After trying vmtouch, it only seems to be partially helping. I’m not sure if I’m just using it incorrectly or not but if I remove the files from RAM and then use vmtouch to add them back in, the hitching issues are still partially there.

To fully explain what my issue is, I currently using the Linux version of the Cyber Lancer demo from Itchio as it’s small enough to fit onto my 128 MB SD card, which is very slow. I can easily run the game from other storage devices that have much higher read speeds but I want to get the most out of my older and slower storage devices. What’s happening is when the game first loads when it’s files aren’t stored in RAM, is the game essentially freezes for a split second every time it has to load an asset that wasn’t previously loaded.

vmtouch isn’t making the hitching go away, it just making it load a little faster. This does mean that it’ll help but if you’re aware of a better solution, I can try that out as well.

That wont be necessary, after doing more “extreme” tests with preload, it seems like I was wrong about preload. I used sudo sysctl vm.drop_caches=1 to make sure that none of the game’s files were loaded in RAM before using preload like I did yesterday, but the game still has hitching issues. This means that the game’s files were probably still loaded in RAM when I was testing it yesterday.

For context, what I’m trying to do is find a way to run smaller games more smoothly from some very old storage devices that are very slow. I thought that preload would be the solution but since it doesn’t seem to actually do what I thought it did, I’m going to need a different solution. I will try vmtouch and respond back if it works.

After doing some more “extreme” tests, it seems like I was wrong about how preload works. In fact, it didn’t seem to actually preload the files at all, so I’m not sure what it actually does. I ran sudo sysctl vm.drop_caches=1 to make sure that none of the game’s files were loaded and then used preload like I did yesterday, but the game still has hitching issues. This means that the game’s files were probably still loaded in RAM when I was trying it yesterday.

When I used preload, it let me manually add files to ram. I used sudo preload filename for each file (the game I tried it with only had two) and it seemed to add them to ram. I know this because the game had hitching issues even after just adding the main executable but the hitching went away when I added the second file.

I mean, as long as they don’t require an ID that’s fine I guess, even though what they’re proposing can be easily circumvented. But my biggest, and everyone else’s, concern is that, as with what’s been going on with age verification, it’s possible that it’ll just snowball into something worse. It doesn’t help that there are people, like me, that currently can’t get IDs. There are already several websites that I have to use through a VPN, so if these age verification laws keep getting worse, people like me might completely lose the ability to use the internet entirely, unless they make getting IDs easier.

When you say “remove”, do you mean completely remove or move them to swap/zswap/zram, depending on what the system has enabled?

I know that we do need better regulations for protecting children online but I don’t think we’re ever going to get that. It seems like the government that we have now just wants to have full control over everyone. In fact, the FTC made a statement saying that they’re basically giving companies a loophole that allows them to partially ignore COPPA, which is one of the best protections children had online. It’s obvious that they have no interest in protecting children online, if they’re making statements like that.

I saw the developers of MidnightBSD state that they are going to block users in California when this law gets put into place. I hope that more OSs do the same. Especially Windows, it could be devastating to California’s economy and make them, along with other states and countries, reconsider their decisions on age verification.

I don’t live in California but I’m interested in seeing if there are any other OSs that will be blocking California users. I’m probably fine to just continue using Linux Mint but I’m open to trying other distros/OSs in order to participate in this protest if Linux Mint doesn’t.