[Bug 1833322] Re: Consider removing irqbalance from default install on desktop images

[Christian Ehrhardt ]

Hi,
this was overlooked for too long but came up in bug 2046470 again which made me see this for the first time.

I'd wish we'd have had that even a bit earlier e.g. to release it with
mantic and not half way through noble, but still now is the time to
still change the next LTS.

I needed to make up my mind on this to come to a conclusion and so I wrote a
summary mostly for myself, but also for others that I want to ack to the
decision as well as for anyone to later be able to understand what changed
and why.

I must admit that I'm slightly biased, having looked at it ages ago, even
before I was more active in Ubuntu development and already wondering if that
should be used by default.

And yes, some people had a stronger wish to get it out of the default.
So as already reported, many have already asked to remove it.

I'll try to break up my answers to be more easily referable.


** Also affects: irqbalance (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1833322

Title:
  Consider removing irqbalance from default install on desktop images

Status in irqbalance package in Ubuntu:
  New
Status in ubuntu-meta package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  as per https://github.com/pop-os/default-settings/issues/60

  Distribution (run cat /etc/os-release):

  $ cat /etc/os-release
  NAME="Pop!_OS"
  VERSION="19.04"
  ID=ubuntu
  ID_LIKE=debian
  PRETTY_NAME="Pop!_OS 19.04"
  VERSION_ID="19.04"
  HOME_URL="https://system76.com/pop"
  SUPPORT_URL="http://support.system76.com"
  BUG_REPORT_URL="https://github.com/pop-os/pop/issues"
  PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://system76.com/privacy"
  VERSION_CODENAME=disco
  UBUNTU_CODENAME=disco

  Related Application and/or Package Version (run apt policy $PACKAGE
  NAME):

  $ apt policy irqbalance
  irqbalance:
  Installed: 1.5.0-3ubuntu1
  Candidate: 1.5.0-3ubuntu1
  Version table:
  *** 1.5.0-3ubuntu1 500
  500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu disco/main amd64 Packages
  100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

  $ apt rdepends irqbalance
  irqbalance
  Reverse Depends:
  Recommends: ubuntu-standard
  gce-compute-image-packages

  Issue/Bug Description:

  as per konkor/cpufreq#48 and
  http://konkor.github.io/cpufreq/faq/#irqbalance-detected

  irqbalance is technically not needed on desktop systems (supposedly it
  is mainly for servers), and may actually reduce performance and power
  savings. It appears to provide benefits only to server environments
  that have relatively-constant loading. If it is truly a server-
  oriented package, then it shouldn't be installed by default on a
  desktop/laptop system and shouldn't be included in desktop OS images.

  Steps to reproduce (if you know):

  This is potentially an issue with all default installs.

  Expected behavior:

  n/a

  Other Notes:

  I can safely remove it via "sudo apt purge irqbalance" without any
  apparent adverse side-effects. If someone is running a situation where
  they need it, then they always have the option of installing it from
  the repositories.

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