Linux manual prefetch config

[ochadd]

Looking to keep certain applications in memory permanently. I'm always closing and opening apps when I should leave them open. Restarting into Windows then back again many times a day/week. There are other ways to better improve my usage but I'd like this to work.

I've read about Preload and the end result is exactly what I want but letting an app or OS choose the config means I had just as well stay in Windows. I'd like to go through and force the OS to preload Firefox, VLC, Picasa, etc into memory and keep them there. I've got 1.7GB of memory sitting dormant 99% of the time I'd like to be using a sliver of. Any ideas?

If I'm gaming I'm in Windows and fairly confident I've never used more than 1GB while doing what I do in Linux Mint. Any applications or config files I can manipulate to get this to work?

 

[Nothinman]

There's a preload that seems to be similar to SuperFetch for Vista, but I've never used it.

 

[degibson]

I'm not sure why you bring up your 'booting into Windows', but if you're running linux and you want your applications loaded permanently into RAM, then install them on a RAMdisk that is mounted and loaded at boot-time.

 

[ochadd]

Originally posted by: degibson
I'm not sure why you bring up your 'booting into Windows', but if you're running linux and you want your applications loaded permanently into RAM, then install them on a RAMdisk that is mounted and loaded at boot-time.

I bring it up because I'm restarting frequently. Typically a couple times a night going back and forth between Windows and Linux. When Linux fires up I'd like to have certain applications loaded into memory at startup but not yet displayed. I would like them to persist there even though I may exit the application's GUI. Firefox, Picasa, and probably the music player. My understanding is this is how readahead in the kernel works but would like the ability to customize it.

There are certain applications I need Windows for yet. I'm trying to ditch it completely for everything but gaming. Currently I have Linux Mint 6 running AS efficiently as XP. This is one of those things that would make it that much better for my usage.

I don't believe a ram disk fits the bill here.

 

[Nothinman]

You could try hibernating Linux instead of shutting down, that can be tricky when booting into another OS though because the hardware state might not be consistent.

My understanding is this is how readahead in the kernel works but would like the ability to customize it.

Readahead is just something like kernel seeing that you've read X bytes from a file so it reads X+Y because it's likely that you'll want more of that file in the near future. The kernel has some smarts depending on the I/O scheduler you're using but nothing as indepth as you're talking about. That's what that preload daemon would be for.