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    Chrome OS 79 to throttle CPU usage on background Linux apps, improving web, Android performance as needed

    Kevin TofelBy Updated:4 Comments2 Mins Read

    The Chromium team is working on a new feature for Chrome OS 79 that should improve general Chromebook performance when using Linux apps. If the code changes are completed and succesfully tested in time for Chrome OS 79, any Linux apps running in the background would see “throttling” down by the CPU, allowing more processing power applied to foreground apps such as the web browser.

    This approach actually isn’t new: According to the bug report and code changes to date, Chrome OS already does this for any Android apps that don’t have the user focus. The Chromium team is reusing that approach for a broader approach of performance improvement:

    Refactor ArcThrottleObserver into ThrottleObserver.
    This change, in preparation for addition of crostini throttling, moves
    the ArcThrottleObserver class to chrome/browser/chromeos/ and renames it (and all usages) to ThrottleObserver. This is because the class
    is no longer ARC++-specific. Additionally, moves WindowThrottleObserverBase to chrome/browser/chromeos/

    I use Linux apps in Crostini quite a bit, and until now, thought my time in them is fairly dedicated. That is, I didn’t think I often switched out of a Linux app to do something else. But then I thought a little deeper.

    While I don’t typically jump from a Linux app to Android software, I do jump back and forth to my Chrome OS browser quite a bit. I’m often using an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to code for my CS classes in Linux and tend to look up details on a particular API or other information needed for my coding.

    Here’s an example of when I need to convert an integer to a binary number for an assigment:

    This type of browsing activity doesn’t require much horsepower but it would be nice to have more CPU resources focused on my task at hand. And I’m sure there are plenty of folks that could use more processing power for an Android app or two when they also have Linux running in the background on their Chromebooks.

    By the way, if you’re curious about what system performance tool I’m using in the top image, it’s a Chrome Web Extension called Cog. I use it on all of my Chromebooks to measure and monitor CPU usage as well as memory.

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    After spending 15 years in IT at Fortune 100 companies, Kevin turned a hobby into a career and began covering mobile technology in 2003. He writes daily on the industry and has co-hosted the weekly MobileTechRoundup podcast since 2006. His writing has appeared in print (The New York Times, PC Magazine and PC World) and he has been featured on NBC News in Philadelphia.

    4 Comments

    1. Lionel Sacks on

      So, here’s a fun use case.
      I was mucking around with Python Jupiter notebook on Chrome OS. Possibly pointless, possibly fun; but that is then a Linux app with no Linux UI but serving a chrome front end. So who should get the CPU priority?

      • Kevin C. Tofel on

        Somebody on Twitter asked me the same thing yesterday. I said that I don’t think it will be because this is how Chrome OS works today with background Android apps and there’s no way (that I know of) to configure it. My recommendation is to hit the link with the bug report describing this change and suggest that this be a configurable option.

    3. Benjy on

      Using Inkscape on 79 is much slower than it was before. Almost unusable for real work. It seems buggy the approach.