I've combined this with setting the value for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\IoPageLockLimit to 0x00200000 for a 2MB locked-down area. The result on my 256MB desktop is very satisfactory - first time after booting, OOo Writer loads faster than MS Word!

I think it's a shame that memory management behaviour has to be modified by playing with registry values, since many people are understandably wary of making a mistake and possibly rendering their PC unusable. Mainframe and minicomputer OSes of days gone by typically provided more user-friendly and better-validated controls for this purpose than does Windows.

revnomad · Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2005 1:33 pm Post subject:

I've read over this. Is there a safe way for a non-tech user to do this? Crying or Very sad

Please?

NTP

taylormc · Power User Joined: 27 Apr 2005 Posts: 56

Create a text file called something like OOoMemManagement.reg containing the following lines (beginning "Windows", and ending "00200000"):

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]
"LargeSystemCache"=dword:00000001
"IoPageLockLimit"=dword:00200000

Double-click on the .reg file and the registry will be updated with the specified values.

This is the only remotely easy way to do it, as far as I know.

I guess it would be wise to back up the registry first, using whatever backup tools you use - sorry, I'm not very good on that bit, or on restoring if necessary.

revnomad · Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2005 4:39 pm Post subject:

mehturt · Newbie Joined: 22 Feb 2006 Posts: 2

how about on Linux? on my machine it starts up in about 10-20 seconds, even with Java off and graphics memory size up to 64 MB.. any suggestions on how to speed it up?
it's Intel Celeron 2.6 GHz, 512 MB RAM

harwey · General User Joined: 21 Feb 2006 Posts: 22

Hi Mehturt,

you might try to install the prelink package on debian only type apt-get install prelink. I think it will be available on other linux brands too.

Cheers
Harald