Please use lzo for Thunderbird snap

snap
1

Hi,

I’d suggest to enable lzo compression for the thunderbird snap to improve startup times. Thanks!

2

Hi @l3mur123, that’s a good suggestion, but in the wrong place. You need to contact the snap maintainers:

$ snap info thunderbird | grep contact
contact:   https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird
3

Hi @alan_g, thanks for the suggestion! I actually did this first (https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+question/699340) and was re-directed here. So it seems we’re in a loop.

4

Huh! That is frustrating. Let me see if I can track down who (if anyone) maintains the snap recipe…

5

@seb128 Ping! (Maybe also worth improving the contact info)

6

@alan_g Thanks a lot, that’s very nice!

7

Hey,

Thanks for the suggestion. Did you do any measurement on the impact on startup times using lzo would have or are just assuming it would have one?

8

What’s wrong with the contact information? Launchpad is the right place to report bugs and we monitor those, it’s just that the user sent a support request there…

9

If that’s the case, then the response they got needs improvement. :wink:

10

Hi,

not for Thunderbird specifically. For Onlyoffice Desktopeditors, it had a great effect, so I was assuming it would be similar to Tb.

11

Some numbers:

$ etrace analyze-snap -s -e --window-name="Account Setup - Mozilla Thunderbird"  thunderbird
original snap size: 74.76 MiB
original compression format is xz
content snap slot dependencies: [gnome-3-38-2004 gtk-common-themes gtk-theme-traditionalhumanized]
worst case performance:
	average time to display: 9.085122869s
	standard deviation for time to display: 484.141601ms
best case performance:
	average time to display: 2.560798974s
	standard deviation for time to display: 14.948602ms
worst case performance with lzo compression:
	average time to display: 4.858175076s
	standard deviation for time to display: 469.955371ms
	average time to display percent change: -46.53%
best case performance with lzo compression:
	average time to display: 2.550980015s
	standard deviation for time to display: 12.18343ms
	average time to display percent change: -0.38%
lzo snap size: 97.22 MiB (change of +30.04%)
12

Thanks for the analysis. I assume “worst case” is the first start after booting. I’d consider 50% improvement there meaningful for the experience.

13

That is the cold start, which users usually associate with “snaps are slow”. That’s a very meaningful difference, I believe.

14

Thanks for the details, the snap has been switched to lzo now. The current beta channel version has the new compression and a candidate build is started

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